For kite equipment, I have been happy with brooxes.com gear. At spatial@ucsb, Kitty Currier and I have endeavored to create inexpensive aerial platforms. One of my favorites is the Discavet– a self-leveling rig made from a compact disc, plastic bottle, twine, cable ties, tape, notebook clips, and a toy screw. It uses a Picavet suspension. See: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaglennon/4590225417/in/photostream/
Gyro servos are now fairly easy to acquire (though about $65-$70/each), and could make for some fun hacking.
Concerning software tools for basic georeferencing and partial orthorectification (to reconcile sensor alignment of aerial images), here are a few I use:
mapknitter (open source) link
mapwarper (open source) link
ArcGIS via the Georeferencing toolbar (proprietary) link
Alan
Continuing the thread — though deviating from the original post...
With respect to using Android or iOS devices for collecting GPS field data, do you have any suggestions for the “best” companion app? Apps that afford point, polyline, and polygon data types would seem to be a baseline for GIS-flavored instruction.