Hello Drone Community!
I am a couple of months into a big octocopter project and need a little bit of help. First off to describe what I’m doing: I am building an EV manned octocopter and I am hoping to make this project as open source as possible. Through lots of data analysis, I want to create the most cost-effective manned octocopter with today’s commercially available technology (while seriously respecting safety measures). I have already checked out other projects to help with some of the design decisions like Colinfurze, JLaserVideo, The Manned Octocopter Project, and Rene Steinhauer’s project. I am writing up all my findings into a manual of sorts explaining each of the parts of the octocopter, characteristics that are important about each part, and why I ultimate decide on the specific part I buy for the project. Also, all the spreadsheets I use for data analysis will be available.
That brings me to the first question: What is the easiest way to make all this available to anyone who would like to view it? Also, where is the best place to post updates and questions for this project? I have seen a few different forums and settled on this one but let me know if there is a better place for this project to be discussed!
Now some questions about hardware:
-Are there Flight Controller brands out there I have not yet considered? I am looking into DJI (A3 pro, N3 pro?), PixHawk, Auterion(Skynode), Fusion Engineering(Fusion Reflex). If anyone could explain the difference between the A3 pro and the N3 pro (if that exists) that would be great (I talked to customer support for about an hour and got nowhere…). Additionally, the DJI flight controller software seems intuitive and easy to use, but I am unsure of what else I could use. I have seen Ardupilot Copter recommended as well but if there were other suggestions for the software, I would appreciate it.
-What are aspects of a flight controller that I should look for? I haven’t quite found if there are quantitative flight controller parameters that are easily comparable.
-Are there flight controllers that are 14s? After all my data analysis on the combination of propellers, motors, and batteries, a 14s setup looks to be the best in terms of safety, power, and cost.
-I am familiar with the hardware that goes into an fpv drone, but it seems like there are fewer pieces of hardware for the octocopter with one of the above flight controllers. Correct me if I am wrong but the flight controllers also include the power distribution board and receiver?
Thanks for the help!
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