 Hey guys, welcome to Rotorite. Today we're looking at a revolutionary new FPV system. This is coming out from DJI. They're coming out with an FPV system that's all about HD. And they have put together the whole kit for you, which are going to be the DJI goggles, controller, and also the DJI air unit, which is going to include this box here, the camera, and the two antennas. This is going to actually record HD footage on board with an SD card. So you're going to get 1080, 60 frames just out of this. So depending on we'll see how much we will like the quality of it, but it could possibly replace your GoPro. It's going to be kind of hard to fit on different frames. It's a little large, but I mean, it's really not too crazy. We're able to fit it in this teeny race drone. And this handles radio signals and the FPV video all in one unit. The DJI is full HD in the goggles. So not only are you seeing exactly what you're recording, but it makes the experience that much better. That's crazy. That is nice. That's kind of nice. Condenize. That's kind of sharp. That's kind of sharp. That's like 4K. Yeah, that's a really high quality image. I'm done with it. So does it stay really solid? We're about to find out. Like there's no kind of click of nothing? Does it look like that all the time? OK, where's the arm then? What's so special about this? There's been other HD systems before. Special about this one is the latency. They're boasting about a 7 to 28 millisecond latency. And what I see that as being is from your control stick to when your drone actually makes that maneuver, is about 7 milliseconds. And then from you touching your controller to what you actually see in your goggles is going to be about 28 milliseconds. If you compare that to other things that we have on the market, I mean, we're probably used to flying with about 30, maybe 40 milliseconds. I mean, I'm not sure of the exact number, but the point is 23 is really fast. I took it, not even seeing any of the specs beforehand, and I went out and flew. And I mean, I didn't notice any latency at all. Yeah, I can get used to this. Does it stay crispy the whole time? Oh my god, it's not a bit of static. And I'm like all the way at the end. This is the future, bro. It's not even the future, it's here. It's right now. This is the present. It's a crazy time to be with it. Does it feel like any lag in the latency? Not enough that I would be like, oh, it's too much latency. I'll take this all day. This is what we need. Like it literally looks like I'm watching the Discovery Channel. People are like, oh, does it look like GoPro footage? I'm like, no, man, it kind of looks like reality. It's just beautiful. It's even sharper than a GoPro. Bro, it's, it's, it's, it's, I haven't seen a bit of static. This is amazing. Like this is everything that FPV was missing, that right there. I mean, I went all the way to that white sign down there, not a bit, not even a twinkle of breakup, which so ever. And that was everything, everything you guys just saw. That was all like DVR from the goggles. We don't have an SD card in that yet. Let me put an SD card in the quad. Ah, yeah, that's nice. Yeah, what can I say? That's amazing. Oh God, that is really good. The quad doesn't fly amazing. I wish we could fix that, but wow, it's good. No breakup, right? No breakup. It's just a shaky quad. Just pretty sure we, I can go over here. Yeah, I'm completely behind the building, like no line of sight at all, worst case scenario. Has no like latency in that. It's getting just now, it's maybe getting a little more latency, it just now started to pixelate. And I'm like, I would never be able to go here on regular gear. But like look in the lower corner, it tells you the latency, what does it say? 24 milliseconds. No, that can't be right. No, it's just 35. Okay, that sounds maybe more right. Where are you at? You're not behind the building. I'm like right in the middle of the courtyard. Like I'm about to do like the thing you would always say, like I wish you could do that, just go all the way around. It's getting really pixelated now, but pixelated is like rough video. It's failsafe now, but I'm in such like, okay, I'm just gonna disarm it. Did you failsafe it? Yeah. But I'm in like, you would never ever do that. Like I'm totally in the center of the whole thing. That's an important thing is how is the, the failure going to be, because analog, we're really used to flying analog, where you get snow. You get kind of snowy. Your video gets a little break up. You know when the video is getting worse and you can fly through it. You get used to like. Yeah. I think that was the downs, like the downfall of the pro site. Of the other, yeah, other HD systems that have been out before, they don't get snowy or a little get a break up. They freeze frame or do something really bad. Shut off completely and just go to black. Yeah, big problem with that. So this seems, it gives you a good warning. You'll know when it's going away. That's, oh come on. I keep flipping it. There we go. Got him. Nice. Oh wow, it's pretty crazy to fly this courtyard too. There's lots of dew back here. I feel like there is a little bit of latency. I'm kind of struggling. Maybe