This is my first "toothpick" sized micro (I also have a newbeedrone acrobee, but that is an entirely diifferent kind of thing) and I have to say I am super impressed. This thing is so much fun to fly.

Of course it doesn't handle like my 5" quads but it also fits through tiny gaps and doesn't crash anywhere near as hard. I did lose the little U.FL dipole antenna during an encounter with a tree on one of my first flights and I only had a U.FL to SMA pigtail, so that's why I have this (relatively) heavy antenna on it. Looks a bit ridiculous but it works just fine.



I am running 3S 450mAh tattu LiPos and it has power for days.



I'm going to try to fit a RunCam Split 3 Nano in this little stack (I've ordered it, should arrive next week sometime) as well as a more appropriate antenna. The stock battery grip and strap are also totally useless but that is easily fixed.

Range doesn't seem too bad. How far have you taken it out?

Did you get the version with a built-in SPI receiver? If so, which one (Flysky of FrSky)? The reason I'm asking is because I've read reports that the new Crazybee F4 Pro V3 board with a built-in FrSky receiver supposedly has less range than previous versions of the same board, and I've just bought one of those V3 boards.

(07-Oct-2019, 10:20 AM)SnowLeopardFPV Wrote: Range doesn't seem too bad. How far have you taken it out?

Did you get the version with a built-in SPI receiver? If so, which one (Flysky of FrSky)? The reason I'm asking is because I've read reports that the new Crazybee F4 Pro V3 board with a built-in FrSky receiver supposedly has less range than previous versions of the same board, and I've just bought one of those V3 boards.

I haven’t taken it too much further than I did in that video but it seems fine. I got the one with the FrSky R-XSR receiver since I had also seen in reviews that the integrated FrSky receiver yields terrible range.

Thanks for the confirmation. I only got one of the boards with an integrated SPI receiver because it's going in a 75mm 2S whoop and so i didn't want the extra weight of an external receiver. I guess I'll find out if I made a mistake and will end up having to fit an external receiver to it.

A bit late to the party, but I got my Larva X last month and it's been so much fun!

It's only my second quad—after an Eachine Trashcan—so don't have a lot of experience, but it's nimble, fast and I've crashed it a lot without any damage
:-)

I have the "integrated" FrSky receiver version and this evening I pulled the receiver antenna in a crash. Good thing it's just a replacing a length of wire. I'm not sure of where to put it though, it came with the antenna pointing up but I feel it was too close to the camera, I guess I could bend it to point down but then it may be very close to the battery. Anyway I see how it goes!

Good video by the way, I still have way to go

I recorded this yesterday and cut some flights together. I love my LarvaX! Next time I'll use the DiamondVTX dvr instead of the goggles. Not sure how to embed here, but the link should work:

Nice!

I replaced my SPI RX antenna using a rigid(ish) single-thread wire and I'm getting more range than I used to. It may be that the wire is much more rigid than the stock silicone wire and it jut holds straight better. Anyway I'm getting something like 150m without any problems, in contrast with the ~100m I was getting before

Hope it's okay to add to this thread

A year or two ago I transferred my LarvaX to a GepRC Phantom frame. Added a Foxeer lollipop instead of the stock VTx antenna.

I had to replace the Diamond VTX & DVR as the DVR didn't work, out of the box.

Today, I replaced the stock RunCam2 Nano with an old Foxeer Toothless Nano 2 (1200 TVL) - OMG !

I set the camera and BetaFlight for PAL, since that gives you 720 x 576 resolution, as opposed to 720 x 480 (NTSC).

The CobraX goggle video (using an Eachine Pro58) and on-board Diamond DVR video are pretty darn amazing.

After some processing in Vegas Pro 19 I'm really impressed with the results:

Goggles DVR:


Diamond DVR:


A couple of years ago I recorded some flights with the RunCam2 Nano, and those were just full of jagged edges and little red 'berries' everywhere. This is soooooo much better !

Is it possible to get the OSD overlay on the Diamond DVR. I have invested in a few of the Diamond VTX/DVR boards a late. From watching your video I think the quality is fine, but would be nice to get some basic OSD elements into it, like voltage, thrust, amp draw, so the viewer can get an idea of what sort of numbers are being used to achieve the flight characteristics shown in the video.

Would wiring the cam out to FC then sending it back to the VTX, but on the cam in pad instead of Video in, do the job? I'm guessing the Diamond DVR records the pure cam feed and not the mixed one.

