If you’re going to be flying around a FPV-capable aircraft, be it a quadcopter or a fixed-wing plane, you shouldn’t be surprised if bystanders want to take a turn wearing your googles. Of course we hope that you’re good enough flying line of sight that you don’t need to be wearing the googles to stay airborne, but it does make it harder to pull off the sort of tricks and maneuvers that your audience wants to see. So if you want to put on a good show, the audience really needs their own display.
Unfortunately, as avid FPV flier [Michael Delaney] discovered, even the “cheap” ones will run you at least $100 USD. So he did what any self-respecting hacker would do, he set out to build his own. Using a collection of off the shelf components he was able to build a very impressive monitor that lets the viewer see through the eyes of his quadcopter at less than half the cost of commercially available offerings. Though even if he hadn’t manged to beat the cost of a turn-key monitor, we think it would have been more than worth it for this piece of highly customized gear.
At the heart of the monitor is a Boscam RX5808 5.8 GHz receiver, which is controlled by an Arduino Pro Mini. The video output from the receiver is sent to a 4.2″ TFT screen intended for the Raspberry Pi, and on the backside of the laser-cut wooden enclosure there’s a 128 x 64 I2C OLED to display the currently selected channel and diagnostic information.
An especially nice touch for this project is the custom PCB used to tie all the components together. [Michael] could have taken the easy route and sent the design out for fabrication, but instead went with the traditional method of etching his own board in acid. Though he did modernize the process a bit by using a laser and pre-sensitized copper clad board, a method that seems to be gaining in popularity as laser engravers become a more common component of the hacker’s arsenal.
We’ve previously covered using the RX5808 and Arduino combo to create a spectrum analyzer, in case you want to do more than just watch your friends do powerloops.
The solution I use for spectator is the Eachine-ROTG01, it’s a dongle for mobile phone, and it’s only 15usd… Not good enough for flying (too much latency), perfect to spectate.
https://www.banggood.com/Eachine-ROTG01-UVC-OTG-5_8G-150CH-Full-Channel-FPV-Receiver-For-Android-Mobile-Phone-Smartphone-p-1147692.html?p= 1O210313408882201708
interesting, thanks for the info
The page you linked to says $23.99 USD
https://m.ebay.com/itm/1x-5-8G-150CH-USB-FPV-OTG-Video-Receiver-UVC-Downlink-VR-Glasses-AV-for-Andro/282769846859
There is also a version of the phone receiver that has an internal battery so it doesn’t eat your phones battery like the v1 mentioned above does!
Also is there anything more to life than powerloops?
I got a 10″ monitor in a gun case with a Raspberry Pi and one of those OTG receivers using luvc to record onto the pi. Got a regular fpv receiver for flying with the PI laptop/FPV ground station when I dont want to wear goggles. Can also use the PI for making pid changes but haven’t had to.
Powering the whole setup with 2 2700 mah 3S lipos and stin power bank for the PI that allows using while charging so it acts like a ups.
It’s weird going from goggles to screen flying though!
Hi Tom,
I am working on a project very similar to it, but some difficulties in finding at low price an LCD monitor that has both analog input for the video receiver and that may be connected to RaspPi as well.
Can you give some reference for the monitor you bought?
Hi Miker, I tried to connect the Raspberry Pi to Eachine ROTG01 receiver but not successfully, even if recognized as video0 the image is black and I guess there is a lack of driver. Which OTG receiver have you used with the RaspPi?
Matteo