Flight controller recommendation for cheap programmable drones?

ArduCopter
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Hello,
I used to build drones and I have a new project in mind, the tech has moved on a bit since I last did it and want to ask some advice and recommendations please.

I want to build 4 quadcopters that can fly in formation, with the ability to program different formations. Nothing too complex, most of the time just a simple box formation. The quadcopters will be carrying a small payload of a sports cam each.

From what I have read, it is possible to do this with Arducopter. However I mostly unsure of which flight controller to buy that will allow this? I have been going through the documentation of recommended FCs, but a lot of them on the links are discontinued or very expensive. I really need something on a budget that I can do this with. Can anyone make any recommendations of FCs?
Thanks

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I like the Matek boards. H743-Slim is a good current tech choice. If ~$70 is too much there are F4 or F7 board choices for less $$ from Matek or Holybro.

1 Like
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@stanley @dkemxr On that note, I loaded ArduCopter on a MATEK F405-STD and connected a Raspberry Pi zero W (Rx>Tx1, Tx>Rx1). But when I ran mavproxy ( mavproxy.py --master /dev/ttyAMA0,57600) it did not connect. sudo raspi-config was used to configure the serial interface.

Any suggestions?
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