newbie intro: looking to get into autonomous flight

hi all, my name is Ken and i am a complete quadcopter noob. my ultimate goal in the hobby is to design, build and successfully launch my first autonomous quadcopter, but since i am completely foreign the hobby i thought i would start by learning the basics.

i look forward to sifting this forum and learning from all the seasoned members on this forum. while i have been doing some preliminary web browsing, and was wondering if anyone on this forum has heard of or used an APM flight controller. here is a link i found:

http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/drones/first-fully-autonomous-quadcopter-flight-tests/

i was curious to anyone's opinions on APM flight controllers. any info, advice or opinions would be really appreciated. thanks everyone!

heresken said:

hi all, my name is Ken and i am a complete quadcopter noob. my ultimate goal in the hobby is to design, build and successfully launch my first autonomous quadcopter, but since i am completely foreign the hobby i thought i would start by learning the basics.

i look forward to sifting this forum and learning from all the seasoned members on this forum. while i have been doing some preliminary web browsing, and was wondering if anyone on this forum has heard of or used an APM flight controller. here is a link i found:

http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/drones/first-fully-autonomous-quadcopter-flight-tests/

i was curious to anyone's opinions on APM flight controllers. any info, advice or opinions would be really appreciated. thanks everyone!

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Hahaha, APM is very popular, I'd suggest it or a NAZA for autonomous flight.

Here is a list of flight controllers that support waypoint navigation.

Depending on how far you want to take it, you might be better looking at the Pixhawk. APM is no longer being developed as the hardware has run out of steam.

thanks for the info, this will help me build a good jumping off point to get started in this hobby.

Best overview and instructions that I have found on Pixhawk is here

so after some internet sifting and info i received from members on this forum, i decided to go with the pixhawk by 3DR as my flight controller. i decided to find some off the shelf copter/kits that i can cut my teeth with, and later take on my experiences and design my own frame/arms/brackets etc that will allow for a higher payload.

my initial goal with my first off the shelf copter/kit will be to have it make a simple journey from point A to point B all by itself without crashing while equipped with some sort of gopro camera. again, i am very new to this and i am not enough familiar with too much of quadcopter lingo and jargon so please excuse me if i confuse some stuff as i go forward with my project. i have a budget of $1k-2500 for my first quadcopter, so im not completely hamstrung by money, but i don't have a dream budget.
i am interested in a few of the models that DJI has to offer, but i was wondering if anyone had any thoughts, advice, opinions or info on a build kit/off the shelf copter that i can attach a pixhawk and a gopro too and would fit what i am looking for. i probably left some info, or wants/needs out of this post that would help you point me in the right direction, so if so please let me know. any help would be really really appreciated! thanks again.

Not knowing where in the world you are it is difficult to recommend suppliers but something like this http://www.droneshop.biz/multirotor...pm2-6-gps-f450-quadcopter-self-build-kit.html would give you a good start. A 450 frame is big enough to carry a Gopro plus whatever stuff you may need as your project progresses. I expect you may need to go through several builds to get to your ultimate goal.

thanks for replying Paul, i should have mentioned that I am in the Bay Area CA, and that I recently found out that the 3DR offices are right in my neighborhood. I also should have mentioned that I do plan on taking this in many many steps and will also be starting from square one by learning to fly (and crash) with an X5C-1. I couldn't believe how cheap they are and I am excited to get my hands on it. the next phase that will run parallel with learning to fly with the X5C-1 will be to build a larger copter from off the shelf stuff that can facilitate a pixhawk, a GPS, and a camera. this will be my $1k-2500 build. once I get enough experience and knowledge from this first build, I would like to move onto extrapolating from that base knowledge and building a larger copter that is capable of higher payloads. I would like to design and machine the frame myself, I know that this is a lofty goal, but I plan to give myself a time frame stretching well into 2016 to finally get to building my own custom autonomous copter. I should also probably mention that my work provides me with a complete machine shop with a mill and a CNC machine that I am allowed to tinker with in my off time for my own personal projects.

thanks for the link and keep them coming!

