Dear all,

after i have read a story about quadrocopters in a journal, i was alway thinking about such a flying machine. Since some weeks i am reading different forums and discussions about quadrocopters (gaui, which needs only a little bit screwing to build it, mikrokopter, which has also an good forum in german language (my language) or a kit from Conrad, where it is easy to get spare parts.

Finally,  ordered the arducopterkit 1.1 from www.buildyourowndrone.co.uk, but i don’t know why I take that decision.

Maybe, it was because I like open source,

Maybe, I was impressed by this forum here,

Maybe, it was because of great posts of all the people in the forum,

Maybe it was just a good feeling…..

After soldering the red and the blue board, i putt them together and connected usb (no additional pheripherie). The board (arducopter mega 2560) welcomed me with some nice blinking leds – and important, no smoke or sparks.

Still feeling good!

After i found out, that the next step is loading a firmware (ardupirates 627) i could access the board with the cli, which allowed me to calibrate the magnetometer.

When whatching the magnetometer in the configurator and comparing with a magnetic compass it seems to work. Also the accels, previously calibrated in cli, were reacting to movement of the board. It looks,  that the boards are alive.

Now, i have completed soldering the power distribution and the next step would be:

 “Gentlemen, start your engines” (Mary Fendrich Hulman, Indiana).

At this step i am little bit confused: Possibly that’s because of my poor English knowledges.

When checking the forum, i could found a lot of threads around “toasting” the board when usb and battery are connected, or connected in the wrong sequence, or together/alone with ESC or…..

Please help me with next steps for calibration of:

TX: Which power source should be connected (usb, lipo, both)? What about ESC (the four wire cable from PDB to the red board). Is it better to do that in configurator or in cli?

ESC: Which power source should be connected (usb, lipo, both)? Should the motors (3 fat cables) be connected. Do I need to do that within cli?

In Germany we have a saying: “There are so many trees that you could not see the forest. I guess I’m now in a similar situation.