DIY brushless controllers?

Hi again,

Has anybody taken a crack at homebrewed brushless controllers? I
notice Microchip has two interesting appnotes that could be used for
this:

Brushless DC motor control made easy (speed-torque control)
(http://www.microchip.com/1010/suppdoc/appnote/all/an857/index.htm

PIC16XXXX/18XXXX DC Servomotor (brushed position control)
http://www.microchip.com/1010/suppdoc/appnote/all/an696/index.htm

So a position controller would be basically a combination of these
two applications... the second addresses optical encoder up/down
count; the first the pwm sinusoidal generation to drive the actual
brushless motor.

Has anybody seen or experimented with these?

Microchip also has some other neat app notes about brushed servo
control, and one cool sinusoidal microstepping drive.

I just wanted to get talking about brushless drives and pitfalls
with them since there aren't so many options for us as opposed to
brushed/stepper etc.

Cheers,
Andrew