Good afternoon. I have a company that is interested in sponsoring a programming contest for students, and we both had thought about how neat it would be to have students program quadcopters. However, we're not sure what is out on the market. Is there any inexpensive quad copter (~$100 or so) that has any ability to be programmed, or is programmability limited to much more expensive units?
Well - I think there are a number of open source based quadcopters - many of them very low priced. BUT, this stuff is rocket science....it's not, to my knowledge, available to program in a way that most students could deal with. http://www.multiwii.com/software Is an example of open source software which many low priced machines (and flight controller boards) are based on. It would seem the students would already have to have a lot of background in the basics of R/C flight controllers and the various options in order to come up with ways to program the quadcopters. Fancier flight controllers built on APM are available - these could be programmed for lots of feats, but again it can get advanced. http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__74644__Micro_HKPilot_Mega_Micro_Sized_Flight_Controller_and_Autopilot_with_Leads_2_7_2_APM_.html It may be worth your while to head over to diydrones.com and ask the same question - but maybe even more specific, such as exactly what you'd want them to program. IMHO, land based programming may offer a simpler task and more options because making flying things do tricks can be very difficult (and chancy). The stuff you see at TED and at demos often takes years of programming and 10's of thousands of dollars worth of sensors to accomplish.
