New Design

Today, I will be working on a new design. A kind of an overhaul for the entire plane. I was thinking of carving out a compartment to stick the battery pack in. My only concern is cutting it in the wrong place, and off centering the weight of the plane, so after i place all the non-permanent parts, like the arduino board, and smaller parts on the glider, then I will work on centering the weight with a battery pack. Also, for the motors, i was thinking about carving small indentations in the wings so the motors fit snug inside the casing, and it will be slightly more aerodynamic.

New items

Today I got some new swag for the drone. A gyroscope, accelerometer, and lcd screen. Also two 4.8 inch propellers and an 8.4v battery pack. Even though it's less than the 9v battery i was using, this thing packs a punch, and has a lot more energy also. the thing is that it weighs a bit more then the 9v battery, so i'm hoping that the extra power it provides will cancel it out. With the gyro and accelerometer I hope for this to transmit the data to the lcd screen, which are all on board the plane. For a start, I will have the arduino shut off power to the plane once it reaches around 100 meters or the length of a soccer field. then have it glide to a stop. Its all I can do at the moment. Once I get that working, I'll most likley get a bluetooth chip and from my phone, program how far I'd like it to fly in real time, or when to have the engines cut at x altitude, then have it glide to the ground. Also another image from my original setup and the new parts i got. That switch and the 9v batteries are now gone from the updated design.

Basic info

This is the official page on updates and info on the Crusader One, the Bergen Catholic High School robotics team project. Were starting off small by attaching 18v motors onto a foam glider, and with an arduino board, attempt to control altitude, and how far it goes just by that. No human input is here at this point. Once this works, my second step was adding some sort of Bluetooth or shortwave radio to the plane transiting data in real time such as wind speed, the speed of the plane, how far it's flown, etc. I'm mainly just doing this as i go on, and i'm still early in this project. My ultimate goal, this current project just being a stepping stone, is to build a drone that can fly at a higher altitude, and with a kinect camera, or something similar, be able to see strategically placed red squares, or blue circles or whatever on a field, and when it sees this it will tell it a new instruction. eg green triangle, lower altitude  yellow square, turn left 15 degrees, and etc. I know this this will be alot more complicated, so i'm starting small with something like this to get familar with how an automated drone and plane works. Here are a few pictures of an early design.