Video, OSD and FPV setup

Post date: Oct 14, 2015 6:22:35 AM

Now it's time to put some video feed back on this bird to fly FPV (First personal view)

I chose the Immersion EZOsd as On Screen Display because it have a Current/Voltage probe and an integrated GPS.

In theory this OSD should display Current voltage information, flight time, speed, altitude and direction to home. it offer as well a telemetry recording system via left audio channel you can either record it on the on board camera or use your audio out from your goggle or FPV screen to have a live display on your smartphone or PC.

I give a try to cheap 600 line AomWay camera and the immersion 600mw 5.8Ghz was the natural choice to add to the chain.

Equipment:

Diagram:

Cabling and testing:

I have positioned with double side tape the OSD main board with the GPS on the top plate of the frame beside the DJI GPS/Compass and the Current sensor board attached to the bottom plate.

The connectors on the current sensor are Deans and my battery packs are all in XT60 so i directly solder on the current sensor PCB to cable with XT60 connector on one end. Immersion has put enough soldering pad on the other side of the PCB to directly solder the cables. By soldering 2 cables with XT60 connector in parallel from the Current sensor board i can choose to use the quad with one battery pack or 2 battery pack without adding connectors or cables.

I have solder as well the cable form the current sensor to the power distribution board. Doing that i reduce the number of connectors and therefore the number of potential bad contact on the main power supply chain.

The Video transmitter is fixed with Double side tape on the rear plate with the antenna the further away from the ESC.

The connecting chain form the camera to the video transmitter is straight forward and all the cable provided match with their appropriate connectors.

Single axis camera gimbal with micro servo 9g

The Naza M Lite gimbal function is compatible with PWM (pulse width modulation) servo command

By attaching the camera directly on the servo horn i should obtain a single axis camera gimbal.

I have in stock some broken gimbal holder and some dampers. I cut one of the arm of the gimbal holder bottom plate. The screw holes of the gimbal holder match perfectly the screw holes on the bottom plate frame. I cut accordingly one of the arm of the bottom plate gimbal holder to be able to of-centered the servo to have the camera in the craft axis. From an already broken top plate gimbal holder i cut a 90 degres servo holder and bolts and screw it to the already 3 arms cutted top plate by drilling a 3mm hole on the 2 plates.

Hot glue and cable ties did the rest...

The servo cable should be connected on F2 naza output.

Naza M lite setup for the gimbal

The output frequency for this small analog servo should be 50hz

I tweak the Servo travel limit PitchF2 values with the following Max:1000, Center:-150, Max:-1000

I set up the F2 Gain to 22 and i reverse the servo direction.

X1 is going to be used by the RC pitch control pot of my transmitter 100 seem to be a correct speed.

Flight test:

Conclusion:

My DIY single axis servo gimbal work pretty well for FPV flight, of course not optimum for photo or video but for that i have my phantom2 and zenmuse h3 3d.

The camera is a cheap camera so i have a cheap quality image, specially when there is quick light changing conditions.

As expected,I have better result with the Boscam polarized circular antenna compare to the stock immersion whip antenna.

I was not impressed by the GPS performances of the Immersion EZOSD. It take ages to acquire satellites and sometime the altitude was very wrong. I had once -130 m altitude at sea level or -30m. I can't position the board any better. my only option is going to remove the gps unit from the board and fix it higher on a pole like the dji gps but i'm not really keen on doing that.

the most important for short FPV flight is to have an eye on the battery voltage and current consumption and flight time. It's a different story i guess for long range fpv flight....

I should try to find a small DVR that i can plug in the chain in between EZOSD and the video transmitter to record the flight with the telemetry.

I give a quick try on the telemetry app on either my android phone or a pc laptop. it's look very interresting but a bit useless for short range fpv flight.

I'll make a more detail test on a future post.

My final gain setup are the following:

• Pitch:120%

• Roll 120%

• Yaw: 100%

• Vertical: 100%

• Attitude Pitch: 120%

• Attiture Roll: 120%

Setup and maiden flight <<<Previous Next>>>> Hacking Naza M lite into Naza V2