Make: Drones: Teach an Arduino to Fly

Make: Drones: Teach an Arduino to Fly is an October 2016 book by David McGriffy about DIY quadcopters.

The book describes how to build three types of drones: a small drone, a medium-sized drone and a large drone.

Contents
First part of the book guides a reader through the process of tuning an existing drone Hubsan X4C. It then describes how to take a Hubsan X4 frame and build a new drone out of it using the MultiWii flight controller firmware.

Second part of the book describes the construction of a drone using the frame of Syma X5 (another existing drone) and Arduino Teensy 3.2 board for the flight controller. This drone features power modules, sensors and radios, all glued together by a custom circuit board.

In the final chapters the reader dives deeply into building a large drone which is based on S500 frame kit and Pixhawk Lite flight controller, which runs ArduCopter firmware. This drone features a GPS module and is able to fly autonomous missions.

Perception
The book is a great, but somewhat dated introduction to the hobby. It teaches how to build drones and discusses the hardware well.

However, as of 2021, the book needs an update. It doesn’t cover modern software (like Betaflight), modern RC links (like Crossfire), modern goggles (like DJI Goggles) or FPV systems (like Caddx Vista).