Hi all, I was wondering whether it would be possible to build an fpv like drone, with custom motors, props, fcs, and such, but utilize a high quality digital camera like those found in DJI. However, I don't want to use dji as I don't want to spend 699 on the dji digital goggles. Basically, my question is that would it be possible for me as a normal consumer to either A. find the supplier that creates the high quality drone cameras for the various photography drones being sold, not just DJI drones and buy the camera from them, or B. find a camera supplier that sells high quality hd digital cameras that can stream their video, as I want to use it for fpv while flying. or am I just SOL? thanks 

High quality streaming…and not spend $600 on goggles.. that’s not asking for much..
Anything is possible, it’s just a matter of throwing enough money at it..
My question is what do u want to do with it? I know the USFL has a drone flying around the players and it streams live footage… but YOU CAN TELL.. it’s from the drone..

(27-Jun-2022, 12:40 AM)Rob Axel Wrote: High quality streaming…and not spend $600 on goggles.. that’s not asking for much..
 Anything is possible, it’s just a matter of throwing enough money at it..
 My question is what do u want to do with it?  I know the USFL has a drone flying around the players and it streams live footage… but YOU CAN TELL.. it’s from the drone..

Basically active surveillance of some plots of land. I dont want to buy a drone for this purpose though, I want to make my own drone that basically takes the footage from the drone cam, and sends the active video over a VTX to an VRX to a monitor, similar to how many fpv cams do it. I don't really care about high latency or such, as my main concern is range (on open land) and video quality.

Sounds like either of these would fit your needs:
(Range, video quality, diy affordability)

OpenHD
https://github.com/OpenHD/Open.HD

Ruby Digital System
https://rubyfpv.com/

(27-Jun-2022, 01:01 AM)Lemonyleprosy Wrote: Sounds like either of these would fit your needs:
(Range, video quality, diy affordability)

OpenHD
https://github.com/OpenHD/Open.HD

Ruby Digital System
https://rubyfpv.com/

Thank you so much!!!

Does the drone have LoS to your base station or are there obstructions? You might be able to do something with the new HDZero kit, but it seems to be very dependent on range and obstructions. If you could get the VRX high enough off the ground and then stream the HDMI output to somewhere else it might give better than analogue imagery.

If on the other hand you are talking about almost military level drone tech, like blow up a building 3000 miles away with realtime uplink and images, yeah it's possible, but at a steep price.

That Ruby Digital System looks interesting though. The hardware as well is pretty much mainstream. I would recommend the Alfa networking too, I use it for Kali Linux and pentesting, it's good tech. Though many network adapters using Ralink or Atheros will be suitable too.

If you do this as a project would you be staying with standard optics or adding something specialised, like a thermographic camera? It's a side project of mine that I on and off research. I haven't found anything affordable so far. But if you could find a thermographic camera, it would allow your drone to run at night and patrol while giving you the ability to spot humans and animals.

The Ruby Digital System is something that I seriously considered experimenting with, but I was concerned with the latency- and more importantly, my significant other wouldn’t be happy with me if I drowned out our home WiFi every time I flew.

(27-Jun-2022, 02:37 AM)Pathfinder075 Wrote: Does the drone have LoS to your base station or are there obstructions?  You might be able to do something with the new HDZero kit, but it seems to be very dependent on range and obstructions.  If you could get the VRX high enough off the ground and then stream the HDMI output to somewhere else it might give better than analogue imagery.

If on the other hand you are talking about almost military level drone tech, like blow up a building 3000 miles away with realtime uplink and images, yeah it's possible, but at a steep price.  

That Ruby Digital System looks interesting though.  The hardware as well is pretty much mainstream.  I would recommend the Alfa networking too, I use it for Kali Linux and pentesting, it's good tech.  Though many network adapters using Ralink or Atheros will be suitable too.

If you do this as a project would you be staying with standard optics or adding something specialised, like a thermographic camera?  It's a side project of mine that I on and off research.  I haven't found anything affordable so far.  But if you could find a thermographic camera, it would allow your drone to run at night and patrol while giving you the ability to spot humans and animals.

Sorry for the late reply, but I was pretty busy these last few days. I'm thinking of doing a nano-long range style drone build, except it uses a raspberry pi for automatic drone control, along with the raspberry pi cam. For the thermal, I think a good option would be the MLX90640, as its under 100 bucks and does a decent job for a thermal cam

I am not sure what the Raspberry Pi is supposed to do...autonomic flight.
Why not use iNav, which does autonomic flight and is already proven firmware.

As for the thermal camera,  DroneThermal v4 is a thermal camera with standard
video output so it connects just like any other camera, Easy. Nothing to configure,
nothing to convert, no need for Arduino or Raspberry Pi to convert the image.

Thermal might be nice as a second camera, but I doubt that you would want to
use it as a piloting camera. Even if you set an autonomous flight, you might still
want a regular camera for piloting the craft. So, in reality, you would likely need
a dual camera set up like my Rescue Quad build. In this build, I am using the
ViFly Camera Switcher. It is easy to use and works quite well. 



There is quite a discussion about a thermal camera application in the following
thread:
How do I connect external I2C (SCL SDA) device to BetaFPV controller? 


NOW...

Back to HD video. Besides DJI and Vista which both {as far as I can tell}
use the same technology and both require EXPENSIVE goggles. The cost of the
goggles is one thing that has kept me out of the digital game.

There is another up and coming option...HDZero. From what I can tell, it is very
good, but still costly. The goggles are still several hundred dollars.  I would like 
to see HDZero goggles in the $ 200 USD range (or less). {Yeah, I'm dreaming here}.

From what I can tell, HD is costly no matter what flavor you are talking about.
It takes an HD camera, an HD VTX (yeah, you can't send the feed over analog
and get HD at the other end), and an HD receiver which is basically the goggles.
Some DJI transmitters connect to a smartphone which is snapped onto the transmitter.

Yeah, you have got to get the signal back to a set of HD goggles or monitor.

Also, I have yet to see a VTX and video receiver that uses "Cell Phone" type
transmission. Yep, probably a reason for that. Can you say REGULATIONS and
use of cellular transmissions, cell towers, and interference with other cell phone
devices. You have to PAY for that service. I could be wrong, but I don't think you 
will see that very soon. 

Oh yeah, the RemoteID that the FAA is clamoring about was suppose to use either
cellular signal or WAN which would require a monthly service fee from the service
provider. You just don't get this stuff for free. 

There are systems out there, but, as you say, they are expensive. I keep hoping
that the HDZero system will reach an economy of scale or get enough competition
between manufacturers to bring the price down some. Yeah, I am probably dreaming
again. 

So, if you actually find anything that is remotely High-Def at any type of reasonable
price, then PLEASE let us know. There is a reason DJI has been the only HD game in
town for quite some time. Only recently, has any other HD options even been available.

Yeah, that RubyFPV looks interesting, but I don't see much on it. From what I can tell
it is an experimental OpenHD project. Nothing wrong with that, but it is not something
that you can just buy, install, and use. Personally, I don't want to have an electronics
project where I have to build everything myself just to get things running.  If I could
buy a camera, a VTX/RC module, and some goggles...put that in a quad and go, then
we might be talking, but I am simply NOT going to do some Electronics Illustrated 
project just to have HD video. It is still to young for my blood. 


Anyway, just my take on it.