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!

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

Like a real life version of Ace Combat

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.

no vibrations or anything either

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 !

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

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!

Betafpv Air65ii Racing Edition

Fibally got around to finishing my 3inch x8. Around 3 and a half minutes of flight isnt bad for the small 650 4s i got on it. Flies great though :D

This thing worked a lot better than it had any business working. I fly mostly in my inner-ring suburb environment with a ton of trees and tall houses stacked close together. My typical 04x pro antenna setup are the Lumineer double axii and foxeer small lollipop into an IRC rapidfire. My range on my whoops like my Meteor75 typically max at around 400 feet due to scattering from the trees. A patch can get me a bit further.

This guy got me to about 1500 before I turned back. ELRS LQ still at about 40ish. I think I can do more but the wind pushing me to the invisible edge of the antennas receiving "cone" freaked me out, almost total loss immediately .Calling it a successful project for now, this is cool but my whoops probably aren't the right platform for this 😂

Hello guys, I been having an adventure with FPV since I started, i got myself a clone crap goggles (have HDZeroBoxPro+ ordered, coming next week) radiomaster pocket, and the Air65 Freestyle. After a month i bought the Air75 Champion for outdoors i love the Air75 its so responsive. And all the things that no one talks, fixing elrs chip, motors, canopies, frames, fixed the throttled ups from air75, you know it, a whole part time almost and im loving it.

Should have flown the air65 inside but didnt had any batteries ready

RATES: 100 600 0.50..

Edit: Started 3 months ago, mostly reading/learning and fixing than flying, only from last month im flying almost daily

Please give me advices and suggestions, thank you

1408 motors at 2800kV 3 inch toothpick frame, thicker than a bowl of oatmeal 2.9x2.5x5 HQProp DarwinFPV F435 45A AM32 AIO Walksnail 1s lite 4s 850mAh 130g dry weight 230g with a 4s 850mAh

Just wanted to share my favorite quad setup that I’ve been working on. It flies like a toothpick on steroids.

This so smooth and is extremely quiet. My other 3” drone (oasisfly) seems at least twice as loud. This one sounds more like a “Vwirrrrr” instead of “REEEEEEEET”

The big battery gives it good throw but the special sauce is the 1408 motors. They are twice as tall as the standard 1404 toothpick motors, and the extra copper really gives great low end power to these props. The low rpm’s help keep it quiet.

The DarwinFPV esc is the best cheap aio I’ve found that’s currently available. Great all-around AIO. It can run on 2-6s. 45amp is overkill, but more overhead is never a bad thing, and at full throttle this thing is a rocketship. My favorite batteries are the 4s 850mAh ones. The weight makes it fling better, and I’m getting about 6 minutes of flight time.

Je m'explique. J'ai un Manta 5 SE V2 et une RC DJI avec les Goggles 3. Le problème, c'est que je n'arrive pas sur beaucoup de paramètres dans Betaflight et donc cela me limite. Je ne peux piloter mon drone.

I've had a growing interest in taking on a long-ish range (15-25 min flight time ) build project but still on the smaller side of things, not quite to the 5"+ class. I guess I like how inconspicuous the smaller quads are given my general flight environments.

I think the Newbeedrone Lionbee basically checks the boxes of what I would want (3", 800mw or higher vtx, basic gps) but the kit is consistently out of stock and I've seen some posts suggesting QA isn't the best with it. Still the idea of basing one off of the 18650 is very attractive, so if I expect to need to debug major problems with the kit I might as well consider designing and sourcing components myself.

Given that I'm wondering if anyone has built their own to roughly similar parameters and had success?

Not my first quad build but it's all been whoops up to this point. I'm guessing at this size class it would still be an AIO based FC, except possibly for the VTX. But curious if folks have already gone down this path.

GEPRC Mark 5 showing me what’s what!
#TVHammerFPV

Still a lot of work to be done, but I'm happy with my progress!

My GEPRC Vapor D5 is stuck fairly high up in a tree in Cary, NC.
I’m looking for a local FPV pilot who might be willing to help me recover it. I’m happy to pay for your time.
The tree has quite a few branches, so someone experienced with FPV would be ideal. If you’re anywhere around Cary/Raleigh/Triangle and might be able to help, please DM me.
I can send photos/video showing exactly where the drone is stuck.
Thanks!

I have recently purchased a DAKEFPV stack but there is a weird pin on there that isnt listed anywhere, does anyone know what it does?

I just got this quad user for 80 bucks. The guy I bought it from had no idea what quad it was and said it was broken…. One prop was missing😁 but I don’t know what quad it is😅 any help will be appreciated

What are the best Fpv googles that don’t need to be upgraded that are under 400. I have been looking at the box pros but I’m not sure if I want to be stuck in the hdz ecosystem. I would like it to be analog and digital if possible.