 Welcome back to ChaosZoneTV from Halle. The next talk will be a treat by Nuxnik. Welcome to FPV. Just a quick content warning, we will do a little demo flight at the end, and that will contain flashing lights and, like, see sickness, risks, I guess. From time to time on social media, you'll see a drone video that's not your typical wide panoramic shot. Chances are, if it's fast flying in tight spaces, that this is FPV flying. The pilots combine electronics tinkering with lots of open source software. And Nuxnik will give us an introduction on how you can be as cool as him. Go ahead. OK, welcome to FPV. I don't know if I'm that cool, but I appreciate it, the awesome introduction. OK, I am very excited to be here and to be talking to you about a topic. I am very passionate about. This is an introduction level presentation with a whole slew of information. But let's get started. But before then, here's a quick word from our sponsor. My name is Seth Fleming, also known by my online pseudonym Nuxnik. You can see it in the IPA transcription there on the right. I am a freelance software developer and a private consultant. Here are some of the things I do in my free time. I like to reverse engineer hardware. I do electronics repair, woodworking. I like to build furniture. I play music, anything from country to death metal. And I'm an amateur radio operator. I also have my own little corner of the interwebs at Nuxnik.com, where I write about various things that interest me or projects I'm working on. As far as contacting me, the best way is through good old fashioned email at Nuxnik, well, nuxnikatnuxnik.com. OK, here's a disclaimer. Before I get started, although I do consider myself fairly knowledgeable on the subject of FPV, I am making no assumptions to know everything about FPV multi-rotors. Some of the information I'll be presenting is solely based on my personal opinion and personal experience. So seriously, don't tase me, bro. If I say something that you don't agree with. The point of this talk, as I said, is to introduce you to the fast paced world of FPV multi-copters and give you a brief view into the hardware and software that goes into building, configuring, and flying FPV drones. OK, now with all that out of the way, let's talk some drones. So some of you may have the question, what the hell is FPV? Well, FPV is an acronym, which means first-person view. It refers to the technology, not so much the method, used in piloting remote-controlled vehicles. In a nutshell, an FPV-controlled vehicle has a camera mounted on it. This camera is wirelessly transmits a video signal, which is received by the pilot and viewed in a remote monitor. The pilot controls a vehicle with a wireless transmitter and can steer the craft based on real-time information of the video signal. It's not line of sight. OK, this technology can be used in piloting any variety of vehicles, for example, airplanes, cars, boats, and even submarines, any kind of vehicle you can think of as long as you can put a camera on it. However, one of the most common implementations is in conjunction with drones. In more recent years, the term FPV refers specifically more and more to quadcopters. In other words, it is more commonly understood that when someone refers to FPV, they are referring to FPV drones. With that said, when I use the term FPV in the presentation, I will be referring to FPV drones specifically, their components, and the discipline of piloting them. So in general, the technologies and disciplines that go into FPV as a whole are immersive and multifaceted. And we'll get into that. Here are I will be showing an incomplete list of some of the different skills, technologies, and disciplines of FPV. And I'm sure this audience will at least have one or two things that they can definitely that they have experience in. So one is general electronics. In the context of FPV, you will be soldering a lot when building your own quads. You will be soldering components, wires, and modules together. As a caveat, well, it's not really a caveat. You don't have to have an electrical engineering degree in order to have fun in FPV. Only a very basic understanding is required. The amount of immersion in electronics really depends on your interest. So in other words, you can delve as deep as you want into the electronic aspects of FPV and stay inside your comfort zone. Another aspect you can delve into is radio and wireless technologies. This is something that interests me as a ham radio or amateur radio operator. FPV drones are controlled wirelessly, which means you can delve into the world of radio propagation if that floats your boat. You can get into DIY antennas, receivers, transmitters. There are a lot of people in the FPV community who make their own antennas. And as you see here in this video, I believe it's Joshua Bardwell. He is analyzing a 5.8 megahertz video signal in a spectrum analyzer. Also, you can get into software. And there's lots of software to be had in FPV. The brains of these drones are controlled by software. And I got good news. This software is open source. This means you can freely download, modify, improve, and share the source code used in your very own quads. You can compile your own source code and flash them to your drones. And here, I believe, yes, that is a video clip where I am messing with the Betaflight source code. I was changing some of the strings to say funny things like Ninja Flip and things like that. And another discipline is 3D printing. Having a 3D printer is invaluable as an FPVer. You will find yourself designing various mounts, skids, camera holders, antenna mounts, protective shields, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. As we all know, the internet is full of objects freely available and ready to print. So what is required in FPV? As I mentioned before, you don't have to have a degree in aerospace engineering in order to build and fly FPV quads. All you need is a willingness to learn. And later down the road, the only required skill is to be able to solder, especially if you plan on building your own quad. So it's a learned skill. It comes pretty quickly, actually. All the same, having a deep understanding of electronics, radio propagation, software, and 3D printing are not required, but at plus. So I can tell you my personal