UAV Part Selection

Pixhawk
1

Hello All,
I am currently trying to assemble a list of components for a drone build:
6200mAh 4s 40c Lipo 589g
40A Constant Current SBEC 36g ea.
Turnigy D3542/6 1000KV Brushless Outrunner Motor 130g ea.
10*5.5 Prop 10g ea.
S500 PCB Quadcopter Frame Kit 416g
Pixhawk PX4 Kit 267g:
Pixhawk px4 2.4.8 32 bit ARM Flight Controller with shell
Safety button
Anti-vibration set for pix board
PPM module
M8N GPS
Power Module T-plug type
Pixhawk-I2C Splitter Expand board
3DR radio Data Transmission Module(915mHZ)
mini USB cable
mini OSD
Pixy2 Smart Vision Sensor - Object Tracking Camera 68g
MakerFocus Lidar Range Finder Sensor Module Single-Point Micro Ranging Module 5g ea. ( 4 of these)

I’ve just started researching this topic and have zero experience with drones and associated hard/software. There are two main objectives:

  1. Send Drone to a list of GPS locations with time at each location to take pictures/video.
  2. Take pictures at the least and maybe record an area after sending it out to its way-point location.

There is no receiver/transmitter because my team is considering using the ground control app to use the device. Is it necessary to have a physical controller? I have https://docs.qgroundcontrol.com/ https://dev.px4.io and http://ardupilot.org/planner/docs/mission-planner-installation.html as references to learn what I need. Is that enough? All suggestions on where to gather necessary information will be helpful.

2

Hi there,

You first will have to decide if you’re using ArduPilot or PX4 as the flight software. This forum is for PX4.
ArduPilot comes with Mission Planner, QGroundControl comes with ArduPilot or PX4.

For first flights (or due to regulatory requirements) it makes sense to use a controller. Once everything is tuned nicely and flights using GPS are fairly robust, then you can move to more automation using e.g. just a tablet.

If you want to automate commanding a mission and you don’t want to use e.g. QGroundControl but build your own app or script, you can use the Dronecode SDK which will help with that.

3

You need a receiver and transmitter on any new build for tuning and checkout. It not just going to work and would be irresponsible to fly autonomously without it. You should also include a telem radio for monitoring.