Hey, I’m trying to help a (non-local)Highschool with a TSA Drone competition.. they have a few questions that’s “out of the norm” of FPV.. any chance for some advice?
This is a class I recently met and they are struggling with things.. I’m doing my best via “text”.. but is very difficult..
They are looking at purchasing a “kit” and asked my opinion / preference “betaflight or ardupilot “.. I am only familiar with BF and havnt looked over the requirements of the quad to perform.. I know ardupilot is more “servo friendly”.. and also successfully got a single servo to work on BF..
Is anyone familiar with this competition?

https://www.lli.com/tsa-drone-uav-starter-packages

Those kits look quite expensive and do not seem to offer any special equipment compared to off-the-shelf commercial products. It does not seem this competition requires using those kits, so it seems to be an option to choose your own gear. I would say the advantage going with the kit is if they provide step-by-step instructions, tutorials, and support for getting the teacher/students up and running. If they don't and you are willing to help them build out their setup, they would probably save quite a bit of $ and likely end up with a better flying drone for the competition. Also the drone could be repurposed after the competition as well for other purposes too.

As to BF vs Ardupilot, the pros/cons are listed out in the link you sent. Its been a long time since I used Ardupilot, but for autonomous navigation it has the advanatage, however I don't think that plays into this competition at all. Assume it will be indoors, so no GPS, and don't know if the group will get to setting up altitude hold or optical flow. I believe their goal is to pick up a beanbag and navigate a course manually and then drop off the load within a 10 minute period. It sounds like their time should be spent training a student to fly the drone in angle mode with docile rates either by LOS or FPV, and designing a mechanism for pick up/dropping the bean bags. Not sure how much better Ardupilot flies indoors?
If you will be their main source of help, then I'd say go for BF. It has reasonable external controls with servo/pinio so it can allow extra servos/motors to be controlled by the radio.

This sounds interesting though, wonder what it really is...

Sounds like the 'Rescue Quad' would do that task quite nicely.

Speaking from experience.. I know purchasing equipment for schools is a major PITA.. so many rules, only certain vendors ect. I know Tarek from Cyclonefpv encountered major difficulties with his “school drone program”.. and heard from him since..(from the info I gathered a piece of equipment “malfunctioned” and there may or may not had a small “fire”.. the school board placed the blame on Cyclonefpv selling them inferior components…
This is why I had my wife stick with the 1s Timyhawks.. . Less chance of a lipo or charger “failing”..

Looks like the competitiors will be flying these FPV. these kids will need a lot of time on the simulator.

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As for equipment, the kit looks pretty off the shelf components.

Totally agree!!!! They have one 5” setup they “inherited” from a previous attempt last year.. it’s on Flysky.. and apparently a wire came loose from the RX.. I’m helping via “text” the best I can..

You can tell them about this forum if they help with setup.

..informed them of this forum, and MULTIPLE YouTube creators.. this was pen to paper.. we had no cell / internet service… recently I sent links from this thread..