Replies to This Discussion

3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on April 1, 2012 at 9:41pm

How about the "Getting Started" tab right at the top of this page?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Rod Cole on April 2, 2012 at 4:10am

Jose:

It would be helpful to know more about your objective.

1. What is your experience with Radio Control models and multi-rotor helicopters?

2. What is your experience with photography?

3. Stills, Video, or both?

4. Professional or fun?

As Chris suggested, the "Getting Started" tab provides a lot of information about Arducopter and APM. After that, read the threads in the forum and the Wiki.

If you want to lift a point and shoot or a GoProHD, you can do so with a relatively inexpensive Quad.

If you want to lift a professional still or video camera, you will need a Hex or Octa capable of lifting 3-6 pounds, depending upon the weight of the camera. It is not cheap to build one of these as you will want to use the highest quality motors, ESC, and batteries because when one of these falls out of the sky, it can be quite expensive and it is nearly impossible to obtain insurance that will replace broken equipment.

I know of several people who have had their DIY Octa fall out of the sky into the water and the replacement cost was $8-10K when you consider the camera & gimbal. Many of these crashes were due to brownouts caused by a poorly designed power distribution grid. Another acquaintance dropped a $150K turbine collective pitch heli with a $20K camera into the ocean.

I have been a cinematographer and professional photographer for many years but I am just getting into AP. I will be happy to answer those questions I can answer.

• ▶ Reply

3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on April 2, 2012 at 6:38am

Rod, thanks for the helpful response. For that you get a zen "n00b ninja" badge!

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Rod Cole on April 2, 2012 at 7:26am

Thanks Chris. 

I usually feel helpless to add anything useful as I am a noob myself, so I am thrilled when I can make a worthwhile contribution. I will proudly wear my "n00b ninja" badge and continue to chime in on questions regarding cinema and photography from a professional viewpoint when applicable. BTW, I got that compile issue we discussed sometime ago figured out and am now able to successfully pull the code with GIT Extensions and compile it in Arduino-0100 Relax. Thanks for your assistance on that problem.

What I have not been able to do is get The Mission Planner to work on my Mac inside a VM. Finally imaged a drive with Windows 7 which I swap into my company provided Linux based laptop to run Windows natively. I still plan to see if I can make it work some day but it was taking way too much time away from building my crash Quad and my Octa. Thanks for your efforts to get me up to speed.

• ▶ Reply