opinion what I get out of FPV. Personally, I enjoy FPV because I can build electronic projects that deal with wireless technologies, go out, and actually fly them. Very practical. I'm not worried when I crash or break something because I look forward to fixing what was broken and sometimes doing upgrades when the parts have finally bit the dust. In the end, 50% of the enjoyment I get out of FPV is, I guess, the best way to say it is in German. Das Basten. Basten is kind of like creating something with your hands or tinkering. So that's 50% of the fun for me. And the other 50% is the flying aspect. Flying is a hell of a lot of fun. And for you, you can have your own personal taste. Some people care more about the flying. Some people like more of the technical stuff. So the sky's the limit. So what is an FPV drone? So we've talked about what is FPV, but what is an FPV drone? What is its components? To better understand the hardware that goes into making a drone, think of it the same way as the hardware of a computer, just as a parallel. The standard components of a computer are a motherboard, a hard drive, RAM, GPU, PSU, et cetera. These components, when connected together, form the computer as a single unit. The components of a computer communicate with standardized protocols. These same concepts apply to the world of drone hardware, albeit the components of a drone are not the same as those of a computer. To further illustrate this point, when you know how the individual parts of a computer work, hard drive, RAM, GPU, et cetera, you know how to build the perfect computer which best fulfills your needs. This same concept applies to selecting the hardware components of a drone. In order to design your perfect drone, you will need to understand its components. So in order to understand the components, we're going to talk about flight controllers, motors, ESCs, receivers, FPV cameras, VTXs, et cetera. The terms might sound a little foreign, but hopefully at the end of this presentation, you'll have a good idea on how they function. OK, let's get to the first component, which is the flight controller, or in short, the FC. It is the brain of the drone. It is outfitted with various sensors and communication ports. Some of the sensors include gyroscopes, accelerometers, voltmeters, et cetera. These sensors help the drone sense its position and adjust its flight characteristics. As already mentioned, the flight controller offers communication ports, and these ports can be connected to external modules and sensors. The details of how a flight controller work are kind of beyond the scope of this presentation. So in summary, just try to take with you, the flight controller is where everything happens. If something goes wrong here, then the system will crash. And your drone will definitely crash. OK, let's talk about electronic speed controllers, otherwise known as an ESC. I'll get into a technical version of how they work and then try to put in a layman's version. They convert a PWM pulse width modulation signal from the flight controller into a three phase AC current, which is used to drive the motors. The frequency of this current determines the speed and force at which the motors are driven. So in the end, a lower amplitude or a smaller signal from the flight controller drives the four motors of the drone and the ESC translate those signals into a different three phase electronic current, which drives the motors in the end. There are some flight controllers known as AIO, or all-in-one boards, which have built-in ESCs. So as pictured here, this is a single ESC. A lot of these components can be built onto one flight controller board. OK, motors. Of course, we have to have motors or the thing won't fly. So motors are the engine that keeps a quad flying. And modern quadcopters, brushless electromagnetic motors are most commonly used. These motors are driven by a three phase alternating current as we discussed, which is provided by the ESC. And here's a quick note. For the presentation, I'm specifically referring to quadcopters, which have four motors. However, FPV drones are not limited to four motors. Sometimes you can find configurations in three, six, eight, and even more. The more motors, the more weight you can carry. So there's different characteristics, depending on what you want to build. OK, and in order to receive the signals from the pilot, the drone needs to know what to do. And in order to receive those signals, you need a receiver. And that's exactly what a receiver does. It receives signals and communicates the desired flight direction to the flight controller. The flight controller, in turn, takes these signals, does some calculations, and sends a PWM signal to the ESCs, as we talked about. So the receiver can be a separate module, as shown here. This is a TBS, Team Blacksheep, Nano receiver. It's very, very small. You can see 1.8 millimeters, or 1. I can't see it from here. Doesn't matter. It's small. It's about this big. OK, it can be built into the flight controller also. OK, and the camera, which pretty much defines the term FPV. This camera sends a video signal to the flight controller. And the flight controller takes the signal and will process it a bit and add an on-screen display. So it just films what is in front of it. It'll process the signal through the flight controller. The flight controller will overlay an OSD, which is called an on-screen display. We'll see that in the demo later when we fly around the studio here. And yeah, and that signal can, or this on-screen display can show your battery level, your speed, your altitude. If you have a GPS module, it can show you the GPS coordinates, flight time, et cetera. And then the signal gets pooped out to the VTX. So what the hell is the VTX? I'll tell you what it is. The VTX receives the video signal from the flight controller. It modulates, amplifies, and transmits the video signal so that the pilot can view it in his or her FPV goggles. OK, now the VTX can also be built in in an all-in-one flight controller. And we'll get to the antennas. A modern quad will usually have two antennas, one for receiving control signals from the pilot. You'll see that one on the left-hand side. That is an immortal T antenna from Team Blacksheep. And one for, sorry, in order to steer the craft