What are the best Flight controller for beginners?

If you want to choose best flight controller for quadcopter but don’t know which one is or suit to beginner,then you’ve come to the right place,here to tell you that which oneis the best flight controller.

Flight controller is the most important part of quadcopter

As we known, A quadcopter can fly in the sky must need all parts such as Flight frame,ESCS,Motors,Flight Controller,Lipo Battery,Transmitter and receiver,Propellers .etc. Flight controller is the most important one ,I regard the flight controller as a brain which will stop flying when its components fail. what does flight controller can do? it may control all of the following aspects of flight – possibly more.

• Gyro Stabilization – the ability to easily keep the quadcopter stable and level under the pilot’s control. This is a standard feature of all Flight controller.
• Self Leveling – the ability to let go of the pitch and roll stick on the transmitter and have the quadcopter stay level.
• Orientation mode- The pilot can control the orientation of the quadcopter.
• Altitude Hold – the ability to hover a certain distance from the ground without having to manually adjust the throttle.
• Position Hold – the ability to hover at a specific location.
• Return Home – the ability to automatically return to the point where the quadcopter initially took off.
• Waypoint Navigation – the ability to set specific points on a map that quadcopter will follow as part of a flight plan.
• GPS – the ability to record the data of flying,it will shorten  search time for next time.

Flight controller Comparison Table

These are some of the popular Flight controller listing as below（some of them have been outdated）,all of them are Open Source boards which also have Gyro Stabilization, Self Leveling ability.You can find out the differences of them.

Board	Care Free	Altitude Hold	Position Hold	Return Home	Waypoint  Navigation	Price
AeroQuad 32		Yes	Add-on	Add-on	Add-on	$149
ArduCopter (APM 2.5)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	$180
AutoQuad v6.6	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	$19
Crius All In One PRO	Yes	Yes	Add-on	Add-on	Add-on	$25
Crius MultiWii Lite						$13
Crius MultiWii Lite	Yes	Yes				$39
Hobbyking KK2						$22
MultiWii PRO / MTK GPS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	$430
MultiWii PRO 2.0 / MTK GPS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	$542
OpenPilot CC3D						$14
Paris MultiwiiCopter	Yes	Yes	Add-on	Add-on	Add-on	$95
Quadrino ZoomFlight	Yes	Yes
UAVP/UAVX	Yes	Yes	Yes	Add-on	Add-on	$75

How to choose best flight controller for quadcopter

If you want to build quadcopter by yourself,the first thing is choose best flight controller for quadcopter.there are three things to considering when you buying it.

The flight controller board must be open source board

Open source is quite popular,flight controller is not exception.It is a very flexible method and you can always modify any of it to suit your own needs .So if want to diy my own quadcopter i will choose the filght controller board which is open source.

The price of flight controller

Before you think about purchasing flight controller, you should really compare the quality and cost of the two platforms.  For the beginners the cheaper the better Unless  you are rich,but you must be sure the quality of the filght controller is good. Of course which one is determined by your needs.

What are the best Flight controller for beginners?

For the beginnner,need some quadcopter build guide,I suggest you to choose open source flight controller board above list,and the price is less than $100 even $50, many beginners choose OpenPilot CC3D or kk2.The OpenPilot CC3D is a very established board and it’s very cheap , More importantly the CC3D is very easy to configure and tune, it has excellent community support. KK2 it’s also cheap, Functionality wise, it’s pretty simple too. The kk2 as a great starter board. There’s lots of documentation for it. Someone always keep a kk2 around just for testing.

This post is from diy quadcopter website:http://www.rcdronegood.com/how-to-choose-best-flight-controller-for-quadcopter/

Quadcopter battery calculator formula for you

How to calcular quadcopter flight time for you? if you do not know,please read ahead,this post will tell you the formula about quadcopter battery calculator.

Quadcopter battery calculator formula

Quadcopter flight times =(Battery Capacity * Battery Discharge /Average Amp Draw)*60

Introduction calculator formula

For calculate your quadcopter flight time,you have to get three factors:Battery Capacity ,Battery Discharge and Average Amp Draw.

Battery Capacity:

As we know,Choose the best lipo battery for quadcoper is very important. Bigger lipo battery can be powered more energy.In fact As the battery gets larger, the increase in flight time becomes ineffective,because of the weight of battery.But today we are not to discuss the matter. For calculator you have to take the battery’s capacity in amp hours,To convert from mAh to Ah, battery capacity divide by 1000.For instance,1800mAh/1000=1.8Ah.

Battery Discharge:

From lipo battery warnig will let you know that be too dangerous and be permanently damaged when voltage levels become lower then 20% and fully discharged..In respect of this, it’s common practice to not discharge your LiPo batteries below 20% mAh during flight; In other words.the effective capacity is only 80% that can be used during flight time.For instance, 1.8Ah*0.8=1.44A (effective capacity).
By the way,quadcopter flight times calculator base on the true battery Capacity or the non-oversized in capacity.

How to work out Average Amp Draw?

Before quadcopter battery calculator you work out the average amp draw,you have to know two things, one is about your carrying weight of your quadcopter which include battery weight.An other thing is the parameters of quadcopter motor,Read your motor instructions,you have to know how many amps one motor will be draw to produce 100g of thrust?This is the key points in the calculation of Average Amp Draw.For example,
If you know each motor draws 1amps to produce 100g of thrust. if your quadcopter take 2000g to flight,each motor will have to produce 500g (500g = 2000g / 4motors) of thrust in order to hover. Then your quadcopter Average Amp Draw is 20AMPS ( 20AMPS =4motors * 500g/100g per 1amps);
An other way to work out the average amp draw,buy a smart lipo battery which will record lipo Amp Draw when quadcopter move on or steady hover in the sky.This calculator much more accurate than the frist one.

Make a conclusion for quadcopter flight times

For instance, i have a lipo battery 3s 3300mAh, I calculated the average amp draw of quadcopter to be around 20 amps,and iI am making an assumption that 80% of battery capacity will is used,then the quadcopter flight time is 7,92 minutes.
Quadcopter flight times = (3300/1000mAh) * 80% / 20 amps *60 minutes = 7.92  minutes
Obviously this quadcopter battery calculator is a very simplistic calculator base on steady hover.For aerial photography work or FPV flying which the motors will have to spin faster, and thus pull more current. This higher current draw will reduce flight time and your flight times will degrade dramatically with about 75% or up to50% of the calculated quadcopter flight time.
Post source:http://www.rcdronegood.com/quadcopter-battery-calculator-flight-times/