a little bit. But is it worth it? You know what I mean? Absolutely. It's almost like worth the latency. Oh, there it is. There it is. There it is. This problem. It's really good. I just want to play with that all day really. It's all I want to do. You know something that I do think we were experiencing was feel, it's not too bad now. This unit gets really, really hot. I believe that when that's getting hot, you get more latency. It kind of goes into like a lower power mode, you know? So I think maybe that was it. You know, it sat there upside down after you crashed it or failed, you know, whatever. The system's not perfect. There are some things I'd like to see improved. I really want to see the air unit get even smaller. I feel spoiled because this is the smallest HD unit to ever exist. And already I'm like, we'll only make it smaller but you know, we're just used to much smaller components. But you know, I think we might see frame makers start coming out with specially designed areas to put this thing because it's totally manageable. It is just a little bit larger than what we're used to. The goggles, they're not as comfortable as what I'm used to. And we got some light leaks. See how I'm like, get my fingers in here? I'm seeing reflections on the screen. These look like you're the bad guy in some sort of like alien flick. I'm curious to see how the fit is and you know, if you have any light leak issues because I get a little bit. There is a lot of light leak. Can we make this tighter? Oh no, that's way worse. Oh worse. Yeah, take the head down. First thing I'm gonna say, I have a pretty small narrow face and there is like, I can see the trees and the reflection behind me over here. And I can't see with the straps that it has, being able to make it tight enough to fit my face. Well, let's fly them before you ride them off. Let's get them in the air. We'll see how they video. So I'm kind of scared because you said something about latency. Well, that's just the thing that's been the problem with HD but are you experiencing any latency? Definitely doesn't seem that way. I mean, this is unreal. The goggles, I kind of hate but the video itself is amazing. Can you use this video system with your own goggles? No. You have to use that. You have to use the goggles. That would be the killer for me because if I could use- Your fat sharks, right? Or if they were comfortable and fit similarly. Like I said, it's just, these are really flat. There's a lot of light but I'm not noticing any lag at all. Do you see the recording icons on the screen? I do. Yeah, I forgot to hit record but luckily it came set up that it starts recording when you take off both the DVR and the goggles which is a 720p DVR recording and the onboard unit which is going to give us a 1080p 60 frames a second. So you don't have to carry a GoPro? You do not have to carry a camera. Which is, you know, a big thing if- But you could. If you want to go like 4K or something because that maxes out at 1080 right now. Yeah, but most people are fine with that. I'm going to see if with the hoodie I have less light leak because there's a lot to have the straps up and then have a cape. And now I really do look like that. And now you look like Star Wars. Ta-da! So we're going to set up to do a bit of a range test. We're going to find a long stretch of pretty remote road and we're going to set up the pilot on one end going to fly a straight line chasing a car. In the car we'll have multiple spotters. One of them will even be on the phone with the pilot. We're just going to fly it until either the video cuts out or until the control link is lost. The DJI claims that these things can go 4 kilometers out now. I'm actually a bit skeptical about that mainly because our FBB systems that we currently use on 5.8 gigahertz, 2.4 and 900. Even though sometimes you can get that much range generally speaking in the environments that we fly it's almost impossible to get those results. So we're going to see if what DJI claims is actually true. I'd like it to be able to go 4 kilometers out. That being said, I'm not sure. I really don't think that's going to happen. We're actually going to stay pretty close to the ground like we would normally in a racing or freestyle situation as opposed to those long range systems that you know work. You're typically up and out away from your body and have clear signal. We're going to go just like we would if we were flying for real. So that'll definitely affect the range. It's going to be more real life for us. We're not going to typically be in those situations where we have wide open nothingness blocking us. We're going to have obstacles. So we want to see if this is going to be a system that'll work well for FPV. Do we have communication with the pilot in command? Yes, sir, brother. And I am beginning to drive. And it's sweet. He's right on us. Oh, yeah. I see him right in the rear view. Hi, Alex. I'm in front of the car. Hi. Oh, God. I have the signal. Pretty good. Pretty good. You're flashing backwards right now. Yeah. I'm going to hit you. Keeping visual contact with Yandrone. I could just reach out and grab that thing. I missed that little high sign. I get splashes of