and another for transmitting the video signal, which is on the right-hand side. This is a triumph, I think, TBS triumph. I have one here on the table somewhere. For example, the signals from the pilot can be transmitted on 2.4 gigahertz or 868 gigahertz. And the antenna to the left receives those signals. And the band for video signals is typically 5.8 gigahertz. So it's a little higher. Now we'll talk about the frame. One component that binds all these components into one unit and gives us its form is the frame. This is commonly made of robust materials, such as carbon fiber or hard plastic. Frames come in many shapes and sizes, many of which depend on the flight characteristics desired by the pilot. The frame shown here is a GEPRC Mark IV. I'm rather fond of that one, so I figured I'd show it. I actually have one here on the table, but I'll show you that later. Perpellers, they come in many different sizes and shapes. As with other components, selecting the correct propeller depends on the flight requirements, air density, temperature, motors. And the criteria for selecting the best propellers can be very complex and really go beyond the scope of this presentation. So you just need to know these things have propellers and they are core component. So we'll just tie it all together with an overview. As previously discussed, the components in every drone vary and are largely dependent on the flight requirements or the preferences of the person building the drone. So now that we have a general understanding, and not a very deep one, but a general understanding of the standard components that make up a modern quad, let's look at some of the software. So we get hardware and now we'll move to software. Okay, we have learned that the flight controller is the brain of the drone, but that is pretty much a half truth. The real brain of the drone lies in its software. Due to the limited time of this presentation, I'll only focus on one software project, namely the Betaflight project. Here I'm a Betaflight fanboy. I even wrote, put on my hoodie. Betaflight is a free and open source software suite for flashing and configuring flight controllers. It's two main components, well there's more components, but the two main components of Betaflight are the flight controller software and the Betaflight configurator. Let's look at the software first for the flight controller. The flight controller software does just that. Before when I showed you that clip of the software, that was actually the Betaflight software itself. Is the software that operates and keeps the drone in the air? It communicates with the external modules, reads from the sensors and inputs and interprets pilot data. It is responsible for controlling the motors and overlaying the OSD or on-screen display as we talked about before. At its core is the real workhorse of any drone. Listed underneath is the GitHub page. You can download the software for yourself, poke around, have fun and try it out yourself. Okay, and now we have the Betaflight configurator and it pretty much offers an intuitive UI which we can use to easily configure the drone. So let's delve deeper and look at how it actually works live. I think the best way to see how it works is to see it live in action. So I have here my freestyle quad, my five-inch freestyle quad. Let's connect it and look around at some of the things we can configure. So on the side, there is a small USB port and I'll turn it around here. And I'll switch over to Betaflight. There we are. Hopefully you can see it. Could you make it a little larger in the monitor in the front, please? Okay, I'll plug it in. If I can figure out where it is. Okay, there we are. Okay, and here, oh, there's a little delay there. So I'll just, okay, we're gonna hit connect. I would hit connect. Live demos are always a lot of fun. Always bound to happen. I can't see it in the monitor. It doesn't say ACM-0, something at the end of that block device. Dev slash ACM-0, interesting. Not working. Well, that figures. Well, I guess I might have to just give you the load on on how it works without showing you since I can't seem to get it to work here. With the Betaflight configurator, you can look through and see more easily, I guess. Here, I'll turn this so you can see a little better. Here's the USB port on the side. The specific components that you want to configure, for example, I can configure my transmitter. I configure the switches for my transmitter. I can configure each switch to do a specific thing for the drone to arm it. If I flip over, I can go into turtle mode and make it flip over. And there are many things I can change in that software. Also, I can change the video signal. I can change the different UART pads on the flight controller to do different things. For example, if I add a GPS module to the flight controller. And I can change the OSD. And as I said, the OSD, and we'll see that later in the live demo, hopefully the next live demo will work. In the OSD on-screen display, we'll see some things, for example, how long the flight was, the name of the craft, and many things like that. So that's pretty much what Betaflight does, Betaflight Configurator. So let's move on. I'll unplug this one here. One thing you never want to do is plug in a quad with a full battery indoors with these props because this thing is a flying chainsaw. Never do that. Well, what I did, you don't want to plug in a battery. That's bad news. So we'll keep talking about open source software. And the next thing I want to talk about is, sorry, yeah, there I am. And the next thing I want to talk about is OpenTX. OpenTX is a hardware independent open source firmware that can be flashed onto your transmitter. This here is a transmitter. I have some gimbal guards here. And it gives you the ability to save different drone profiles on your transmitter and enables communication with external modules. These are external modules in the back. They can be extended and they can extend your transmitter. Very interesting devices. I have a few here and we'll go more into detail on those later in the presentation. Just one thing you need to take away with you is that OpenTX is the software used to do that. Okay, let me move down here to the presentation. Can you switch over back to the presentation, I believe? Okay, yeah, there