Discussions

I'm looking to do a tacocopter-like project with a friend, and we're trying to decide what copter and control system to use.  

Our requirements are:

- Must be able to hold a payload of at least 100 grams in addition to the full robot + control system stuff mentioned below.  More payload capacity is always nice.

- Must support GPS to fly to a particular location.

- Must be able to be remotely directed to a new GPS location.  (How are the copters without telemetry even controlled?)

- Would be nice if the copter could be controlled by an onboard Android phone so that we can remotely communicate with it over the cell network.  I don't want to reinvent the wheel by writing control software from scratch, but it would be nice to do most of the heavy lifting on the phone rather than needing a bunch of independent microcontrollers onboard.

- Would be nice to keep the total cost under $1k, excluding the Android phone.

If Android can't provide a complete control system on its own, it would be great to use an ARM-based system rather than Arduino.  ARM is so much more powerful than the Arduino platform, and I feel like Arduino is on its way out given the rising popularity and decreasing cost of devices like the Raspberry Pi.  I saw the PX4 control board but it looks like everyone uses the ArduPilot.  Is PX4 an appropriate choice, or will this require a lot of extra work vs. going with ArduPilot?

Thanks in advance for your comments!