I am new to Arduino, and building electronics in general, but I have set out to build a mini quadcopter with an Arduino 101 board. I believe I know how I would like to go about doing this, but I do not know where to start when it comes to actually connecting 4 motors to a single 101 board. I also have yet to pick out which motors would be right for my project, but I figured I would start looking at those once I have figured out my options for connections to the board itself. Any help at all would be great.
You will need a motor driver for each motor. A MOSFET, diode and resistor for each motor would be fine for a quadcopter with brushed motors. Google for examples.
With a quadcopter you have to design a mass budget and power budget, which are interrelated as
your endurance depends on power and battery mass, and power depends on motor/prop thrust curve
and the mass including battery.
You'll probably find better advice on a drone forum for such trade-offs. There are calculators for
motor/prop/thrust which can be a good initial guide too.