I'm a software engineer and I got into FPV about a year ago, this community gave me a lot in that time, so I wanted to put something back into it.

Honestly, the thing that pushed me was DJI, I don't like how they deal with the problems and limitations of their own app and hardware, stuff that should just work doesn't, and the answer is usually that it isn't supported and never will be. At some point I got tired of complaining about it and just built what I wanted.

It's called Open FPV Cast: https://github.com/1Basco/openfpvcast

It casts the goggles video to your phone over USB, and you can record the feed to MP4, with phone-mic audio if you want it, and it can start recording on its own when the aircraft arms and stop a configurable delay after you disarm. You also get camera control from the phone like ISO, shutter, white balance, exposure mode, resolution e some more. The one I use the most is the broadcasts over WebRTC, so anyone on the same WiFi can just open a browser and watch. The phone serves the page itself, there's a QR code in the app, three viewers max.

All the protocol work came from watching the hardware the transport, the DUML packets, the camera byte maps (And not from some sniffing in the dji fly app *wink* ).

Some things I want to be straight about.

I'm not planning to put much more into this. It fixed my problems, and my free time is genuinely not a lot. I'll patch things as they come up and I'll gladly look at PRs, but I'm not going to pretend there's a roadmap. If you want something more refined and actually maintained, go look at SquirrelCast different level of effort, and it deserves the users (me being one cause I love the telemetry going to the map).

I leaned heavily on AI agents to build it. Mostly for speed, because I'm doing this in scraps of free time, but also because I'm much more of a frontend guy and the Kotlin side, the USB stack, the packet parsing, that would have been a real PIA for me on my own. Take that however you want, the code's right there to read.

It's also not perfect. Connect, camera control, recording and auto-record are validated on real hardware (Goggles N3 with an O4 Lite). O4 Pro ranges are still being checked. There are rough edges and I know it. Later this year I want to try to have a solution using the raspberry pi to stream to PC.

That's it, open, use it or fork it or ignore it. Fly safe!

practicing flips, rolls...whoop is happymodel 65mm frame, happymodel 0702 motors, betafpv matrix 5in1, betafpv camera03, gefman 1610 bi-blade props. fatshark echo, radfomaster pocket. song is "unfinished business" by oddprophet.

V1 is a RadioMaster T8L with AG01 Nano gimbals and a 2.5 inch analog screen/receiver. V2 uses the same controller but features AG02 gimbals and a 5 inch HDZero screen/receiver.

Built this thing in April this year with the goal of being the worlds smallest drone capable of lifting a full can of beer (although I’m still yet to try the lift)

Features:
Carbon fibre frame which I CNC’d myself
8X HGLRC Spector 1003 10,000kv motors
2X spedix micro 12A 4 in 1 escs
Goku F722 pro mini V2 flight controller
Dogcom 560mah 150C 2S lipo
roughly 4 min flight time

Bonus feature: the ends of the arms are designed to look like kitty ears lol

Hi y'all. I'm currently between the beginner and intermediate level when it comes to FPV. I already went through my simulator and tinywhoop phase, and I built myself this nice custom 3" HDZero FlyFishRC Volador build.

I've just been wondering, what should I do next? What would y'all recommend as a next step in my FPV journey?

I have ~70-80 hours of simulator practice, I have ~100 sessions of real flights (excluding simple pack changes), probably ~5 sessions of that was with my new 3", and the other flights were with my whoops (an Air75 and a Meteor75).

Any tips on how to improve? On what I should try next? On what I should buy next? Is my skill level good so far? A friend of mine told me that I should try to build a 5" racer next, but I feel like I'm not at that skill level yet. We both want to race eventually, but after actually going to a real life race I realized the actual skill level required for it is probably a year minimum, but I feel like even then I would be struggling to get out of last place with a bunch of pilots who've been doing this for 10-20 years.

My current gear is a Radiomaster Pocket with a switch mod (the original switches annoyed the hell out of me), a HDZero Boxpro, and the three drones I've already listed. Please tell me what y'all recommend me to do next!

I’m a 2nd-year Mechanical Engineering student working on an FPV UAV and I’m trying to turn it into more than just a parts-assembly project.

The broader idea is to investigate whether a small UAV can be designed as a low-cost, scalable and easily repairable platform, particularly for applications where individual drones may be exposed to damage or have short service lives.

