Call me Crazy!
 

So i have sorta looked into fpv a few months back and lost interest due to lack of understanding all the wigits that goes along with the set up. i recently lost my trainer do to an inflight loss of a wing (long story) i have flown 3 electric park flyers and a .60 nitro trainer. i fell i am ready to move on. i really want to get into something that i can take pictures or defiantly do some areal surveillance. I have a .60 size engine with about 5 working servos from my old trainer. I want a plane that can handle my needs, suggestions? So my question or problem is.
1) I want a system that I can control from my laptop sorta like the Arduplane set up. and I was looking for at least about a 5 mi range. (that’s the max on my receiver/transmitter so I want to stay some wat radio contact.)
What do I need for this set up? all components? plz help here
2) what (or where to even look to start) system do I need to send live feed to my lap top with a swivel camera mounted on the plane.

I know you all prolly think im crazy but this would be a sweeeet project and I feel im intellectually up for the challenge. I fly out of my back yard (50 yard run way with telephone poles on approach 30 yards upstream and 15 ft trees on the other end. much skill has been acquired on landing and take offs.:) ) and I am 10 miles from the nearest town. So I sorta need a plane that can take wind and rough terrain.

RE: Call me Crazy!
 

Your crazy. jk

My club thinks i'm crazy too but they just don't care for fpv flying. Note that you will need your ham radio license to do any fpv flying. I already have mine.

One major problem I've had with attempting to do any fpv flying from a computer is that my laptop can't stand the extreme summer heat. It locks up and I have to do a battery pull. I'm currently working on an intercooler for it. Those cheap laptop cooling pads you can buy aren't enough. Most people just use goggles for fpv flying but you'd have to use your laptop on an adruplane set up with maps and waypoints and stuff like that

I would reccomend buying a basic fpv setup before doing anything like buying an autopilot. The best place to buy video transmitters is here. I wouldn't buy that fat shark crap if I were you though. A 100mw transmitter is, indeed, inexpensive but you shouldn't expect a range of more than 30 feet. This place is horrible about including required cables and power adapters. They give you the bare product you ordered but you have to find most of the cords yourself. I had to buy a 12 volt switching adapter for my reciever. My camera actually came with a cord but the video plug was unike any connector I had ever seen before and couldn't find anything that fit it so I soldered a composite video ending on there instead. The important part is that you actually get what you ordered at all. There are very few places where you can buy this stuff at all so you just have to deal with it and have a good understanding of how to wire stuff up and solder.

Depending on what transmitter you have depends on what battery you need. My 1 watt transmitter is 12 volts so I use a 3-cell 2200mah lipo battery. I get maybe 1.5-2 hours of battery life with that.

The best way to mount cameras on planes that weren't designed for fpv flying or dont have a place to put a camera (i.e. high wing aircraft like mine) is to order meccano parts from here and build something like this to mount the camera on:
http://s18.postimage.org/4isy61kqx/2..._45_27_100.jpg
http://s18.postimage.org/inyr7uts9/2..._45_10_927.jpg

Here is all my equipment. (excluding misc wires and cables) I needed that stuff to get to where I could watch the live feed on my laptop
http://www.urbandrones.com/24Ghz-1W-...tter_p_13.html
http://www.urbandrones.com/24Ghz-12C...iver_p_17.html
http://www.urbandrones.com/540-High-...Lens_p_20.html
http://www.all-battery.com/11.1V2200...Connector.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/EZgrabber2-Cap.../dp/B0036UUST4
http://www.amazon.com/VideoSecu-Regu...702&sr=8-1 (what I use to power the reciever the didn't provide an adapter for. You could also just use a 11.1 volt (3-cell) lipo battery and take apart that adapter for the output plug if you don't have a way to supply power from your car or soemthing)

As for a camera mount that moves around you'd need something like this, two servos and two reciever channels you aren't using to plug them into.

As for the "arduplane" setup, you'd need an APM 1 or 2 board, and a battery equal to or greater than 6 volts but less than 12 volts. The battery plugs into your reciever which plugs into the ardupilot's input channels chip to power it and override it. There is a detailed documentaion of that thing (both APM 1 and 2) and how it works here You can get the ardupilot mega board (both 1 and 2) diydrones.com and any batteries from all-battery.com

I can't believe I spent an hour and a half typing that. I hope it makes intelligable sense to someone.

RE: Call me Crazy!
 

Awesome reply! Thank you this helps. One question tho. How far of a range do you have in ur fpv?

RE: Call me Crazy!
 

When testing on the ground I can walk about 1000 feet away before the signal becomes messed up. This is with trees and all kinds of obstacles in the way. In the air I've haven't had a chance to fly that far away but the video remains crystal clear the majority of the time and without a doubt wouldn't have any problems going further. A guy with the same transmitter as me was able to fly 35,600 feet in the air at a line of site distance of 13 miles.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCDPWYM7T-U[/youtube]

This was with a directional antenna. The most cost efficient way to get that kind of range would probably be to buy something like this. Here is the antenna the guy in the video used. Note that this is for 2.4ghz stuff and won't work for anything else.

You would run out of controller range long before you ran out of video range with that. A 1 watt 2.4ghz transmitter and a standard receiver without a huge antenna should get you really far. Probably further than the range of the average 2.4ghz controller transmitter range since those transmitters have an output of less than 1 watt.

RE: Call me Crazy!
 

FPV is the BOMB!!!

We have an Affordable new FPV plane called the TechPod. It will be available soon! tell your buds!
www.hobbyuav.com  www.civilianuav.com  or www.evuas.com