What I will attempt to do here is just simply state in brief what you need to get into this hobby. It's a general start from which you can greatly augment with readuily available sources I already mentioned.
"Painless360" has a great many series that takes up step by step through the hardware as well as software, taking you by the hand until you have your kwad hovering in your back garden. Once you get further into the hobby you can catch up with "Joshua Bardwell" on how to improve your kwad, your FC settings and simply how be a better flyer. And in between there are humongous range of sources you can refer to depending of which topics interest you the most.
I startedfrom scratch - never touched a joystick - much less fly anything- until Mar 2017 when I first bought my little micro drone. Today Feb 2018, I have :
- flown and lost many drones from micro to a full sized 690 Hexacopter.
- built from kit complete kwads that came with bundled parts
- source components and build kwads with my own component and specs and finally
- cut simple shapes out of carbon to build my own kwads in combination with stock arms and configurations I favor.
The utmost basic parts to get your contraption off the ground and flying.
Lets start, these are the most basic set-up you need for a kwad (the flying carbon with 4 arms):
1. The kwad fame
2. The Power Distribution Board (PDB)
3. The Flight Controller (FC)
4. The Regulator/Electrical Speed Contoller (Esc)
5. The motors
6. The propellers
7. The receiver
8. The transmitter
9. The power source
The Kwad Frame
The frame is the contraption that will hold everything together when you take off into the air. Four motors with the four propellers on the four (thus the term "quad") arms which extend outward from the main body. The body can be made up of a top plate, a bottom plate and/or an intermediate plate held together by standoffs and screws. Your flight controller and pdb sit on the bottom plate and hang from the top plate, the exact configuration depends on real estate available on your quad. Most frames are fashioned from carbon fibre. Others use tough and very light metal. Almost always the arms are cut from 4-6mm carbon fibre for strength and extra durability in case of crashes (when you fly into things).The Power Distribution Board (PDB)
This is power board which distributes power from your Lipo batteries to the components that need it. Flight controllers uses power channelled from the battery through the pdb (5v). Motors take power directly from the pdbs channel from the battery. Most motors use between 3S (11.8v) and/or 4S (14.8v). Some go to 5S all the way up to 6S. My preferred pdb is the Geprc LCSF which can output 50amp per motor with a maximum of 65amp.
The Flight Controller (FC)
There are so many FCs out there depending what your particular needs are. LOS has less specific requirements, for FPV you may want FC with a bit more features. Compact builds use AIO fc ... All in One which includes integrated PDB and OSD (on screen display) features. I have used everything from SPRacing F3, Betaflight F3, Omnibus F4, Foxeer F3 and others. My key driver is cost and ease of soldering. Less complication is better in my opinion, I only need the quad to fly at the moment so SPRacing F3 is the cheapest and easiest to put together.
The Electronic Speed Controller (ESC)
The Motors
The Propellers
The Receiver
The Transmitter
The Power Souce
Additional kwad parts for LOS and FPV: top row for LOS and areal view recording, bottom row for FPV via goggles as well as recording.
And measurements, if you feel like putting together your own kwads from meshing up available frame parts. These are broad guidelines.
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