we are. Overview. So we have seen there are many other choices when it comes to the hardware which runs on most drones. So far, I only have scratched the surface. There are many, many more open source projects specifically in the flight controller area. So do your due diligence, look it up, and they're pretty easy to find online. Oh, okay, yeah, that's right. I think I need to do that, right? There we are. All right, yeah, baby, it's working. Okay, let's move to the next one. Okay, we just talked about that, yes. So do your due diligence, look up your different open source software projects. There's iNav, there's KISS, there's many others, so that is up to you. So hopefully I have sparked your interest in getting started in FPV, and with so many options and possibilities, what should we buy? We always wanna buy something, so good quality equipment can be expensive. I don't advocate buying expensive equipment until you're sure FPV is something you want to invest your time and money into. This hobby can get quite expensive, as you can see here on the table. With that in mind, I put together a quick guide to buying FPV gear. It's split into different phases, one, two, and three, and in each of these phases, you will be acquiring equipment that builds on the equipment that came before it. In other words, you will buy the least amount of equipment required, and in each phase, the new equipment builds on the equipment you bought before. This way, you won't have to go all in and decide later that FPV isn't your thing and be stuck with a bunch of paperweights sitting in the corner. Another disclaimer going forward, I will be expressing my own personal opinions regarding FPV equipment. There are some people with very strong opinions about what you should buy and what you shouldn't buy. We all have our own tastes and preferences, so just don't blindly take my word for it and say, oh, he said you should buy that, so I'm gonna buy it. Look it up yourself. Unfortunately, there's no one-size-fits-all solution to getting equipment, so you have to find the equipment that's right for you. Okay, so I've set up a shopping cart for you, and this is phase one. So you've listened to the talk and it sparked your interest and you say to yourself, yeah, that sounds like something I wanna get into. This is cool. So phase one is the least expensive step. You will be getting into, you only be getting your feet wet and have minimal investment and money in time. Therefore, the only two things you will need to buy for phase one are a FPV simulator and a transmitter. So let's look into the simulators first. Okay, and to be honest, I'll refer you to Velocidron. Really, to be honest, this is the only simulator I've used. Its graphics are simple. I can play it on my laptop. The quad tuning process is straightforward and intuitive. Quad tuning was something I wanted to show you in Betaflight, but unfortunately, we couldn't get to that. And it's a complex subject and you'll hear it quite a bit. So quad tuning, save that for later. It's compatible with Linux, Mac and Windows and the time of this presentation that costs about 16 pounds 99, which is about 20 euros. So it's not a big investment. So let's move to the transmitter. We know we wanna get an FPV simulator. There are more simulators out there, so look those up. There's liftoff, there's rotor rush, there's a bunch of them. Look them up. Since I don't wanna make too many equipment recommendations, I will show you only the transmitters I have to give you an idea of what is out there and all these transmitters, as I mentioned before, they all run open source software, namely OpenTX, which we briefly discussed. So the first I have shown you this already is my FreeSky QX7. It's my daily driver. As far as transmitters go, many people would probably say this transmitter is outdated. They're right. It can be extended with external modules, as I showed before. It has built-in FreeSky protocols. I prefer using this transmitter when I'm flying a quad with at least a three-inch propeller diameter, so a quad this large and larger. And I do that because the stick resolution is higher on this. So the points from here to here are much larger and I get a better resolution. So I like this bigger one for that. Like I said, there's newer, better, more modern options, so you might wanna look those up. And next is a pretty good starter controller or transmitter. It is the Jumper T Lite. It's an inexpensive transmitter that runs on OpenTX. It can be extended with external modules and comes shipped with multi-protocol functionality. You can use this single controller for bind-and-flight quads. A bind-and-flight quad, if you buy a quad, it comes pre-built and you can just bind your controller to it. At the time of this presentation, it costs about 90 euros. And it's small, fits in your hands, kind of like a Xbox controller style. Feels like an Xbox controller. And the last radio I'll be showing you is the Beta FPV Lite radio. Three, it costs around 60 euros. This is actually not the three, this is the two. You don't wanna buy this one. It's not fully featured. The other one has the three. It's a decent transmitter for its price. It has a small form factor, but however, no screen. And as I said, I have the older version. So if you wanna spend a little less money, you can probably get the Lite radio two or at least look into it. So let's go to phase two, phase three, we're not there yet. And we're gonna add to our shopping cart a tiny whoop. A tiny whoop is a drone like this. And we will be adding FPV goggles. This is where it gets exciting. So we've been practicing in the simulator. We can keep our quad in the air and aren't crashing as often. Flying these things is not easy. It takes a lot of practice. Let's expand our equipment and get two more items. So in my own personal experience, it's better to start with a small quad with like a tiny whoop because you will crash and crash and crash and crash and crash and crash and crash. And crashing is part, a big part of FPV. That's why starting out in a simulator will save you a lot of money. Do your practice in the simulator. It doesn't cost anything to crash. When you crash in the real world, it costs money. So for safety and financial reasons, I recommend starting with a tiny whoop. If you