This project aims to autonomously return a glider from a high altitude balloon (100,000 feet). I just wrapped up “proof of concept” autonomous glides dropped from a hexacopter. We’re ready for 18,000 foot class E flight testing, pending how our talks with the faa begins and ends.

Heres the video! Let me know what you guys think.

So, I started this project 2 years ago. Not cutting my hair until i finish it.

The High Altitude Balloon Return project aims to return a flying wing autonomously from a 100,000 feet. There's a lot of challenges associated with this. I tried to make my own flight controller in the beginning (Project log 1-6 to see this progress), now I'm using dronekit and Arduplane because someone with an IQ that isnt in the single digits told me I was being stubborn.

Or, if you just want to see the flight test footage:

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On the sixth installment of my project log, I finally get some test flights off with the flight controller i started to make from an arduino 101.

Up until this point, we barely had the aircraft gliding. This week I decided to add some methods, and cruicial parts to the aircraft that make it behave more like an actual aircraft, and down the line will help it make its own decisions. All of that is outlined in the video above. Enjoy!

I'd love to hear everybodies thoughts on the project so far.

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Our High Altitude Balloon (HAB) project aims to return the electronics on board a weather balloon autonomously instead of drifting away on a parachute. My Project Log series aims to provide short sweet and to the point updates to said project. Heres the most recent one:

Heres some background:

Our High Altitude Balloon (HAB) project aims to return the electronics on board a HAB autonomously. Traditionally, weather and HAB's return electronics safely to the ground via parachute, but this obviously steers waaaayy off from the launch site and takes hours to find. We aim to cut down the risks involved by just bringing everything back via flying wing.

The flight plan is as follows:

1.) Climb to 100,000 feet under balloon
2.) Have balloon explode at highest altitude and have small parachute bring down the plane from 100,000 feet to 30,000 feet. Lack of air pressure makes the void from 100,000 feet to 30,000 feet an uncontrollable abyss for the glider. Small parachute is used to decrease terminal velocity.
3.) Airplane releases itself from flight line and glides towards destination.

My Project Log series aims to provide short sweet and to the point updates to said project. Heres the most recent one:

This week I try to start making progress on the flight controller. Starting off with the original program code written by Kemal, I try to fix things here and there to smooth out the glide.

Next video will explain the program a little bit more, and will be of trying to achieve a successful autonomous straight line flight, and trying to incorporate turns.

Side note, you guys know of any other arduino flight controller projects i could pick up on and learn from? Computer science isnt my strong suit.

Previous uploads:

Project Log 1: Introductions

Project Log 2: Base Flight Test

Project Log 3: Q&A about design choices

I'm trying to do this whole project from the bottom up DIY, so i'll be keeping an updated, weekly project log series going! Let me know what you guys think of the project so far, and drop any feedback if you have them!