Components

[ElectricBud]

Hi, My young son found a book on drones at the library and was completely taken up by the idea of building his own quadcopter with a basic, lightweight wooden frame. I'm totally overwhelmed by all the choices for components. His only request is that the quadcopter has altitude hold. I found the Hyperion F3 flight controller (https://hyperion-world.com/en/p2597033-hp-fcf3dlx), which I like for its OSS, but I don't know how to go about finding all the other parts that will be compatible (receiver, transmitter, motors, ESCs, battery, etc.) or even what needs to be compatible and what doesn't. If anyone could help me out with advice for a complete beginner (I literally know NOTHING about all this), I would really appreciate it.

 

[ElectricBud]

Oops. Just realized maybe F3s are outdated and not the way to go. As I said, I have no idea what I'm doing! Recommendations for a flight controller with altitude hold and what parts to buy along with that would be very much appreciated!

 

[wafflejock]

Hah yup basically f4 or f7 based boards are ones to look at, the main thing is to be sure whatever receiver you have has a output signal with a protocol that the given FC supports that said I think most f4 and f7 based ones can support basically any receiver (srxlv2 or some other niche things aside). The escs are generally compatible with any FC but you can find combo esc and FC "stacks" on sites like racedayquads or getfpv.com

Regarding being beginner building suggest check out Joshua Bardwell on YouTube and the website of Oscar Liang as they're both great resources for getting up to speed or filling in technical details.

 

[wafflejock]

You can download betaflight configurator but not sure there is much you can do with it until have hooked it up to a board/FC with betaflight flashed onto it since the utility basically made to read from and write to the FC but in there you configure what port/pins the receiver is wired to and pick off a protocol that it supports.

 

[wafflejock]

Regarding compatible motors and props and all there are sites like ecalc.ch that can help get idea of power to weight and what components will be pushed to near their limits to make a thing fly completely from scratch but would suggest put together a 3" or 5" build smaller is bit more durable but maybe can't carry nicer camera and a little smaller components to work on (need hemostats or needle nose or something to solder things in any case)

 

[ElectricBud]

Thank you so much for all the information and resources! I'll take a look at it all and hopefully have a better chance of helping him start this build!