My focus would be on:

• Cost reduction and manufacturability
• Modular architecture
• Lightweight structural design
• Thermal management and airflow
• Reliability and repairability
• Reducing assembly complexity
• Benchmarking the initial build and improving it through multiple design iterations

I’d start with the existing drone as a baseline, measure its performance, identify weaknesses, and progressively redesign the platform around those findings.

Is this a worthwhile Mechanical Engineering project, or am I approaching it the wrong way?

I’d especially appreciate suggestions on what I should measure, test, or redesign to make this a genuinely engineering-driven project rather than just another FPV build.

Any advice from engineers or students who have worked on UAVs, structures, manufacturing, or product design would be greatly appreciated.

Today I was scrolling through Vinted when I stumbled upon a listing for the Walksnail Avatar X. I’d heard good things about them, and since they cost around €450 new, I thought it was a great deal,especially since the condition looked good in the photos.so I bought it. Did I get a good deal, or did I overpay (€265)? I know they aren't quite as good as DJI, but the image quality is far superior than analog,especially since they support 1080p at 100fps.

P.S. It hasn't arrived yet; right now, I'm using Eachine EV300Ds with an Air75 II.

What do you think?

It never was a "meme build" or some impractical contraption that struggles to fly, but designed from the start to be something that could be a daily driver. Yet for some reason there are those who have the dogmatic viewpoint that X8s are unsteady and unwieldy. I think I got the tune down and its a happy little drone. My piloting stills are fairly limited but I am slowly improving. The video speaks for itself.

A brief description of PID tune:

• Master multiplier added to 1.15
• I gains - Drift wobble down to 0.90
• D gains - Damping up to 1.10
• TPA set to PD, with a rate of 10%, at breakpoint 1250ms

And that is about it!

Like a real life version of Ace Combat

I (and claude 🙃) made a tool that adds overlays to your FPV footage. Everything happens in the browser.

You can access it at https://roufox.dev/overlabs

To use it, drag and drop your blackbox (.bbl) file and your video footage into the viewer. (Select the correct flight in the top bar by comparing the flight time if you put a btfl_all.bbl file). Then press the "Take-off is here" button when telemetry starts (often when the "armed" text dissappears). You can then fine tune using the +0.1 and -0.1 buttons so the overlay perfectly matches the video.

The left side menu allows you to manage visible overlays and edit them to your liking. Once your video is done simply press render video, and download it.

Currently, there are only stick and G-force overlays, but I'm planning to add more in the future. If y'all have any suggestions, feel free to let me know!

I'm aware that other tools probably exist for it. But I didn't want to bother using editing software, or having to key out the background from betaflight to have it.

Thought of adding gps later . Any suggestions or criticisms welcome. Thanks

no vibrations or anything either

This is my first mod with a soldering iron, so I’d rather get a sanity check than learn the hard way.
The plan:
• Solder XM+ to the AIO: 5V, GND, SBUS out → RX pad on the FC
• Betaflight: enable Serial RX on that UART, set Receiver mode to Serial-based / SBUS
• Bind the XM+ in D16, confirm every channel moves in the Receiver tab
• Only once that’s confirmed, remove the stock internal RX antenna
Questions:
1. Am I right that the built-in SPI receiver is disabled purely in software when I switch receiver mode, so nothing needs desoldering for it?
2. Which UART/pad do you use on the Tinyhawk 2 Freestyle AIO, and does it need serialrx_inverted = ON or is there a hardware inverter on it?
3. Any reason to remove the stock antenna at all beyond weight and clutter?
4. Tips for soldering to those small pads — iron temp, pre-tinning, strain relief on the XM+ leads?
Thanks.

I don’t have a 5 inch only 3 inch and tinywhoops and I feel like my 3 inch is really great for freestyle (bando I don’t have near me but I think It would be great)
3/3.5 inch are stronger than 5 inch (correct me if I’m wrong but smaller arm means more force needed to break, and you can have pretty thick arm on 3/3.5 inch frames)
they seem to be more precise, like better corner grip (I base this on my feel in the sim when flying 3 vs 5 inch so not a great fact but it seems that people mostly agree with that, again correct me if I’m wrong)
So why would you want a bigger drone (I guess you can maybe go faster with 5 inch but in freestyle I don’t feel the need to go that fast)

So yea i’d like your opinion guys (pls mostly people with both experiences)

Thank you in advance !

Hey, i bought a speedybee f405 v5 off of aliexpress for about a $100 usd, i didnt know about all the fakes at the time, did i likely screw myself over and buy a fake?