run into someone's face with a tiny whoop, you will not mangle their face. If you run into someone's face with this, you will mangle their face. So don't do that and don't fly those indoors. Tiny whoops are small and light. They're normally flown indoors, which we will do later. They are called tiny whoops because of the prop guards. These are called whoops, little prop guards. If you run into somebody, the worst thing you can do is get stuck in someone's hair and that's a bummer. I've had that happen a couple of times. Well, not for me, but for the person who I ran into. So as stated before, this is my personal opinion regarding what quad to buy, so take it with a grain of salt. Do your own research. So let's look at a couple of tiny whoops in my collection. You see the video here on the left is from a video I filmed with an FPV tiny whoop, a tiny whoop, namely this Mobula Lite 6 HD. It has a high definition camera installed on it. I even used this, yeah, I used this little drone to film some of the scenes you saw there. It's very, very small and can get in very, very tight places and it has an excellent camera. It's up to 1080p, small little drone, very nice. Here I'll show it for the folks out there in internet land. Very nice camera. Next we have the Mobula 6. The Mobula 6 is a little, well, it's exactly the same as the HD, except it doesn't have an HD camera. So it's with a regular camera that can't take cool video footage. By the way, in this HD camera, there is a mini SD card. I'll show it here. There's a mini SD card that saves your video footage. So you're seeing an FPV feed in your goggles and this thing will save your high definition video footage in here. And then the last one, which we will fly around today around the studio is this little Mobula Lite 6. It is very light, flies for a long time. It's really fast and it's a lot of fun to fly. You can do some pretty cool acrobatic stuff with it. And you can get on people's nerves, which I do all the time. Okay, let's get into the exciting stuff. FPV goggles, this is where the fun starts. It is also possible to buy goggles and practice in a simulator since a decent set of goggles will have an HDMI input. So you can actually use these to hook to your computer and use it as a despair monitor. I do this when I'm riding in a train and I don't want people to see what I'm doing in my computer. I just put on goggles and shut the flap. What do you call that thing? The thing in the front. Anyway, I close my laptop and I see my screen and people look at me like I'm a freak, but who cares? That and you kind of look like you're in Tron. So fuck them. So before discussing the virtues of goggles, trying them on and posing for the cover of Daft Punk Magazine. A magazine I do want to pose for at some point in my life. We will first need to discuss the two video signal types of FPV and these are namely analog and digital. Okay, depending on what type of requirements you have, these video signal types can influence the goggles you buy. So pay attention here and this will be a money issue for some of you. Here's some DVR footage from a flight I did and this is analog video and it is exactly that, it's analog. So for those of you as old as me, you will remember back in the good old days, the old analog TV transmissions of the last century. It looks like that and it's pretty much the same technology. There are advantages and disadvantages to analog video system. The advantages are equipment compatibility. So equipment for analog systems is open and intercompatible. It's not locked to any specific vendor. This means that the video transmitters and receivers are not limited by proprietary protocols, which is a definite plus. It has low latency. Latency means that the time it takes to get from the camera, your feed to your goggles is very low in latency. So the transmission is faster, which means you can react more quickly. For some people, this is kind of subjective. Some people say there's a big difference between digital and analog. It depends who you're talking to. It is low cost. Analog equipment is much more inexpensive than digital. It uses low bandwidth in the radio spectrum, which means you can fly with more people. So you can fly with your friends so they can use their analog equipment and you're not gonna blast the whole bandwidth and screw everyone over. So something to think about. Okay, so let's talk about the disadvantages. And really, the biggest disadvantage, as you saw, is the video clarity. It's low. Some people would say the security is an issue because it is not encrypted and anyone can view that. I don't really see that as an issue, especially if you're flying with an FPV quad. I suppose you could probably run it through some kind of encryption algorithm. I don't know. Maybe look into that for fun. Okay, so the good thing is this analog signal you're seeing looks like crap and you think like, oh, how do I make a nice video out of it? Well, you strap on an HD camera to the top of the other drone so you'll see here is my FPV camera right here, this little guy, and here is my HD camera and this is gonna take the good stuff and this is gonna be just for flying. So a little FPV camera here. It's got a little cap on it. Yep, very small. Okay, that's how we get the cool video footage. So let's get to digital. So some of the advantages to digital, unlike analog, these systems transmit and receive digital signals. So as you can see, the video clarity is clearly the biggest advantage of digital signals and of course the biggest selling point. For example, when flying among trees and small branches, the details make a huge difference and can mean the difference between whether you crash or not. Something I don't do is fly around in the woods like this with an analog system. It's very hard to see those little small branches and they will take you down quick. It's called scraggle. So digital FPV disadvantages, higher latency, which means the signal, you will talk on Scottie. The signal transmission rate, I guess, is slower, which means you will not be able to react as quickly. I don't see this as a big problem. Some people do. The cost is higher. Digital systems are more expensive than analog and the equipment compatibility, this is the big one for me, which really makes me a big turn off, is