randall1959

My Feedback: (11)

I came up with this idea lately. I didn't really have the money to get a set of VR glasses and I didn't really need them anyway, as all I want to do is be able to line up decent AP shots. My receiver for my wireless setup is allready on a helmet I have so I took it up the next logical step.
Recently these tiny little TFT monitors have been showing up on Ebay. The one I ordered is 2.5" and has AV inputs. All the controls for picture adjustment run right down the side.
My idea was to mount a bolt on the side of the helmet, and make an aluminum rod to mount the TFT monitor on.
It's situated in such a way as to not be in my field of vision when I am flying the plane, but once I set up a line to my photo, I can flip on an autopilot and look at the monitor while I line up the shot with rudder.
My Nikon 3700 has an AV cable running back to my wireless transmitter, and with the TFT monitor I can use my wireless setup as a viewfinder and I don't need anyone other than a spotter.
If I need to I can still hook my tv set right up to my wireless receiver. Everything will have plugins so it will be easy to change it around.
I'm still waiting on the monitor but when it comes I'll be sure to post an update. In the meantime here are a few pics.

HemiRam

Thats pretty cool... i bet that would work better than those glasses anyway

Radiofly

Just passing by and saw your device. Nice idea, good clean execution. I do have two thoughts...
1. You will feel a lot better wearing the helmet if you balance the weight of the monitor and extension. The longer the extension arm, the more weight necessary to balance. It would be good if you could put a balancing weight behind and on the oposite side of the helmet.

2. You may find it tiring to shift focus from distant plane to near monitor. Ultimately, you may have to place the monitor at least at arm's length, perhaps mounted on the RC transmitter.

Keep up the experimentation and have fun.

randall1959

My Feedback: (11)

I've allready considered the weight idea. I just have to wait until all the parts arrive and I get it assembled.
Actually, I've tried a miniature 2.5 inch handheld tv on the arm and right out to about the end is where I could see that one.
I could also invest in a decent pair of bifocal sunglasses that are polarised. My missus works at Walmart Vision center as an optician so it'd be pretty easy to get a pair. That way I could move the monitor up a bit. I might even consider some sort of square magnifier over the screen.
My plan is to not look into the screen until I am lined up with the subject, then flip the FMA copilot switch and focus on the monitor and fly the plane in with rudder, so I wouldn't be constantly glancing back and forth.

randall1959

My Feedback: (11)

Here it is finished finally. Although I haven't been able to fly due to wind I have done some taxi tests and I can see the monitor very well. Now I need to either drill or cut some air vents in the helmet and add some weight to the back to balance it on my head better. It's not very heavy though. The bonus is that I can keep my antenna pointed at the plane and see what the camera is doing at the same time and not need someone to tell me when to snap pics.

talk the torque

Wow Randall thats a pretty good idea. What do those TFT monitors cost and what voltage do thay run off? The only thing that I can think of that might be a problem is that if you try keep the heli/plane out of the sun then the sun will be behind you and the glare might make it difficult to see the monitor. I was thinking of mounting the TFT like a peak of a cap. You could put a sun shield above it then and it would second as a peak for when you looking at your aircraft with the sun above. You could also balance the helmet using the receiver and batteries. Nice going Randall

Jason

Troglotech

I've been having a stab at flying by watching some sort of monitor....and it's great fun. You definitely need a spotter though, or you will lose the plane......I came close to doing that on a few occasions. I luckily inherited a VR headset (please excuse the photo, it's a screen-shot of the video taken by the plane!) but I found that without some kind of sun shade (I considered asking someone to chuck a towel over my head) you can see very little. The problem was that in the event of a drop-out of reception you had to quickly find the plane in the real world, and this meant re-focussing and adapting to the change in light levels very quickly which is difficult to do. Quite often I would get a bit stressed when I couldn't find the plane for a few seconds. The VR headset just caused too many problems, mainly the fact that you couldn't look away from them easily, and it's even harder to look upwards as they get in the way.

The next plan was to fly using the Video Recorder's LCD screen (seen on the right of the picture), this is a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) with a 40GB HDD and produces MPEG-4 video files. Again, the problem is one of light levels, in direct sunlight you just cannot make out the picture well enough to fly using it. However, with a bit of cloud cover and getting near the end of the day the LCD picture is quite useful and you can get a real pilots view quite successfully. I've done quite a bit of flying using this method and it is brilliant fun, you get so much better video's as you can frame the shots, and it's quite easy to fly smoothly as the horizon helps in the turns. When you get a way out, the sound of the motor over the speakers helps as well.

Again, the main problem is....without a spotter you can get so far away that you cannot properly visually see the plane and it is easy to lose either the video picture or get out of TX range. I usually lift the TX aerial a bit higher and bring it back in range quickly....but it sure does get a bit scary sometimes.

To reduce the equipment a bit (I was humping around receivers, batteries etc. etc.) I'm having a go with one of these new receiver / monitor units, it has its own battery so all needed on the ground was that device. When I wanted to record I would just plug the PVR (which has its own battery built in). With the monitor / receiver stuck on top of a post and the PVR on the ground it's quite easy to fly by the monitor alone as long as the ambient light was quite low.

Randall....I hope your one works out because flying with the monitor alone is brilliant fun (if a little scary).......