First of all, I would like to thank everyone on this site that helped me within the past few weeks! Y'all's advice definitely helped me make some decisions in moving forward with these UAVs. With that being said, I wanted to give an update to anyone who is interested in what I finally purchased.

I definitely wanted to get something Arduino-compatible, and first looked into getting a hexacopter. However, I had an overwhelming amount of feedback to start out with a quadcopter instead, which I've learned also tends to be more efficient than a hexa anyway. I was also told to get something cheap and durable to practice flying with, since this is my first experience with copters. So, I purchased two drones, one for beginner's training and one for experimentation.

The copter I purchased for practicing with was recommended to me by a user on DIYD. This is the UDI U818A Quadcopter that I bought from Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/U818A-2-4GHz-Axis-Quadcopter-Camera/dp/B00D3IN11Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403121723&sr=8-1&keywords=udi+u818a). It has so far proven to be very durable, and I can get some practice with it inside my office.

The second copter (just came in today) was also recommended by a number of users here, the 3DR IRIS. After opening up the packaging, it seems to be somewhat intimidating, but I'll get started putting everything together tomorrow.

I thank you all again for your help, and I'm looking forward to working with these copters!

Kate