water. Oh, yeah. Watch out for splashes. It's so close. How does the water look? Oh, man. That means it's going to go down in water potentially. OK, wait. No, we're going to be clear of puddles in a minute. I'm going to go ahead of you. OK. We got a line of sight. We got you. It's starting to get a little slippery. Yeah, well, the car is between you. So maybe stay just behind the car so that we're not blocking you. OK, we're clear of puddles. So if you're going to go down, you should be pretty safe to go down. But I wouldn't maybe necessarily be so close to Jamie when you're going to go down. Oh, she's fine. We are pretty far. We're at an intersection. It's really good. Like, the signals are great. We are coming up to an intersection. So I'm going nice and slow. There's people. Hey, everybody. Like, what the hell? Dude, it feels so good. That was hilarious. Is it good? Oh, peace sign. We've gone up. We've gone over a little bit of a hump. Now it's getting flaky. Now it's getting flaky. Is it? All right. It's getting. It's going to go up. Hold on. I'm going to pause here. Just hover behind us. Hover behind us. I'm going to let a car pass us. Get behind us. There's a car coming up. OK, we're clear. Get back in front. There we go. We're not in front because I don't want to block you. So what do you see? It's better now. It was bad. Now it's better. It's not where it was, but it's definitely more than flyable. We are so far. Oh my gosh. How far are we, you think? I have no clue. But you're really close to the car. Oh my gosh. Is that shot sick, Jamie? I'm glad the image just got clear. I'm not even kidding you. Sorry, Jamie, didn't mean to get that close. We're going under some power lines, so be careful. I guess you can because it's A-D. Dude, it's so clear right now. I don't get it. And the control. Here's another thing. The control feels really good, too. It doesn't feel like the latency is increased or anything. Does it feel like there's any latency or anything? No, it feels the same as why it took off. Wow. Dude, it's pretty clear. I can see you really well, your eyeliner and everything. Watch out, Jamie. Oh my gosh. I see. I see. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, I just can't imagine that happening. Don't worry. Don't get between the truck, man. It's going to block you. I can't believe how far we're driving. It's so far. Dude, it's so good. OK, now it's getting a little bit more flaky. OK. But it's good. Like, it's flyable. Now it's getting, now it's the worst it's been, but it's back to it. No, it's OK. It's weird. Now it's coming in and out. All right, it's going to go soon. It's going to go. Is it going to go? Nope, it's good. What? No, dude, it's so like, it'll go, it'll just be like normal static. Why? It's going to look different. Like right now it's really hard to, like, I'm not going to get close to the car now. It's too rainy. OK. So what do you see? But now it's better. It's probably not flyable. I'm just kind of holding the stick. OK, Jamie, come in the car. Come in the car. Oh, he hit the car. He hit the car. All right, we'll call it there. Oh, OK. He hit the car. So that is, we made it 2.39 kilometers. But that's like low to the ground, too. Like, that's not high up. Yeah, I know. We had a lot of. 1.48 miles. Basically a mile and a half. We made it a mile and a half. I'd say that's, I'm impressed. I'm impressed. Do you think that the battery had anything to do with him losing video? Because if he was in the air for like six minutes. I don't think so. He said he was still at like high 15s. So, um. He was 15s, but. He just got to the point where I couldn't, like, fly it anymore. So I just, like, ditched it. That's nuts. OK, we'll come back. That was insane. That was nuts. I was freaking, you got like halfway there. And the first time I said I think it was going to go out, that was the first time I experienced static. Yeah. Or what, like, static looks like. But immediately it just came right back and it was perfectly clear, just like I was here. Towards the end, it just got really, really bad. I'm like, OK, should I put it down? And I'm like, OK, I'm going to put it down. But like, I didn't know how to put it down. So I just disarmed. That's fine. You did hit the truck. That's OK. Yeah. Better than any. I thought I did it. You were so close. How close was I? Like, put your hand right where I was. Like, no joke. Let's all talk about how good Alex is. I know. Let's do it. Let's walk through the user interface of each of the items that make up the DJI system. So starting with the Air Unit, which is the camera, as well as this box that handles the video transmitter capability and the receiver capability of the system, there's not a lot that you actually interface with. There's a slot for a microSD card so that you can get onboard recording in 1080p and ports to plug in your two antennas and your wiring harness and a USB port for updating and things like that. So setting this guy up to your flight controller will actually be pretty easy. There's just going to be two power wires to power the unit. And you can just solder those directly to wherever you're getting your main power from. This will be able to take up to 17 volts or up