I just did my first flight with my Multicopter FPV setup and it was AWESOME! I’ve flown planes and gliders via FPV before, but one of the main reasons for building my Multicopter was to do FPV.

My final goal is to attach a stabilized DSLR onto my multicopter rig and shoot some high quality photographs and to mount my HD video camera and shoot some high quality video as well.

I’m using the multicopter describe in my Y-6? Why Not! post and my GoPro Hero2 HD video camera with a 900Mhz video transmitter with a Spektrum Tx module and Rx with one (1) satellite , here are some of the photos of the FPV setup.

It basically consists of a GoPro Hero2 connected directly to a 900Mhz video transmitter. I chose 900Mhz for range and channel separation from my 2.4Ghz radio control transmitter.  It seems to have worked out so far.  A difference from my previous FPV plane setups is that I’ve added a custom 900Mhz video antenna from Hobby Wireless, the VEE 900Mhz IBCrazy antenna tuned for 910Mhz. I was a bit disappointed in the quality of the antenna, but it does do the job. It’s heatshrunk and epoxied around the core using 2 pieces of copper house wiring for the antenna and ground and a piece of perfboard for the joining spot. Making a simple mold and injecting it with plastic or epoxy would have been relatively cheap and improved the quality quite a bit. At any rate, it does work good and is about $16. My Multicopter is already ugly enough without ugly accessories.

I used my 900Mhz base station which consists of 2 900Mhz video/audio receivers, one with an omni-directional antenna which has been SAW modded and a second with a high gain patch panel antenna which has NOT been SAW modded. Since I didn’t have the OSD(on screen display), GPS or EagleTree eLogger v4 hooked up at the time, the antenna tracking provided by the EagleTree EagleEyes was not available, I just pointed the patch panel antenna towards where I was going to fly, and the omni-directional just did it’s thing.

In most of my previous FPV videos I recorded the video signal from the base station onto a portable recorder. This is a low quality (standard, 480p definition) signal and doesn’t look great uploaded to YouTube. This time I recorded the FPV video right onto the GoPro, so it recorded in nice 1080p high def. (uploaded video is 720p though). While it’s missing the heads up display (HUD) of the OSD the quality is excellent.

Below is the first video from my Multicopter FPV setup. No crazy stuff, just a test flight. I hope you like it and ask any questions you may have about it! (The audio is a bit loud, so please be prepared!)

 

 

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