Sounds like you are taking the right approach. You might find some good information here http://www.rcgroups.com/multirotor-beginner-940/
You should be able to get your first larger craft in the air for around $500 no need to waste money. I would suggest investing in a good transmitter such as the Taranis Plus from the start to save you having to repeat the learning curve as you progress. The same would be true for battery chargers.

update: i was hoping to get my practice drone (X5C-1) by today so that i would have the weekend to start practicing with it, but unfortunately i will have to wait until next week. as for my larger drone, i went with a kit from 3DR. I was already looking into how to make this thing fly autonomously and was looking into using an array of proximity sensors or possibly some sort of radar for object detection. does anyone have any thoughts or experience with this?

Update: so i finally received my practice drone, and a buddy of mine who is also getting into drone flight and will be helping me design my future autonomous drone also received his practice drone. between us we have a X5C and a UDI/RC drone. after a couple of days of flying them we have been getting the basics down. i can now safely and softly land my drone on the roof of my car with consistency, although i now realize how much strong winds can make it next to impossible to fly your drone back upwind. at one point i lost my drone into a tree. it took me a rope with a box wrench tied to it and about 20 tries to get my drone safely down. I was in a wide open field and managed to hit the one tree at the end of the park!

i am hoping to get my pixhawk in soon and start learning how to utilize it. still undecided on the frame type of my autonomous drone. i here "H" type frames are best for image collection which is something i am also interested in. i was also told by an engineering friend of mine that i may want to look into using radar to help the drone with object detection. anyone out there using radar for these purposes on their drones? thanks again everyone for all of the info and tips.

I have been using the H frame design for a few different frames and can confirm that it is really nice, it has a lot more room than many other designs and can be built easy and cheap.

UPDATE: so in the past week, my plans have been moving super fast. my buddy and I got two practice drones, an X5C and a UDI/829 and we started learning how to fly them. we were practicing every day and we actually got fairly decent at it. we even started trying to master obstacles like holding hoops in the air and flying through them and landing them on top of our cars.

next we ordered a 3DR X8 with a pixhawk included. we got the X8 in last Friday and started pulling it apart over the weekend to figure out how its wired up and built. we did a lot of internet reading, and with the help internet and many of the forum members here, we learned a lot about our ultimate goal of autonomous flight.

yesterday, we successfully used mission planner, and also flew the 3DR X8 manually. as exciting as that was, we were both a little let down at how fool proof the X8 is. with our practice drones, it was a bit of a rush trying not to crash the copter, with the X8, it has so many accelerometers and that IMU make it almost impossible to crash. really really impressive, and we are certainly not trying to crash the thing, but the automation does take a little of the excitement out.

onto the autonomous study, again, thanks to you guys on the forum, we found a suitable array of sensors including an IR, sonar, and a lidar. all in all, all three of our sensors cost us less than 150 bucks. we are going to test which one will work best for us. my next question is whether someone can point us in the right direction on how to programming the pixhawk to work with the sensors. We don't need actual coding script, but maybe a link that can get us started on learning. thanks again to everyone for all the help, we couldn't have got this far without this forum!

I'll be posting pics of our drones and gear soon.

Glad you are making progress. Have you seen this? https://pixhawk.org/peripherals/rangefinder

i have seen this! in fact, my buddy and i ordered one today. i think it's the ticket we are looking for. i will report back our findings as soon as we get it in and start tinkering with it. i was also interested to know what people are using to transport their drones. woudl it be a worth while investment to spend 400 bucks on a pelican style case with custom cut foam for our 3DR X8, or is this just overkill? so far we have been okay just carrying the thing around, but would it be worthwhile to invest in a solid case? any thoughts on this would be really appreciated. thanks again for all of the knowledge everyone!

heresken said:

i have seen this! in fact, my buddy and i ordered one today. i think it's the ticket we are looking for. i will report back our findings as soon as we get it in and start tinkering with it. i was also interested to know what people are using to transport their drones. woudl it be a worth while investment to spend 400 bucks on a pelican style case with custom cut foam for our 3DR X8, or is this just overkill? so far we have been okay just carrying the thing around, but would it be worthwhile to invest in a solid case? any thoughts on this would be really appreciated. thanks again for all of the knowledge everyone!

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Take a look at a box style guitar/instrument case, they are perfect for this stuff, easy to handle and cheaper. I am making a special case for mine from wood and foam, but a guitar case is a great way to carry.