That's gonna take alot of your lunch money Techno. Just under $3000 is a nice chunk of change. Wouldn't rocketing your ezb across the galaxy take you out of the blueTooth or WiFi range pretty quickly?

Speaking of range, could you set up a WiFi or bluetooth network with hotspots or something AD/HOC to extend the range of the ezb? There's cell phone company called MetroPCS, and I'm not sure if this is still how they do it, instead of having and using the traditional towers, they have little broadcast and receive nodes set up on poles (Tele or electrical) all over the towns. They don't have it in my city yet but they have it up in Detroit.

cool ideas. I know about the price so I had no intentions of doing this but you brought some very good points.

Thanks Tech. I like sharing my ideas and thoughts almost as much as I like hearing others'.

I watched this Ted Talk with a woman from DARPA, (If you want to know what series it was in I can look it up for you, just ask) and she brought up this point that people are either afraid to speak or assume some one better, smarted, faster has already thought of it and the reality is, that just isn't true. Those people are already pretty busy so don't assume they've beaten you to the punch.

Always spit your ideas out. If they're good they can be built upon and if they're bad they can be tossed to make room for new ideas. The only bad idea is the notion of bad ideas. Even if its an old idea you were not aware of. You'll at least be able to move past it then. We don't evolve as a species by hoarding information, we evolve by sharing it. Just remember never to get down or beat yourself up. They can't all be winners, but let's be honest, you can get some nice prizes coming in at second place. ;-)

true that

xbee has a range of a few miles I think. Adding a small PC would avoid the range problems, you may need to add in wireless broadband so you can control it remotely though. I'm sure it would have enough power to move the weight.

If it doesn't need much current to run and only requires and on/off signal you could always use a transistor switching circuit.

I have been wanting to do a drone project for a couple years. Direction antennas are your friend in long range control. Without a complicated system like satellite or cell communications you are limited to 5 to 7 miles line of sight at best due to the curvature of the earth. It ends up being 3 to 5 because if objects in the way and other conditions however. There is a add on device you could interface with EZB called RUBY flight control. http://www.uthere.com/products/ruby/ruby_for_your_aircraft.html

Ruby is a device that is a pass through to your plans electronics. It responds to commands from a receiver ( or our case EZB) and implements the on board gyro , accelerometer and gps to smoothly control the plane and carry out the commands. The ruby remembers flight path by GPS so if your connection to ezb is lost or other technical failure ruby with trace back the path from where it took off and land autonomously...

http://www.nitroplanes.com/projet-drone-2500mm-kit.html

Very nice almost ready to fly drone kit I really want. Imagine a EZ cam inside in the ground turret and also first person view. With a gas powered motor you could be in the air for hours cruisinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LX8m8SLKEA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

6 min in you notice the engine can cut off for about fifteen seconds at a time and only requires a pulse on then back off to stay in the air. Its very fast as far as RC planes go. I would love to have one and just watching the video makes me want to pick one up