RC Car FPV Technology

[JimmyPickles]

Hi, there are lots of videos on YouTube that show FPV technology on RC cars. there is one in particular that shows someone driving on city streets. I'm not posting a link because I feel it is highly irresponsible. that said, I am interested it the technology they may have used.

The video followed the car quite some distance. I don't think he followed in a vehicle behind it. The video had a speedometer and map on the bottom left. I would say the course was at least several miles.

What I'm most interested in doing is to be able to drive my truck through a large field from a static position. I'm in a wheelchair and can't follow it very easily. In terms of distance, I'd be happy with a half mile, or so.

Can anyone help me identify what gear he may have been using? I know there is some electronics out there that are illegal...not looking for that.

Thanks

[Jboucher]

It's either a ground station or a digital setup that costs hundreds like the DJI phantom lightbridge connection.

With analogic, you can get a ground station (monitor or goggles) plus a tower (receiver antenna on the roof of the house). Then the truck is equipped with a powerful transmitter to pass through obstacles.

Analogic is cheap and effective. I get maybe 1km in a clear field with a simple 600mW transmitter and a pair of Eachine ev800D goggles.

The downside is that analogic requires an amateur radio license after a certain power limit.

Digital is a lot more powerful, clearer and I bet it covers more ground but you are looking at 500$ for basic setups and the gear is much bigger.

FPV is made for drones, In the sky you get miles of coverage with a smallish transmitter while on the ground, a simple bush or fence will kill the signal...

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[Jboucher]

I made some FPV videos in my bomber build thread on this forum.

You can see the kind of quality you get for about 200$.

But I am always close to the truck itself.

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[robert@castle]

I made my Yeti JR FPV but it doesn't have great range, 150-200 Feet. To get good range on a car you need to get the antenna in the car as high as you can to get rid of as much interference from the groud as you can. I have the antenna mounted low in mine and is just a basic antenna. If I had it mounted vertically and had a clover antenna, it would get a lot better range. I also have a very low power transmitter on the car because I wasn't aiming for range. There is FCC regulations on how much power you are allowed to transmit with but many places sell more powerful transmitters and I've seen lot of people use them without issue(Not an endorsement to break the law, just an observation that people do it without a HAM radio license).

To get the speedometer on the video feed you need an OSD module with GPS. They are quite common in FPV drone racing and often have lots of settings for what can be added to the video feed.

If you are going to be stationary you can improve your range by having the receiver for the fpv video lifted up as high as you can get(Top of tall tripod or something taller than you), you can also get directional antennas that have much higher sensitivity, but have a narrow with they can receive from. If you run into range issues with your actual R/C transmitter, there is external radio transmitters you can use but they are more complicated to setup and often require custom wiring. You can also mount this up as high as you can get to improve the range.

[Jim85IROC]

Take a gander over at FPVLab.com. That forum is full of FPV experts, and they even have a sub forum devoted to ground usage. Read up... ground usage requires a different approach to air, but there's a ton of info here:

https://fpvlab.com/forums/forumdispl...ROUND-POUNDERS

[JimmyPickles]

Originally Posted by Jim85IROC

Take a gander over at FPVLab.com. That forum is full of FPV experts, and they even have a sub forum devoted to ground usage. Read up... ground usage requires a different approach to air, but there's a ton of info here:

https://fpvlab.com/forums/forumdispl...ROUND-POUNDERS

Thanks so much for the link. This is great info