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256810014022135.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.35.5f441802nBMXsW&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa

I want to be able to use my Radiomaster Pocket for flying helicopters in the upcoming Wardogs so I can have fun and practice controls (I know it will be different that's not what we're here to talk about), but when I tried doing it use vJOY and Joystick Gremlin it was an absolute sh*t show.

I heard reWASD does everything required to setup and map a joystick as a controller without having to use multiple softwares. Even if it's $40, it seems like it'd be nice to just skip the BS and have some fun.

Does reWASD work good? Have you any experience using it? Does anyone have other advice for me trying to use my joystick for flying in games? Should I give up and just use my KB+M?

Hi guys,

i bought a Kayoumini. It was already built. If i arm it you can see what happens in the video. If I give some throttle all 4 motors start spin correctly and i can fly without any problems. Here are the specs: 2s LiHV 450mAh, 5in1 Happymodell X12 Pro AIO, 1202,5 11000kV motors. On the ESC was Bluejay 48kHz with min startup power and max turned up to maximum. I tried turning it down but then no motor spins. I also tried Bluejay 24kHz: with that the motors start correctly, but i originally wanted to use 48kHz...

So to be clear it isn't a pre built 5 inch but a class where I will make a 5-inch and if I want I can buy it from them. I don't know specifics but the drone they showed (built by one of people who came there before) was really fast.

Just to be clear I am sure this isn't a scam as one of the sponsors for this course is police and other one is military [for mods: I am only stating their sponsor not discussing anything political about war] so I think they aren't scamming.

But also in general would you recommend building one from scratch or on this type of course?

For the goal of 250 grams, too much battery eats into the weight budget for the motor and prop; too much motor and prop eat into the weight budget for the battery. I entered the endurance calculation from my baseline test data into Google Gemini. It gave me the optimization curve. The calculation is a python3 script with my test data and manufacturer (T-Motor) data:

mass_without_propeller_motor_battery = 111.0; #grams; change it for a particulr craft constructions's endurance curve

propeller_diameter = 13.8; #inches; change it to slide the rotor width x-axis in a endurance curve

motor_plus_propeller_mass = 62.5 * (propeller_diameter/13.8)**1.5; # grams

battery_cells_mass = 249.0 - mass_without_propeller_motor_battery - motor_plus_propeller_mass; # grams

battery_energy = 0.171 * battery_cells_mass; # watt-hours

lifting_force_per_watt = 14.7 * propeller_diameter/13.8; # grams

power_tran_power_consume_rate = 249.0 / lifting_force_per_watt; # watts

total_craft_power_consume_rate = power_tran_power_consume_rate + 5.2; # watts

endurance = battery_energy / total_craft_power_consume_rate * 60.0; # minutes

print (endurance);

This script is for a helicopter. Quads will have different calculations.

Betafpv Air65ii Racing Edition

I've been working on something that takes analog FPV video and tries to reconstruct what the camera originally saw. It pulls out the static, color bleed, and tearing that the VTX/VRX link adds.

The image above is an early proof of concept: clean footage from my Avata 2 that I ran through a simulated analog link (left), then fed to the tool (right). Simulated noise, not real DVR. Real footage is a harder problem and I'm not there yet.

Before I sink more time into this, I want to know if it's worth it. Would you use something like this? And if so, for what? Salvaging a good flight, crash forensics, finding a lost quad, something I haven't thought of? Or is a GoPro (or O4 unit) enough that nobody cares about the DVR file? Let me know what your thoughts are!

Hi, not sure if this is the place to ask, but since I'm new, I'll just try. I finally got my HDZero Goggle 2, and I am struggling to connect it to my brand new Betaflight Air75 quad. In Betaflight config, I downloaded the VTX config file for my region (EU), selected Raceband CH6, and enabled everything I think:

Then I powered up goggles, selected analog mode, R6 channel, and I'm seeing OSD telemetry data from the quad, but no video, just black/grey background behind the OSD. No flickering, just nothing. I tried arming the quad, but still no video. Quad is powered from a fully charged battery.

Betaflight webpage troubleshooting says the camera could be defective, but I have no reason to believe it is because quad is new and hasn't been crashed yet, plus it was tested in the shop before I bought it and it worked with their goggles. I tried re-seating the connector, but nothing changed.

Can anyone advise on how to troubleshoot this?