Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
No matter which path you choose, another excellent source for information is
ht-
tp://code.google.com/p/arducopter
.
This gives you some information on how the Ar-
duPilot works and also talks about Mission Planner, the open source control SW that will
be used to control the ArduPilot on your quadcopter. This SW runs on your PC and com-
municates with the quadcopter in one of two ways: either directly through a USB connec-
tion or through a radio connection.
The first step in working in this space is to build your quadcopter and get it working with
an RC radio. When you allow Arduino to control it later, you may still want to have the
RC radio handy, just in case things don't go quite as planned.
When the quadcopter is flying well based on your ability to control it using the RC radio,
you should then begin to use the ArduPilot in the autopilot mode. To do this, download
the Mission Planner SW from
ArduPilot.com/downloads
. You can then run the SW, and
you should see something like the following screenshot:
