So I've had to think hard about which route I wanted to take for my research. On one hand, I could go full customized process with every bit of code written by yours truly (including the the hardware design, soldering, testing and integration). This will mean a serious divergence from the primary focus of my research but the high risk could yield immense entrepreneurial satisfaction. I calculated that this route would probably add another 6 months to PhD research. On the other hand, as I've posted before , buy an off-the-shelf flight controller, focus on integrating the peripherals, up-ramp knowledge on the tested code suite and start working on integrating my research algorithms almost immediately. This route is substantially more expensive (Initial capital), but you then have a large community of users to inquire from. I've estimated about 2 month of extra work towards my PhD research. So the decision is now obvious. I've chosen to buy the Pixhawk 2.4.8 first.