to a fully charged 4S LiPo. And so after the power, you're going to have three wires left that you have to solder up to the flight controller. And that's going to be your control link wire. Like, you would put it to like an S-Bus pad. And then you're going to have a TX and RX for your communication to get the information from Betaflight. And that was one of my biggest surprises because like I said, DJI is not really known for integrating with other companies or other products. So that's really cool that you can actually get the Betaflight through the DJI system. The radio is going to be very much what you're familiar with if you already fly drones. Very similar if you've ever seen like a DJI Phantom. It's really similar to controllers of that. The gimbals feel good. It's a little bit smaller than like a Taranis FR Sky radio. The sticks are a little closer together. But when I was flying it, that wasn't an issue for me. They've actually let this be integrated into Betaflight. So you can assign these switches to whatever channels you need to. It's not just automatically preset. The only thing that you can't configure is the start and stop recording button. But other than that, it's just like any radio. It's really weird to see something that looks like a DJI controller but functions like a FreeSky radio, right? Very similar stuff that you may have seen on a DJI controller before. You got your power button. Four switches on it. There's a button here so that you could remotely start your recording on board the drone. That's pretty awesome. And you're gonna see there's two antennas. The one controller and error unit is controlling both of your video and your control link. So this is your battery compartment right here. I'm assuming you pull that down. Boom, battery. Looks like it's got a USB3 on there so you could charge it that way. That's the controller. There's not a whole lot to it. It's pretty simple. Yeah, I wouldn't mind if this was my controller for how good the video is on this thing. The goggles are what's going to provide the most unique part of the user experience for this system. To power them up, you have a harness that you can plug in any lipo up to 4S. You also have a headphone plug so you can get audio out. And on the other side, you've got your slot for your micro SD cards that you can record the DVR of the goggles and you've got a USB plug. On the bottom, you've got sliders that you can adjust the IPD. That's the interpupillary distance to adjust for the spacing between your eyes. And as far as buttons go, over here, you've got a five-way joystick type button that goes up, down, left, right and pushes in. And that's how you navigate most of the menus. Right next to it, you have a back button so you can back out of the menus. And right next to that, you have a start and stop record button. The only other buttons on the other side are quick access for changing channels. We'll show you a little bit about how that works. So in the goggles, you use your joystick button to open up the menu. And entering the player menu allows you to select a channel for your drone. You can move to a different channel. And the cool thing is that because the air unit and the goggles are paired, when you change your channel, it changes it on both units. There's no more trying to remember what channel you're on or anything like that. When you set the goggles to channel three, the air unit instantly goes to channel three as well. In fact, it's kind of weird because when you change channels, you don't even lose video for a second. It's like a very seamless change. So that's pretty cool. This audience menu, that'll be used in our other set of goggles in a second. I'll show you how the spectator function works. In playback, you can look at all the DVR footage so you can play back the recordings of the goggle video itself. And then down in settings, there's all sorts of things that you can change. You can change your camera settings, including aspect ratio, your color setting scene, saturation, white balance, all sorts of stuff. There's settings for your display. You can zoom in and out of it, which effectively resizes the display. So if you think that the field of view is too wide, you can kind of make the field of view smaller by zooming out of it. I thought that was really cool. You have settings for recording. You can change between 1080p, 60 frames a second and 720p and 120 frames per second. So you can get a little bit of slow-mo there. Here where it says PID tuning, this actually accesses the PID settings of your flight controller if you have the air unit hooked up to it properly. So you can change your Betaflight PIDs right in the goggles, which is just awesome. The fact that DJI is interacting with Betaflight in this way, super exciting. Very intuitive and straightforward to use. The joystick just feels very natural to navigate everything. And over on the other side, I mentioned these buttons for quickly changing channels. So if you don't want to go into the menu to change your channel, you can do it right here with this up and down button. And you have a cool readout that shows you what channel you're on. So if you're changing your channel from outside the