I've been meaning to keep an eye on this project but had forgotten all about it. It sounds like you guys are making some headway! I do a little programming on arduino and CAD work for 3d printing, and I would love to lend a hand. The major roadblock for me was always my inability to read the directinput ffb data coming from the sim.
Arduino as the microcontroller and IDE for this project would be ideal for the DIY aspect of things. It's very affordable and has a low learning curve.
MetalGear Honk, you mentioned working on some code for an arduino. Do you have anything in *.ino format I could look at?
Once I have a functional ffb electronics testbed on an arduino, I'd love to work on the mechanical side of things for this project. Any gimbal/base/other designs I create to go along with this will of course remain free and open source. I've been busy with other things, but I keep a thread of my work at simhq.
Anyways, glad to hear you're making progress and I look forward to lots of arduino fbb trial and error! :D