http://diydrones.com/Very cool stuff, it's a UAV you can build at home. The PicoPilot it uses looks pretty sweet, cheap, and functional.
I built a UAV about 6-7 years ago, almost finished it too. I built a simple intertial guidance platform based on an OOPIC, a BX-24 (for math), an i2c digital compass, an OEM GPS pod that was small and cheap, and installed it in a 2 meter trainer I had built.
I used an outboard counter IC that could give me PWM values on pins so I could have the computer be a pass-through for the receiver so I could use the landing gear switch to turn it on and off like they do, it was pretty sweet and I learned a lot about electronics while doing it.
Then, when I began testing, I learned another valuable lesson: Design first, THEN build. My ADXL202 based inertial platform worked GREAT... on the ground. But expose it to a coordinated turn, and it thought it was sitting straight up and down.
I could have added a piezo gyro, but I was in the hole a few hundred already and had run out of steam. A few months later, I saw the CMA CoPilot, a training tool for R/C planes that holds the attitude steady using IR averaging to hold the horizon in place. It would have been more than enough, coupled with GPS guided steering via rudder, to fly from Long Beach to Catalina, take pictures, and fly back (my goal). But by then, I was onto the next big project....
