So now we move on to installing the flight controller onto the frame. Now, all flight controllers have an orientation and so it is important that you secure it to your frame facing the correct way (this saves a lot of a hassle later). Specifically for the Flip32+ board that we used here, the USB port is the back of the board and the opposite side is subsequently the forward facing side. You therefore have to place the flight controller so that the forward facing side is pointing in the same direction as the front of the quadcopter (for the Silver Blade #37 there is no specific 'front' so you can choose).

We secured the Flip32+ here with 3M mounting foam to the middle of the quadcopter (facing the correct way) and then we proceeded to plugging in the ESCs. We use the servo cables to plug the ESCs in (the black, red and white cable) and these plug into the output pins of the flight controller. This is because the flight controller outputs information to the ESCs to control the speed of the motor. According to which flight controller you're using, each motor is numbered 1 to 4 in a specific order (as mentioned above). You need to plug the ESC connected to motor 1 into the output pin labeled 1 on the flight controller, the ESC connected to motor 2 into the pin labeled 2 etc. You also need to plug the servo cables into the pins in the correct orientation. The three coloured wires in the cable (black, red and white) correspond to ground, voltage and signal wires respectively. You therefore need to ensure that the ground wires are connected to the ground pins, the voltage wires are connected to the voltage pins and the signal wires are connected to the signal pins. You can see this demonstrated in the pictures above. Most flight controllers will have the pins labeled with which pin is ground, which pin is voltage and which pin is signal. For example, in our Flip32+ guide, you can see that the pins are labeled with G, V and 6 (the 6 is for motor 6 but this is the signal pin).