Hello and thank you for taking the time to help with our project. We are building a quadcopter with live feed streaming from a webcam. Here is a basic description of the design before I present my questions. The quadcopter will be using a wifi or xbee system to wirelessly take input from a PS3 controller that is connected to our wireless system trasmitter. On the actual quadcopter, we will be using another Arduino Uno that will be connected to 4 of these ESCs Radio Control Planes, Drones, Cars, FPV, Quadcopters and more - Hobbyking which will then be going in to our 4 motors Radio Control Planes, Drones, Cars, FPV, Quadcopters and more - Hobbyking Our teacher has provided us with a wireless webcam system that livestreams at 2.4 ghz frequency. Along with all of this we still have yet to decide on our batteries and whether or not we are using wifi or xbee RC modules. With all the already stated there will be a 3 axis compass and basic gyro for our sensors. My main question is if an Arduino Uno can handle all of the processing that will need to be done in order to balance our motors, take input from sensors, and take input from the controller. And if it is capable of handling this, would it be able to use a wifi shield and maintain all of the other ongoing processes? Thanks for the help, we are doing this project for an 11th grade digital electronics project.
The hard part is managing all the sensors and doing all the real-time feedback to keep control of the airframe. It's hard to do, but lots of people manage to do it with an Arduino, and there are Arduino clones that contain all the sensors needed for this and open source software available for the flight control software that uses them. If you want to send directions to your autopilot then an RC system might be a more appropriate system (comes with a user-friendly pilot interface and has good range). You can use different radio technologies if you want, but make sure you think about what happens when you lose the signal, and don't rely on them for real-time control.