goggle or if someone wants to see what channel you're on while you're flying, shows it right there. So the other thing I want to show you is if you have a second set of goggles that isn't paired to the air unit, you can use these in audience mode. You can go into the menu and access audience mode. And that's gonna then show you channels that are being transmitted on and you can tune into that channel and you can watch other people flying in your goggles. So I'm really glad that we have two sets of goggles because now using the second set, we're gonna be able to use the audience mode and show you guys exactly what FPV in these goggles looks like. Both in it. So Alex should be able to watch me flying out. That sounded interesting. Yeah, this thing, I don't have it tuned all that well. So I'm going behind some trees. It's so much fun to like just fly though. It's kind of a whole new FPV experience. It's definitely not a finalized product. I like it a lot. It's just, it's so clear. You're doing a good job flying right now. Thanks, Alex. They say that the audience member will have a little bit more latency and a lower quality and less range. So. Now why is that? Is it linking to your goggles? It's because the, I hope I'm explaining this right. If I'm not explaining this exactly right, apologies. But my understanding is that the radio link and the video signal, it's all one communication. So it's all one feed that's like put together if that makes sense. You're only picking up a part of that feed rather than the entire package, which I guess reduces the performance. That's my understanding from what they are essentially permitted to explain to me. The whole system is a 5.8 system and it's all together. It's RC and video on one 5.8 situation. If that makes sense. That makes sense a little bit. In your opinion, would you still want to run a GoPro on top of this? I, you know what? We'll have to check the footage, but I probably would because this maxes out at 1080 and I like to film at a higher resolution. It's also 4.3. And this is, you can, this is recording right now in 4.3. You can switch it to 16 by nine, but what it does is it crops the top and the bottom of the image and it does it while you're flying too. So what I'm doing is we're filming all this in 4.3 and then my plan is in post. Oh boy. Mine just froze. Whoa. Mine froze too. Mine totally froze. Mine froze completely. Oh no. Yeah. It just went total locked. That's exactly what we've talked about a few times about. It was previous HD systems. That is. Scary. That's the worst thing that can happen. That was very scary. It was not predicted either. It wasn't like it was starting to go out. It just locked. In all the flights, I haven't had anything yet. So that's why I've been so impressed with the system is because I've done 10 flights and I've never seen anything like that happen. You almost landed in an empire. You know what? Oh no. There may have been a reason for it doing that. Yeah. That's not related to the system. The ESC caught on fire. Who built that one? Shut up. I built it. Do you not know how to solder? I will cut your face. By the place of my honest prediction, I'd probably say your solder fail meter, but it doesn't really make sense. No, I think the ESC failed. We were getting those jitters. Yeah, it's true. It might have been about ESC the whole time. So I think the ESC smoked up in the air. I can't really fault the DJI system because it has been working great. We flew it super long range even when it would kind of go not to static but to its type of like pixelation. It never once froze up on me. So I'm going to give it benefit of the doubt but I'm going to proceed with caution. I'm jazzed. Are you jazzed? Woo! I think this is kind of the first step into the future of FPV. I think it's a big leap. Yeah. We haven't had as many big leaps in the hobby lately. I feel like the tech is kind of plateaued. This is a big jump. Right. It doesn't make the entire FPV experience foolproof. We still did have a failure, which we determined was an ESC failure. So the ESC failed in the air. I wouldn't blame the DJI system. I don't think there's anything. I mean, anything's possible. That being said, it did survive the fire. We got the scorch marks to prove it. So DJI can totally advertise that this is fireproof. Pretty good. It's pretty damn good. So it's not perfect. I think the biggest problem we all faced was the fitment of the goggles. Yeah. Right. We all had some light leak issues, especially Jamie who has probably the smallest head. DJI has told me that they are going to be coming out with different foams. So this just Velcros onto the goggle. You can put different pads on here and they're going to be coming out with thicker versions to make up for different styles of faces, I guess. But to their credit, that's the only downside I can see to it. Right. Well, the size too. I mean, I was expecting bigger. This is as small as an HD system has ever been for sure, but it's still not going to fit in most of the frames that are out there. As far as dimensions goes, it is 15 millimeters thick. It's 45 millimeters long and about 40 millimeters wide. So it's pretty, it's pretty large. It's not, but it