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Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

Do you have any links? I have a quad and figured I'd build a plane out of the spare parts, and ordered a Pixhawk, but none of the connectors seem to actually fit anything else. Am I doing something wrong or are they actually not consistent? Is there some website that helps you connect the components and configure the Pixhawk?

Thanks!

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Try this one - very easy to build, and extremely fun to fly:

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?1395335-Begin...

EDIT: BTW, if you want to get into the hobby, rcgroups.com is basically Mecca for the DIY builders in the crowd.

It doesn't look like he is using a Pixhawk? It's hard to be sure but it appears to be a commodity quad FC, presumably with wing/plane firmware flashed. Not sure which flight control firmware varieties still support planes and wings since the ones I've used haven't had support for that in years.

That's not a flight controller, it's a simple power distribution board, most likely [1]. Flying wings generally don't need flight controllers, they just need two servos and an electronic speed controller for the motor. A flight controller is nice because it can stabilize the plane, and it can also provide autonomous flying it it has a gps. If you just want to fly around like that, no need.

[1] https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61k-Sva2oYL...

This makes sense. Thanks!

True, he just uses a power board. I went full hog and got the ArduPilot board plus the telemetry transceiver so I can have the plane fly from the computer with waypoints. Now if only I knew how to connect everything!

You'd be far better off scaling things back a bit and just learning traditional RC electronics - how an ESC gets wired up to the motors, where the servo's get their signals, and all that. ArduPilot definitely has sex appeal - but learn the basics of RC electronics first, is my advice ..

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