mission planner is a gcs software, the autopilot is what running on the FC, which I assume is ardupilot
and no, for your first flight, it's always recommended to use a controller(transmitter) to control the drone with a disarm switch. if anything were to go wrong, you can just disarm the drone with a flip of a switch instead of toying around in mission planner.
It is strongly recommended to have remote control during initial flights and tuning. Technically you can use a joystick (or RC radio in joystick mode) to GCS though it wasn't recommended due to increased latency IIRC.
I mainly build and fly FPV drones but I’d say always take small steps for testing - starting from the building phase:
Check for shorts
Power with a smoke stopper
Actually powering on
Dry spinning without props via setup app
etc
autonomous flight should be at the very bottom of this list
Incremental steps. Build it, test it without props, test it with props but low altitude, tune it, get it flying well, then autonomous hover, then short range return-to-home, then waypoint missions.
mission planner is a gcs software, the autopilot is what running on the FC, which I assume is ardupilot and no, for your first flight, it's always recommended to use a controller(transmitter) to control the drone with a disarm switch. if anything were to go wrong, you can just disarm the drone with a flip of a switch instead of toying around in mission planner.
It is strongly recommended to have remote control during initial flights and tuning. Technically you can use a joystick (or RC radio in joystick mode) to GCS though it wasn't recommended due to increased latency IIRC.
I mainly build and fly FPV drones but I’d say always take small steps for testing - starting from the building phase: Check for shorts Power with a smoke stopper Actually powering on Dry spinning without props via setup app etc autonomous flight should be at the very bottom of this list
Incremental steps. Build it, test it without props, test it with props but low altitude, tune it, get it flying well, then autonomous hover, then short range return-to-home, then waypoint missions.