Hi all,

I would greatly appreciate suggestions and pointers by the knowledge wealth of this community.

I would like to build a quadrotor from scratch within approximately the following parameters:

• Enough power to lift some minimum weight (a camera or a smartphone)
• Possible in the future to upgrade it to make it an UAV, using arducopter, openpilot or something of the sort
• Low or at least not-too-high cost

I've been searching the forums and the Web in general and of course there is a wealth of information, but that makes me even more uncertain of where to get started.

Any hints or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Julian

Just in case another newbie like me with similar question finds it useful, here are some of the links I found most valuable so far:

Awesome Thread Quadcopter Build for Noobs

Nice site explaining multi-rotors at a high-level (and a lot more)

I also understood so far that for unmanned flight (aka: UAV) the most prominent options are: ArduCopter and OpenPilot. I'm still not sure what components to take into account when I build a simple human-piloted quadcopter so that it will be adaptable to either of those, but I will take a leap of faith for now and start getting my hands dirty.

For the time being, here are the components I'm picking for my first project:

• Flight Controller: Hobby King Multi-Rotor Control Board 2.1
• Motors: Turnigy D2830-11 1000kv Brushless Motor
• 1045 SF Electric Propellers (one set right rotation, one set left)
• ESCs: Turnigy Plush 30Amps

After suggestions (below) I changed the flight controller and added a couple more things:

• Flight Controller (updated): Hobby King Multiwii Mini Flight Controller w/FTDI Interface
• Frame: Q450 Glass Fiber Quadcopter Frame 450mm
• Propeller savers (which I'm not sure I'll use)

I'll probably save the cart and sit on it for a day while I think about other spare parts I should get. Any comments in the meantime to save me from shopping the wrong things would be appreciated (For logistics reasons, I can only shop once every three or four months)

Originally Posted by n00bfly

Flight Controller: Hobby King Multi-Rotor Control Board 2.1

Why do you want to use an obsolete FC ?
Have you looked at Flip or Crius ? They're much better and also very cheap.

If you look for the price get following FC.It's on sale and the same price as 2.1 board

Multiwii Mini Flight Controller w/FTDI Interface
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...Interface.html

Kk2 is a good board with self-level that doesn't require lots of computer time to get setup and tuned. At this stage in the game flight time is the most important thing to learn. Building is easy, flying is much harder. Don't go overboard on your first build, you are going to crash it a lot.

Thank you all! That's exactly the type of feedback that I needed. With no experience, after hours of digging I ended with that HK 2.1 FC only because I couldn't tell the difference anymore.

I will take a look at the other recommendations and pick from there instead.

OK! I'm going with the multiwii then.

I also threw in the Q450 Glass Fiber Quadcopter Frame 450mm and some prop savers (even though not sure I'll used based on what I read on vibrations). A bummer that HK doesn't have the male to male servo leads in stock, otherwise it looks like I'd be set!

Now I only have to wait for the shipment to get all the way here.

n00b- Im awaiting an order myself. Not that you would want to bore yourself to death, but Im going to chronicle my experience as I go. You can see my blog here- http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1821495
Perhaps as we move along we can share info. Out of curiosity, why did you go with the mulitiwii? Seems like the KK2 would be in order to keep things simple.

Originally Posted by DEBAY777

Out of curiosity, why did you go with the mulitiwii? Seems like the KK2 would be in order to keep things simple.

Was wondering the same thing. As a noob myself, I am going for a build with the KK2. When I get better at flying, prolly an APM 2.5.
Isn't there a lot of tweaking/tuning/generally a lot of time-spent-in-front-of-a-pc for the multiwii? Just curious:-)

By the time you muck around with firmware updates etc with KK2, there wouldn't be much difference between boards....Remember, you're on a learning curve, so every little component you become more comfortable with the better.....it will take time, but it will happen. Tweaking, tuning and mucking aroung are a BIG part of this hobby, but the rewards are priceless. Here's a Funny i was sent, explains how we all feel about our hobby...Happy learning curve!

Hitler's New Quadcopter Gets Lost In The Post (DJI Phantom AR Drone) (3 min 59 sec)

I guess I'll let y'all know how it goes with the learning curve for the multiwii. I really don't know what to expect. I did read many descriptions and comments, but it's never the same as feeling it in the flesh.

I think of all the pieces involved in the project, the one I probably would suck the least at is micro-controller programming: I'm much more of a software guy.

I'm also budget- and catalog-constrained, so I preferred to have something more extensible at hand.

I started a build log thread with these pieces. I'll be reporting how it goes there.

Debay: by all means, thanks for the link! I'll be following you as well.

We have both made progress. Hope to see you airborne soon n00b