So I took a bit of a break from working on the Aspen, and in the meantime I actually secured some employment that I will be starting next month. I wanted to share with you all some of the next steps I'm working on with this project before I release it to the masses. One advantage of getting a job is that I can probably start to afford some of the necessary components to continue experimenting on this platform. Up until this point I've been working on a bit of a shoestring budget, including a slight dip into my savings.

So I've got a laundry list of items that I would like to work on including some that are longer term. Some of them include:

- Fully enclosed, lightweight canopy (possibly vacuum formed?)

- Expanded Hopper Size (and lightweight material)

- Optimized Flight Time / Battery size

- Obstacle avoidance and precision altitude control (Lidar?)

- Easier battery swapping (Might be challenging)

- Automated / optimized seed site selection

- Swarm (ie. "Flock") capabilities

- Precision landing control

- Long range telemetry

Ideally I would like to get the drone to a point where within 10 minutes of arriving at a given site, the drone can be up in the air and planting seeds, possibly with multiple units working simultaneously. Its a bit of a dream to have all the drones working at a single "base station" where they come to receive battery and seed "refills" when either item begins to run low. Using this system I would hope to create a seed planting base station that can cover a 1km-2km radius.

In the medium term I would like to release the design for people to be able to build their own copy of the machine. Are there any features you would like to see included? Let me know what you think!