I know the brushless thing has been done before but I hope I've put a new slant on things... I wanted to build a brushless tank I could battle, the only way I could find when I started this was the ELMOD Pro which looks rather complicated not to mention expensive. Anyway... what I did was learn to program the Arduino and use a Sansmart Uno which has RC servo pinouts. The program I wrote processes the left and right track servo signals and will slow the tank down as it takes hits then stops it when dead. As Tamiya spec it then comes back to life and is invincible for a set period. I profiled the infrared signals from a Tamiya to learn what it transmits when it fires and what it receives to take a hit, this I replicated in software.
I found the Arduino didn't have enough power to fire the full distance of the Tamiya so I designed a small amp circuit so I can fire at 30M.
I also figured that I might want to use it in other tanks so I added weight class selection with a jumper so the fire rate, hits etc are the same as Tamiya..... It also has outputs to trigger sound cards and do servo recoil. In this homespun tank destroyer I have used four IR sensors but I could equally have used a Tamiya apple but this was a build on a budget using up old bits and bobs I had left over from other projects.

Drew

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gxxKfF3C3Y&list=UU9-UAz7WE4f47sc9A_b0vrQ

Ambitious project. Sky's the limit with what you can do.. Great job, and I bet you had a pile of fun doing it.