(09-Dec-2023, 07:11 PM)Pathfinder075 Wrote: Would wiring the cam out to FC then sending it back to the VTX, but on the cam in pad instead of Video in, do the job?  I'm guessing the Diamond DVR records the pure cam feed and not the mixed one.

Yes, that should work if you want telemetry to appear in the onboard DVR, but I'm not sure why you would want that. The reason for onboard DVR is to get clean footage like you would with an external HD / 4K camera. Once the OSD elements are "burned" into the DVR file there is no way to remove them, so you would then never have clean footage. If you want the OSD elements just record DVR to your goggles as well (which you should always be doing anyway help locate the quad in case it goes down). Granted the recorded over-the-air footage itself will be worse quality than the onboard DVR but for analysis purposes that is usually good enough. I always keep both onboard DVR and goggle DVR (with the OSD information in) from my flights.

I often see High Res videos posted on YT, but what i want to know as people are flying is how much throttle they are using during a move, or how many amps they are consuming for a given motor. Often these videos are a year or two old, so reaching out to the person and asking them how many amps a certain motor used or how much power they were using while doing a certain move, is pointless (as I recently found out). So I want the ability to have clear footage, but I would like also the ability to dub a minimal OSD to it, so not the full OSD info I use while flying, but more a cutdown version that just gives the key info that people might want. That sort of functionality doesn't exist as far as I know, i'm talking the way gyro data can be used to smooth out videos, it would be just as nice if BF would generate a csv file (or similar) that contained a copy of specified OSD elements for the length of the video, that you could merge into a video and then transcode.

The nearest way i can see to do it, is to send video out from the FC without video in, so you get a black screen with OSD elements, maybe to a secondary DVR, like the Runcam DVR. Then black out any elements you don't want in your editing software, remove the black background colour and replace with alpha (think this the term, but basically make it a transparent background that can be overlayed easily), then merge with the original and recode. If some better method exists, i'm open to it.

Yes you could do it via goggles, but you would have a more complex picture to deal with, with static, which requires more effort when editing. I kind of want a clean image, so it's pretty simple to do the merge.

My flights for me and well my audience are learning experiences. It's hard to really learn something, when you only see half the required information. Does that kind of explain my thinking.

I've seen a ghetto hack used where someone had recorded both clean onboard DVR and also goggle DVR with all the OSD elements in and then overlaid rectangular sections of the goggle DVR onto the clean DVR in post editing to show the telemetry data. You can tell the overlaid rectangle areas came from the goggle DVR because the resolution of those areas is much lower quality than the rest of the image. But it did the job.

Another option is to use DashWare with Betaflifght Blackbox data or telemetry data from OpenTX / EdgeTX logs. There are some tutorials and YouTube videos showing what can be achieved with that. Just Goggle "DashWare Betaflight" and that should give you a bit of a head start.

It's probably something I will have to play with. If the Diamond does take the OSD element and mix it, itself, as opposed to mixing it at the FC end, then wiring a second DVR in that is only accepting video out from the FC and nothing else would probably give me say a 480p OSD only image like you get when the cam dies on a quad. it should be easier to take that, strip the black away and then merge it with the flight footage, which will also be at 480p. This would be used on more powerful quads, so any extra weight is irrelevant. But I do have a couple of Runcam DVR's, so experimentation will be the way.

Failing that, Dashware looks interesting.

I suppose this doesn't come up as most people produce videos as more of a visual art piece than as an educational tool.

The camera plugs directly into the diamond VTx but I believe it splits that signal sending one down to the FC and the other to its own DVR. I don’t know if you can easily intercept the one going to the DVR without affecting the one going to the FC (?)

So you would wire the camera directly to the FC then send the camera plus osd (mixed) signal from the FC to both the cam input on the diamond as well as the VideoIn on the diamond ?

No, wire a second dvr to the video out in parallel to the diamond. The diamond would give flight video to the goggles and also record the camera output and relay the osd overlayed image to the goggles and the Runcam DVR would record only the OSD.

Sorry, i'm an idiot. The DVR records the camera image directly, post processing. You are correct, there is no easy way to grab the OSD data directly. Maybe blackbox is the only way. If the VTX mixed the OSD and camera output to give the image, then it would be possible to jack into the OSD feed directly, but it probably doesn't. So I can't see a way to do it, besides as Snow mentioned, record on the goggles, then mux the two images.

Even capturing the ELRS telemetry log files requires a parser that can reintegrate it with the video, of which I don't have one, nor may one exist full stop. If one did exist and could convert the data to a subtitle file, then it might be possible, in a hacky way, without having to transcode the video.

The question as ever is how to output the OSD data without the image sent from the VTX.

Another night maybe.