In this lesson, we go over the parts of our video system.
After completing this lesson,
you'll be able to: Identify the parts of
a video system and understand the concepts for video wiring.
For a quadcopter build,
we started with a FatShark,
700TVL camera, because it came with a pan and tilt servo,
and it already had a really good resolution.
What we did was we took apart the mount that made this
a pan until servo and we're just using the tilt functionality.
Now the tilt functionality in this case is incorporated into our 3D print as well.
We're taking the video signal from the camera or sending it to
our power distribution board because of the on screen display functionality,
and we're going to be sending it out to this TS58235.8 gigahertz antenna.
Now this takes the signal,
has 32 available channels based on the dip switch settings on the back.
And these channels will relay the information directly to our monitor.
The monitor is already set up for 5.8 gigahertz as well and can scan for the channels,
and we'll see the video signal directly down to this monitor.
Now this is a great option but there are also other options on the market.
Now this specific option was great because it already had the receiver,
it can do a 32 channel scan of that 5.8 gigahertz frequency.
You can also get FPV racing goggles that will
have an integrated video screen into a goggle set up.
This specific set up allows us to send the video out to another device,
whether it's recording to a laptop,
or if you're sending it out to a pair of
goggles or another screen for other people to use.
Because the intent of this design was for search,
it's best to have more eyes on screens so
you can have this screen fly it as the first person view
quadcopter and directly output
that video to a larger TV for other people to search the area.
When we talk about cameras,
we need to also talk about servos and gimbal motors.
We opted to go with servos for a few different reasons.
One because it came with a FatShark TVL camera already.
But mainly because they're lightweight and they don't
require any additional components to control them.
We can plug this directly into our flight controller,
and have direct control over the direction it's turning in its current position.
With the flight controller software that we're using,
we also have the ability to use it as a gimbal because we can tell
the servo what we want to be level and as the quadcopter pitches,
then it'll automatically adjust the camera's position.
If you want to use a brushless gimbal motor such as the turner G1 here,
It's a quite a bit heavier.
We're talking about 10 to 15 grams for
a servo and we're talking about over 100 grams for a gimbal.
So in order to incorporate this,
we would be adding a lot of extra mass to our design,
and we also need an additional circuit board to control this.
So in our case, we opted for a simple solution using
a camera that already had a tilt servo integrated to it.
We are sending that signal out at 5.8 gigahertz,
which goes directly to our screen on the ground.
Some considerations you want to think about when you're designing your own camera setup.
The frequency that we use, that 5.0 gigahertz,
will give us roughly a mile of range with no obstructions.
That also matches our 2.4 gigahertz controller.
So we're at roughly a mile away that we can go.
If you need longer range than that,
we'll need to add additional functionality such as
a different flight controller that can accommodate different types of signals.
But in our case it's a very simple solution and you
can get this video signal out very easily to the ground.
There is one additional thing I want to mention with this SkyZone TS5823 antenna.
This comes with a connector that can plug directly into a GoPro.
So you can live feed GoPro video into this and directly down to the ground.
So this option gave us a lot of flexibility in
terms of cameras that we could add to our units.
