Discussions

Welcome everyone.. I have a million questions and im not sure of where to start looking. ive been reading for the better part of teh past couple of days and it only seems to create more questions so ill start here..

1. Motors

What are the advantages of using 4 motors instead of 6 or 8 as well as the opposite. I can only imagine that i would like to be carrying a camera as my payload. 6 or 8 motors may help me fly more effectively but would use more battery power right? that would bring me to question number 

2. Flight Time

  is there anything i can do to figure out how much flight time ill be expecting as well as what can be done to extend this.

3. Software.

 I see that there are multiple Front end applications that can be used to program the quadrocopter. I believe that i can have realtime video transmitted back to the control center as well. is there any advantages of using one software platform over the other? this woudl tie in with the processor as well but can i load mulitple different programming applications for my setup? whatever im using is going to be arduino based so i would like to assume that there are different software setups for it.

4. Controller.

Im thinking that a RC controller is better to control the Coptor instead of using my android. but i do believe that i read that ill probably just be flying by programming waypoints into it and it will fly on its own. can i also fly just by controller alone? Im seeing on Youtube that some guys are using the video sunglasses and im assuming that video is being transmitted back and they can see and fly through the use of the camera.

I know this is alot of questions and i should probably break them up but im really just looking for a starting point. 

5. Flexability

I see several different copters doing acrobatics. is it possible to do this as well as have cameras on them?

my background is im a robotics applications designer for industrial robots. I was primarily looking to do this because i just thought it would be fun to video our systems for the customer from an aerial view and then it spawned a million different more ideas.