digital systems, there is the problem of vendor lock. So if you're gonna get locked into a DJI digital system, you are only going to be using DJI, which I don't know, that kind of sucks. So which goggles do you wanna buy? That's up to you. I'm a fan of the analog system, which I think is pretty obvious. However, I do own a Sharkbyte system, this is an analog system, or I'm sorry, a digital system. I'm happy with the fact that it is compatible with analog goggles. So it's kind of a hybrid, it is a digital system, but it can be used with analog hardware, which is pretty nice. So I'm just gonna show you a couple things about some of these goggles. This is an E-Asheen EV, I think EV300O, or something like that. It is run by a 2S battery on the side. It has, here I have a patch antenna and a omnidirectional antenna on the top. So this one is, when I place it in the direction of where I am flying, I can get a clear signal, it has a higher decibel DBI. On the top, there's a fan to keep it from fogging up. It has high definition, as I said. HDMI input, I can hook this up to my computer, use it as an external monitor, I said. As I said, another use, which I think is kind of cool, and I do it sometimes, is to use it as a soldering monitor. You can hook it up to a USB microscope and get in real close. You kind of look like Doc Brown with these things on. They're just cool. I like Tron, Doc Brown, Daft Punk, they're really cool stuff. Here are my Fat Shark HDOs. They're a little older. They do have the same features as this set of goggles. I made some external mods, a lot of 3D printing. You can see here, here's a power switch I have, which has a nice little beeps too, which is kind of cool. As I said, this module, this digital module on the front can be removed. Overall, it's a very nice system. I'm very happy with it. So if you want to look into good goggles, kind of like the creme de la creme of goggles is, I would say, Fat Shark. They're also pretty established and well-known in the FPV world. You look into goggles, you'll be seeing the name Fat Shark quite a bit. Okay, so let's go to phase three. We're gonna go back to our shopping cart. So far, we have developed some good piloting skills in our simulator. We've slated those skills into real-world flying by flying with our goggles and a tiny whoop. Now we want to take it to the next step and enter phase three. Since we already have our basic equipment, we can now buy as many quads as we want and expand our fleet. This will largely depend on what type of flying you're interested. So I'm gonna go into some of the different types of flying, different types of quads that I have here on the table. For this phase, we will be briefly covering different flying styles, the classes of quads, et cetera. So you'll kind of have a better idea of what kind of quads are out there and maybe see a style of flying which you could say, oh, I could see myself doing that. So just remember the words and yeah, it's all good. So we're gonna get into freestyle. Freestyle, it is a generic term which can include many other styles of flying. However, in order to keep things simple, we will glob it into the catch-all term freestyle. So freestyle is arguably the most action-packed style of flying in the FPV world. As a comparison, it's similar to the world of freestyle skateboarding. I see it as pretty much the same thing. People get together, they do tricks and you know. In a nutshell, the flying style involves flying in and around objects through tight spaces and openings, sharp turns, near misses, all while trying to pull off a couple of tricks, like right at the last second. A freestyle quad needs to take a lot of beating. That is why, cause you'll be crashing like crazy. That is why it is the most robust compared to the other classes. A freestyle quad can come in many shapes and sizes. I'll start from the smallest to largest. I'll just start at around this one here. You could call this a freestyle quad. This one's kind of cute. It looks like a flying helmet. I don't know, Lord helmet with propellers from Spaceballs. It is, it's a 1S, it runs on a 1S battery. We'll move up the ladder a little bit and graduate to a three inch freestyle quad. As I said, these are very robust. You can see this is made out of carbon fiber. I have my own TPU, 3D printed parts on this. Some camera holders. This one's pretty small. That's a three inch quad. And they're called three inch and five inch and has to do with the diameter of the propellers. So that's three inches across. And here is a bigger quad. This is actually called a mini quad. Cause back in the day, these things were much bigger. And when they got them this size, they said, hey, this is freaking small. You know, this is a mini quad. So this is a freestyle mini quad. It has a lot of custom configurations. Some camera mounts I designed myself in SolveSpace. SolveSpace, check it out. Love it, great CAD program. I can always plug SolveSpace. Love that program. I have my own custom antenna mounts. And yes, these are, I have larger props. Three blade props. You can get two blade props. The common usage or the common configuration is a three blade prop. Here's some of the antennas that we talked about earlier. Yes, this is a six S quad. We'll talk about batteries in a second. Okay, so those are some, just a general introduction to freestyle quads. Next we can talk about long range. Long range is a hell of a lot of fun. And they just go long range. They fly really, really, really far. So how far a long range can fly really depends on who you're talking to and what type of quad you're referring to. And since this can sometimes be debatable what constitutes a long range quad, I'll just say it's kind of like a quad that can fly above average distances while taking into account its size, performance, and battery. Which is a very convoluted saying of, I don't fucking know. So no, actually, there are some things. These things can go pretty far. They can go anywhere from one to 10 to more kilometers depending on some of the components you build into them. Long range flights are generally smoother. They have a feel of cruising without any tricks or rolls. You're just gonna kind of fly and cruise. And long range quads are usually equipped with a GPS module. You can see in this flight, and you can