Advice for making a drone

[rapid igloo]

I am making my first ever drone from scratch and I need someone to please help answer these questions

1. Good app to code c++
2. Good parts for a drone
3. Advice on how to build the drone

[rugged ore]

do you plan to actually make the entire flight control firmware from scratch?

[rapid igloo]

@rugged ore might modify other people's code but that the plan

[rugged ore]

I would highly advise you use an existing firmware as is, writing something yourself would take months if not years

[rapid igloo]

I plan on this being a longtime project

[rugged ore]

how much experience do you have in embedded programming, specifically in vehicle control?

[rapid igloo]

New to it but if I find i too hard I may modify someone else's code

[rugged ore]

why would you need to modify it? There's something for every sort of use. But feel free to check out the sources of some of the popular firmwares - https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight and https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot

[rapid igloo]

I'm planning on trying to make it the slightest bit cost effective

[rugged ore]

I don't see how that's related to modifying already existing firmware

is there something missing that you'd want to add to these?

[rapid igloo]

I might use some odd items instead of the best of the best

Not digging stuff out of the rubbish type

[rugged ore]

I still don't see how that's related to having to make changes to fc firmware

[rapid igloo]

I'm not the most sure but I'm trying to keep everything down

[rugged ore]

you can run Betaflight on a $3 STM32F405/AT32F435 MCU

[rapid igloo]

Thanks

Can we please do stuff for question two I think question one is answered

[rugged ore]

that is if you want to design your own flight control hardware as well... if not there are readily available FC boards for $25-35

[rugged ore]

what sort of use do you want out of it?

[rapid igloo]

A Camera drone just as a starting point for making these kinds of things

[rugged ore]

we'll need a lot more info than that... load capacity, flight time, etc...

[rapid igloo]

Maybe like a half hours power then again if that's above or below average tell me

[rugged ore]

doable, depending on the weight and size

[rapid igloo]

Rather small only holding a camera and possibly some LEDs with a separate power source

[rugged ore]

we'll need actual numbers, not vague descriptions

[rapid igloo]

maybe 5 5 volt LEDs

Not sure about cameras though

[rugged ore]

then work on that first

figure out what the drone needs to carry, then we can go from there

[rapid igloo]

Thanks

[stuck bone]

I would find something that works first so you have a point of comparison between feel versus problem

But if you want to go totally from scratch for the challenge, good luck, and check out betaflight's documentation deep dive and control loop explanation

do you want to write a custom fpv protocol too?