Cheapest QuadCopter for Testing?

I am planning to work on the Precision Landing project this year but i don’t have any hardware for real world testing and my Home country has a very tough regulations on UAVs, For the most part i am safe if i worked in my home or somewhere near it but i am still afraid that anything bad happens to the hardware i will ask in my proposal so i wanted to know what is the cheapest copter i can ask for in my project and still be a good option for solid testing.

It will also need to have a place for an OpenMV board and supports MavLink communication or any communication protocol in general (i.e SPI) and still have enough processing power in case if i wanted to try sensor fusion via EKF between the vision data and a RangeFinder for better accuracy.

I have been using ultra cheap AliExpress Q330 kits and replace the naze controler with appropriate hardware.

Question :
IWhat exactly are you trying to accomplish with Precision Landing and OpenMV ?
As this has already been demonstrated

well, i didn’t find this nativly supported in the codebase.

what i found is the Precision Landing module using IR_LOCK with the altitude sensors on-board to have precision landing.

I was planning to get landing position with altitude estimation (all from OpenMV) and sent this via MavLink to the precision landing module and maybe if i want to go even further, i can try and implement what i am taking in my courses about sensor fusion through EKF to get more precision.

i will appreciate a lot your thoughts about this … as i am very keen to continue pursing my love for aviation and helping others as much as possible.

I suggest you take a look at @fnoop excellent Vision_Landing site, that goes in details for the Precision Loiter & Landing, hope that will shed some light.

I got the chance to see his work and i am planning to build upon it.

Actually i am still wondering why something like this didn’t continue to be developed and merged with Ardupilot … it would saved me the time ^ ^