For further development on smartphone apps it’s helpful to use a copter with buildin position hold and open source flight control.
Quanum Nova/CX-20 is small, the same size as a DJI phantom, and includes APM flightcontrol. Flight time with a Samsung Galaxy S3 as payload was about 5-6 minutes.
An advantage of the Nova/CX-20 is, that a lot of parts of the phantom also fit into it. For example the props, the prop nuts, the battery and also the cam gear.
Some tips if you buy a Quanum Nova/CX-20.
If it’s a PNF (Plug and fly = without receiver), you should watch the Hobby King video for setup.
Before every flight check if the prop nuts are tight. Otherwise you may loose a prop while flying.
For communication with mavlink tools. The usb connector on the Nova works with a default of 115200 baud, but the serial connection on the flight control has a default of 57600 baud. You can use it by soldering 4 wires on it (telemetry tutorial).
If you want to connect a bluetooth module on it, you should set the speed on the bluetooth module properly.
Not every application is helpful to set the baud rate on the bluetooth module. Minicom works but on OS X and Linux, “screen” was not really helpful and also Arduino IDE was not working.
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