check out those GPS coordinates if you want. That's not gonna bother me. It features, a GPS module was built into this quad. I built it myself. I'll show you in a second. It features return to home functionality. This means that if the quad loses signal from the transmitter, it will turn around and fly back to its point of origin. So you see a little arrow, and that points to where I am. I have two long range quads. Ironically, both of these were designed by David Cleedon, otherwise known as Dave C. And I'll get into this one first. This is a micro long range. It is very light. Here's the GPS module here on the back. FPV camera in the front. And I've gotten this quad out pretty far. I built in a new VTX, which is the video transmitter. And it can get, I won't say, illegal amounts of power, because I wouldn't do that. But this thing can get out pretty far. Here's the GPS module in the back. Longer antenna. I'll get into this camera in a second. This camera's pretty cool. And here is the nano long range. This is a 3D printed frame. I built this one from scratch. I also made a build video about this on my YouTube channel. So if you wanna check that out, learn how to build this guy. It's a lot of fun. Here's a GPS module. It's run on a single 18650 battery. Has three inch propellers. This thing is, I think it's pretty amazing. Not because I designed it or did it. I just built it. The engineering behind this is very interesting. It's very, very light. Very interesting. Okay. So we're gonna have to move along here a little bit. So cinematic style quads. I'll just show you that real quick. This is a cinematic style quad. It is used for getting tight and close up to people. You can see it also carries its camera here. Cinematic style. Just think cinema. Think movies. That's a beta FPV 85. And I used it to film this music video here. You can see I'm flying through an office space down corridors. It's very nimble and very maneuverable. Flying down the stairwell there. And as I said, you can fly very close to people because it has prop guards or whoops. Okay, let's move on. Okay, so in all three phases, we talked about core equipment. So here's some other stuff you can get. I'm gonna brush this really, really quick because we're running out of time here. So batteries. Batteries. They're lithium polymer. They're dangerous. So you need to learn about how they work. They don't work like your phone. You don't just plug them in and they work. Well, your phone could be dangerous too. Think of the Samsung seven, I think it was. That was a lot of fun. They can be dangerous. That's why I store them in an ammunition case. As you see here, there are no bullets in this. There are batteries because they can go up in flame and they can take you with them. So keep those in mind. Keep that in mind when you're working with lithium polymer batteries. Cameras. This is a stripped down naked GoPro. I took a GoPro apart, placed it in this case. It's stripped down to only what is needed for it to function. Look it up, a naked GoPro. Running out of time here, so I gotta move. There's some other cameras on there, so check them out. Tools, I have an awesome toolkit that I wanted to get into because I could talk about tools all day long. And here's my toolkit, antennas, hex drivers, different camera mounts, modules, multimeter, antennas, et cetera. So keep a toolkit with you. This is my field toolkit. I use it all the time in the field. I make repairs in the field, a soldering iron is in there. Okay, and 3D printing. As you saw, most of the quads here and they are used with 3D printing, they have 3D printed components on them. So to round out this presentation, we will do a short test flight around the studio to make sure you get a feel of what it's like to sit in the cockpit of a real FPV drone. Let's do that. Hopefully this live demo will work. I'm gonna plug in here. I'm gonna be using the jumper T light. Let's turn it on. Okay, turn on my goggles. Let's turn on the drone so you can get a video feed, see what I'm seeing. And this is an analog system, so if you have epileptic issues, this could flash a lot, so if you have a problem with flashing lights, please look the other way. Don't stare into the light. Okay, let's do it. I'm not warm, so we'll see how this works out. Whoa, bad start. Very bad start. I'm too excited. I haven't had enough booze yet. I don't fly and drink. Okay, here we go, here we go. Let's take it easy. Say hi, people. Let's go out. Let's fly around the hackerspace, folks. Here we are. So as I said before, FPV flying is very, very immersive. I feel like a little man sitting in the front in a little cockpit, you know, a little tiny guy. Let's fly around the corner. Ah, I made it. Oh no, crashed and burned. Hopefully someone saw it and let's see, I gotta turn around and I can probably see myself better. Now there we go. I see a little movement. I don't know if you see anything. Here we go. There we go. We're back on track. I'm gonna go back. I'm gonna risk it. You only live once, you know what I'm saying? Okay, I gotta do some tricks here. You know, I'm gonna crash, so might as well crash in style. Woo, that's called a roll, folks. That's how you do it. 2001, 2001, 2021, 2001. I haven't listened to old rap albums recently, so sorry about that. Here we go. I don't want to get in anyone's hair. Yeah, so as you see, this is really easy to get into. You'll irritate the shit out of people with these little things. After a while, they'll be like, hey, that's really cool. And then you'll fly into their hair and then they won't like it anymore, and they won't like you for a while, because it takes a long time to get out of the hair. Those little motors, when they get caught in hair, it's bad news, it's bad news bears. Oh, he crashes and he burns. Fly around here. How much time I got, folks? We doing okay still? All right, so you see all those numbers and everything. That's the on-screen display, and that's being transmitted from the flight controller. So I can configure that in beta flight, so if I want to know a different metric. There we go, made it. If I want to know a different metric, I can figure that out, I can put it in my on-screen display and see it posted there. Let's go fast. Woo, let's go a little faster. Oh, crash and burn. Okay, I think I'm done. So