Couple of points for those who might be interested...

Connecting the blades up to non-specific controllers...

Not easy to do. The blades are driven by a specific microcontroller (PIC of some sort) which is connected via USB to the AR9331. All of this is integrated onto the mainboard, and can't be removed. It also limits the number of blades you can connect to two, as the MCU in question doesn't have any connectors for more and likely lacks the resources to support them anyway.

As for the controller, it is already pretty much maxed out and would probably not be able to handle more even with the room to connect them. If you could get the MCU without the AR9331 board and also programmed with the appropriate firmware, you might be able to get it running on a generic PC or other more powerful host. You would however need access to the driver to compile it for a different architecture (not impossible, but difficult).

People having issues with controller boards...

Why not do as I do and post extracts from system logs here? Those who have worked with linux, and specifically OpenWRT might be able to help out, or at least give more specific diagnosis of issues...