is as small as HD video has ever been. So I don't know if I'm going to convert all of my quads, but I'm going to have a quad with this for sure. We should talk about the price. We have not in this whole video yet mentioned what any of this is going to cost. Yes. It's not going to be cheap, is to be expected. Any DJI products, not really the most budget friendly thing, but it's not astronomical either. Okay, so let's start with the radio. What's the radio cost? Radio is 300 bucks. That's pretty good for radio. There are cheaper radios out there. It's a little pricey. There's definitely cheaper radios. There's definitely more expensive radios. I think the downside is it's $300 for radio that's only compatible with this air unit. And you can link multiple air units so you can get the radio and get multiple air units. So just like we have one radio that we fly all of our quads on, you'll have one radio that you can fly all of your DJI FPV quads on. Yeah, so if someone's just getting into FPV and this is the route they go, then that makes sense. They're just all in. They'll just only get this unit for every quad they build. They'll use that radio. And you know, if you are already into this and maybe you don't want to buy all this stuff all at once, you can skip the radio. You can wire in your own receiver and just use the air unit for video. So even though the air unit is always going to be capable of both video and the RC link, if you don't want to save 300 bucks, you don't need the radio. You can use your own receiver and radio system. But there's another component that you're gonna have to fit in there when this is already pretty large. This is true. All right, what about the goggles? How much are? The goggles are $529. That's pretty good. That's not that bad. That's less than- Is that less than- The Shark HDOs with any, you know, pretty much any receiver that you could, I don't think there's a $30 receiver. Yeah. So for, it's definitely a higher resolution screen in them. If these goggles could be compatible with analog video, they would be a total winner. I would say just get these because why not the downside is they are not compatible with analog video. So it's only gonna work with the air unit and these you are going to have to use. There is not currently a solution to get video from the DJI air unit into any other display. Not gonna work. So you have to have the goggles. But $529, that's really not that bad. I expected them to be like $6 to $7. I thought this would be like a thousand. They look like they're worth a thousand. They're very fancy looking. The actual air unit, the thing that you actually fly with, what's this? That's $179. Can you get the components separately though? Like, cause what if I smash- Oh yeah. So if you smash the camera, that's $59 to replace. Dude, that's not bad. It's not that crazy. That's not that bad because I think- And the FPV cameras are around 40 that we use right now. Oh, that's not that bad. Another 20 bucks. And then if something were to happen to the air unit, that's $100. All right, so let's say I'm sold on this. I want the goggles. I want the radio. I want the air unit. What's a whole system? What's that get up to? It's gonna be $929. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's definitely a lot of money. Right. I would say it's worth it. But again, like with other systems, you get the radio, you get the goggles. Those are the big investments. You can start buying multiple air units and move your fleet over. It's gonna sting a little bit for people who have already spent 500 bucks on goggles and a couple other hundred bucks on a radio. I know there's someone that's like, ah, I just bought HTLs yesterday. Yeah, that's gonna be fun. That always happens. The minute you buy a new iPhone, the next one comes out. But I think it's fairly priced. I do too. I would say it's overpriced because this is an experience you're just, it doesn't matter how much you throw any other directions, you're not gonna get it. It is, it's a special experience. I'm pretty into it. So I will be flying one of these. Like I said, I don't know if I'm gonna be converting my entire fleet just yet, but I like it. I know, I'm kind of thinking just, I gotta go. No, that one's mine. This is mine, I'm not. All right guys, if you have any questions about this system, leave a comment down below. And if you don't have any questions, leave a comment about what you think is the best feature of this. Definitely. If you're thinking about getting this, go ahead and visit the store because we will have a pre-sell. That's right. Available link in the description. You can pick this stuff up. We are excited about this. I think this is the first DJI product that we've carried. So it is aimed at us. I mean DJI is making it clear they're getting into real FPV. They understand how we use these machines and they wanna play with us. Hit the subscribe button to keep up with all the episodes that we post every Monday. We've got new episodes coming out. So we hope to see you again very soon. Thanks for watching. The Map Ruler, available in the app store. Not sponsored by Map Ruler. If you wanna give us money, we'll take it. Put that in the episode please.