Coding for quadcopter using arduino

I want to make a final year project on gesture controlled quadcopter. So i want arduino code for quadcopter and the specific parts I should use.

I’m guessing you are more interested in the gesture recognition than flight control. I suggest one way to do to do this is via a dronekit module. Leave the copter code alone, and use dronekit to pass commands to the vehicle. I would expect that your gesture engine will parse visual queues into “intent”. You will develop that however you feel like, but the set of intents could be consumed by dronekit for command of the copter over mavlink.
For the actual copter - if you can find a Solo for sale under $500, buy it. Cheaper than building yourself, and much quicker/more repeatable. You’ll waste time building, tuning, fixing a custom build - when you should be focussing on your project!
Read about dronekit here: http://python.dronekit.io/
And ask questions about it here: https://gitter.im/dronekit/dronekit-python

I’ve heard a lot people recommend against this drone especially since it is going to be unsupported going forward as 3DR is focusing on enterprise more. Why are you recommending it now? I’m in a similar situation and had considered this drone myself.

Your concerns are valid- but basically at the current price (in the US) it’s a real bargain, and for a project that only has a duration of a year, the convenience would get it over the line in my view. It also has a companion computer built in for the droneKit stuff.
A lot of time can be wasted researching, buying, building and tuning something to do the same thing, which slows the project.
Just my view though - others will differ, for valid reasons.

My main concern is coming from a limited knowledge of basic programming. I don’t know how long it is going to take me to get up to speed on the python script for the drone since I’m having a hard time understand the documentation that is already out there. Do you think is detail enought? or know where I can fidn more example of the code so I can gain a better understanding?

Some of the advice I’ve gotten I don’t flly understand as I haven’t had a drone to mess with to try some of the examples with.

My final goal is to have a drone fly up to 3 m and then come down in a corkscrew pattern. I don’t expect the radius of the circle to be more than 5 meters nor do I expect the heigh I’ll need to fly the drone will be more than 10 meters.

The gitter channels are good for technical discussions, in this case I’d suggest the ardupilot/research channel and the droneKit-python channel.
But follow the droneKit wiki first, as it is pretty good, and has some decent examples.

And you don’t need a drone to start with: the sitl simulator will teach you a lot, and probably save time and money by not crashing real copters until you’re ready for a proper flight test.

I was looking into the simulations but I’m not sure they are going to provide what I need. I want to be able to look at the flight path from multiple views, not just a top down. Will the simulation be able to tell me altitude as well as X & Y information along with pitch, roll and yaw?

Yes. To visualize a bit better than MAVProxy or Missionplanner, look at http://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/sitl-with-xplane.html
Or
http://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/using-gazebo-simulator-with-sitl.html

I’m going to try Gazebo this week to see if it will suit my needs. Have you worked with it before? I ask because I looked at it today and it appears if there aren’t models out there for my copter I’m going to have to create on and I;m nto sure how hard that is going to be.

Not gazebo - it’s only been around (for Ardupilot) a few months. Sorry I can’t help more. Try the Ardupilot/research on gitter channel perhaps.

For gazebo there is an iris version that works out-of-the-box, with gimbal and camera!

otherwise, you can ouput SITL to flighgear too