The Ultimate FPV (First Person View) Project

In an attempt to capture aerial photo and video, me and a group of friends are working with materials we mostly have on hand, along with some supplies specifically ordered for this project.

Although it has been done before, we are tryin

g it out for ourselves, with the ultimate goal of attaching a high end SLR camera to a radio controlled aircraft. So far we have successfully gotten low res images with a Motorola Droid using an Android app called IP Camera, wh

ich allows you to view the camera live over a wifi network and take up to 5 MP images thro

ugh the browser. unfortunately, the slow shutter speed of the camera, and grainy image results has left us looking for better alternatives, especially for video.

This page will show you some of the ideas we have come up with, as well as our progress in assembling this project into a working system.

The early designs:

It all starts with a broken computer (particularly the HP M490 Media Center, the biggest lemon of its time), and some guesstimations on how to cut it up (the black sharpie lines)

Believe it or not, this is part of the same piece of metal bent into 90 degree shapes with servos and spur gear added.

Next, another piece of metal is formed to hold a servo up to the rotary gear, along with a gear of its own to create a roatational point for this camera mount

The final product looked very similar to this, with the addition of the video transmitter and a 3 cell LiPo battery. unfortunately we ditched this design because it wasnt durable enough, and the camera used in the design was falling apart, and obtaining a used replacement and trying to carefully modify it to connect to all the push rods was going to take too much time and money, for what could become scrap metal in a potential crash.

So with that decision in place, I decided to focus more on the ground box, as well as working with the popular GoPro Hero 2 sport camera.

We have ordered almost everything we need to monitor and control the gopro from the ground.

Since this video has been uploaded, I have almost finished fabricating the box, complete with power switches for the different devices, a video out jack (for live streaming or recording to an external device), and a charging jack for the batteries. The batteries will be charged with an RC charger that supports lead acid battery charging.

I have yet to improve on the landing gear, which will ultimately give the camera operator the ability to rotate the camera between 180 and 270 degrees horizontally, and 90 to 180 degrees vertically, using a separate 6 channel spektrum tx and rx. There is also plans to try and allow the shutter button to be fired with an Aux switch/channel.

2x 7 Amp hour batteries installed to give a total of 14 Amp hours at 12 volts. Enough to power this device for at least 8 hours.

Power switches have been installed, but only one has been fully wired. I am waiting on more wire to finish the rest of them. The composite output and the charging jack have yet to be installed, but they will be shortly.

I have successfully obtained the vinyl labels that will go by each switch. They were cut using the Agency FB font, and the vinyl shop was afraid that the font was too thin to print, but luckily it came out without getting torn. Painting the insides is first though.