My FPV plane works! [pic heavy]

[Fiddy]

yep, landed and destroyed my lil chinese camera lol

thanks man, i bought this ages ago but have never put it together.

is your frame alloy?

 

[ITman496]

Its alloy arms and like fiberglass plates for the center and motor mounts.

That is one nice looking frame. You need to build it.

 

[Fiddy]

very nice! i like aluminium

hehe one day, maybe when i get a FPV system!

 

[ITman496]

Cool! Yeah, aluminum rocks, lol.

Just make sure you don't do what I do and get a 5.8ghz system. Freaking everything causes interference.. lol

Stick with 1.2 or 2.4, 1.2 if your radio is 2.4.

 

[Fiddy]

haha i thought 5.8ghz was the bee's knees?
my radio is 2.4ghz, know of any good setups that arnt too pricey?

 

[ITman496]

The higher the frequency, the harder of a time that the radio waves have going through objects. 1.2 can punch through trees and cars, wheras 5.8 reflects off of everything.

Price is completely dependent on output power, which you pick by range and I guess signal integrity. And then another thing you can do to make your signal even better is use circular polarized antennas.

Since you're using a normal radio you won't have to go far so you should possibly consider this:

FPV313 Plug and Play 1.3 GHz 300mW Wireless System - Camera is optional [FPV313] - $129.99 : Hobby Wireless, The Best In Wireless and FPV Systems

A little pricy but its a nice bit of gear. I use a higher power version of it and its amazing.

Do you know what you want for a camera or OSD?

 

[Fiddy]

wow thats prety cheap can i use the gopro video out?

 

[ITman496]

Yep! They sell a cable for it, too.

So then just get a nice OSD for keeping an eye on your battery, or a slightly more complicated one for things like GPS, or maybe even autopilot, I dunno, and then you're set. Also, get video goggles, they rock. Fatshark base edition, cheap and has the best viewing angle ever.

 

[Fiddy]

how does the OSD get wired in?
those goggles are nice!

 

[ITman496]

You wire it like.. this.

its simpler if you have an OSD with no current sensing but I'd get one, so there aren't any nasty surprises and your battery suddenly dies, lol..

 

[Wolfwood]

very cool to see other folks in this line of hobby craft.

I have played with 2.4 ghz cam systems and rockets, and have always wanted to have something like on of these, but have been trying to figure out the best way to make a GPS Autopilot for it.

transmitting a control signal will be no problem since we hams can blast out 1500 watts almost anywhere. so i think a little on board memory would be good for saving flight data and images if the transmitter on the craft (which is going to be much more limited because of weight restrictions) fails or gets out of range.

For the autopilot do you utilize APRS technology?

IE - craft reports position to base, base calculates position and destination and transmits control signals back to the craft?

 

[ITman496]

I only have my technician so I can't do 1500 watts. =P I can at my school though, they have a class license.

The autopilot is built into the flight computer on the aircraft, there is no base station computer.. well except my laptop, but that's only there to record video.

It has a GPS and you can program way points into it in a mission planner or on the fly, and it will fly to them in sequence, and can initiate special actions upon hitting them, such as loiter, circle at X radius, etc.

The last and most important and useful feature of the flight computer is return to home. If you lose signal or hit the panic switch on the radio, the plane will fly to a pre programmed altitude (you set it to be above any obstacles that you will have potentially between you and the plane) and it will fly to where you turned the plane on and circle above at the altitude until you get radio contact again or the battery dies.

Usually this is fine because say you are flying and dip behind a mountain and lose the link, it triggers the fail safe return to home, shoots above the mountain, and then you have the link again and just carry on.

The go-pro on board does hold its video, and the flight computer stores its gps position in x y z coordinates every second, and you can load that file into google earth and have a 3D line painted in it to see the path your plane took as well as speeds and telemetry at the various points.

 

[TheDukeAnumber1]

I'm very impressed that's a really cool build, what's the wingspan?

 

[ITman496]

58 inches.

Thanks!

 

[ped]

How stable is the Video downlink? , and what power does it run at?

 

[ITman496]

Pretty stable actually!

Even at some distance away it only has mild discoloration sometimes, no real cut outs.

It runs at 1000mw. I have a omni antenna on the plane, and a patch antenna on the ground.