like I said, you're gonna crash a hell of a lot. It's something you get used to. These things can crash a lot. So imagine this is the small version. Imagine flying one, hold on, I'll turn on the beeper, is it beeping? Can you find it? Okay, that's something that you can configure, you can make it beep. So imagine flying that little quad and translate it to a big-ass quad like this one, this five-inch, it'll go maybe 200 kilometers an hour flying on the seat of your pants. You don't want to fly this around people. If you run into someone, you're gonna have a bad day and they're gonna have a worse day, so don't do that. So that's about it. You can download the slides from my presentation on my, at the following URL from my website. If you have found something, I said to be an error in my presentation, please let me know. Ich möchte mich auch ganz herzlich bei den Leuten von KeaSohn bedanken, dass ihr mir diese Bühne zur Verfügung gestellt habt. Ich danke euch tausendmal, also applause for you und applause for all the people who participate. Sorry, I had to say that in German for the folks who are standing here. Not that they don't understand me, I don't know. Stay healthy, happy, and I am looking forward to your questions, thank you very much. This is so nice, thank you so much. It's nice to see our little village of Inais, really just a village in a trench coat of a big city and I know all the spots. All right, so there are lots of questions. To 3D printing and using that with drones, what materials are suitable for 3D printing frames and are they sturdy enough? That's a good question and it really depends on what quad you're making. This, for example, was printed in PLA, but since it's a long range drone, I'm not gonna do crazy tricks with it, I'm gonna be a little more careful. I have crashed with this one. You can do it with PLA, but you're not gonna be printing a frame for a drone like this or of this size. You could, but it probably wouldn't last very long. PLA, ABS, what's a harder one? PETG maybe, you'll be using a lot of TPU because TPU is soft for different mounts and padding style components. So yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, nice. How often do you get motion sickness flying one of the FPV drones? Yes, very good question. I'll just put it this way. I have a tendency to get motion sickness generally when I'm in a car. And the first time I flew with goggles, I felt that way maybe the first 20 seconds and something in my brain clicked and told me it was okay. And after the first flight, I was really okay. I don't really have that many problems and I am more prone to motion sickness. So yeah, that is a good question. Yeah, nice. I can hear the lost drone beeping in the couch. Oh, let me turn that on. No, I think it's the timeout or something. All right, where would you look for other people flying FPV in Germany? Communities, online hubs, forums, what's your recommend? There are lots of online hubs. One forum that I visit quite often is called IntoFPV.com. There are German people in Germany. Well, I live in Germany, so that applies to me. But there are people from all over the world on that forum now with the problems with corona. There used to be more FPV meetups. There are sometimes you can look into tiny whoop races. You can race these things around through obstacle courses. There are events and things going on. The FPV community is rather small. It's not a big community. So yeah, that's a good question. But there are plenty of resources online and meetings and people. All right. What about the legal side, about long range and doing that in Germany or even the EU? Well, there are requirements and things you should do. In Germany, you're gonna have to go to the Luftfahrt Bundesamt. And you can take maybe a year ago, they offered a free course to be licensed. There are three different licenses. They're at least four in this hobby. The A1, the A2 and the A3. I have the A1 and the A2. I'm sorry, I have the A1 and the A3. I'm currently taking the A2. The good thing about this is every country has its own, I guess you could say, organization which takes care of those or regulates those laws. You have to look in for your specific country. The good thing in the EU is all these drone licenses are standardized, so if you get A1, two or three, you can fly anywhere in the EU zone. I'm only speaking for EU, so good question. Yeah, nice. Does anybody in the FPV community use sync, stereo or dual camera setups in combination with the headsets or is that too intense? Oh, like a 3D. Yes, actually, that is interesting. I've never tried it. I would like to. There was a time maybe four or five years ago, maybe it was longer or farther back where you could do that. There is a setup where you can transmit 3D, so yes, that is possible. It's not very popular, not anymore, and there were some people doing that. You can probably find a bunch of videos on YouTube about that, they're probably a little older. But yeah, good question. And I haven't done it myself. I would love to. That's something that's definitely on my bucket list. Good question. All right, and then another regulatory thing. Does a HEM radio license help in FPV, for example, for stronger video signal? Yes, and it depends on the band. And it depends on your class of license and it depends on what country you're living in. So yes, with the 5.8 MHz, there are specific channels. I think it was like 5.9 or there's a couple, which depending on the flight controller or the VTX, which are not in use, they're specified as HEM radio channels. And if you are licensed as a HEM radio operator, you can, I think you can get up to five watts or something like that. Don't quote me on this. I'm just pulling this out of my ass right now as a specific question. But yes, you do have some advantages. All right, that's very interesting. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. And yeah, happy new year. See you next year, hopefully live in person. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next talk on Chaos Zone TV will be Bertel. And he will talk about electro-grusel cabinet best of lender. What may happen if one applies the mantra, if it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid to electricity installations? All right, that sounds interesting. See you then.