My work colleague (we'll call in Charles) wants to get into FPV and we've been experimenting with a few cheap options. There's now a ridiculuously cheap way to get into it. It all comes from the Chinese copy-house Eachine and the components are crazy-similar.
Assuming a single battery for flight (to start with) and you have a soldering iron or access to one (or live near me).
Quadcopter:
Eachine E010 £13.01
Pretty much indistinguishable from my Inductrix. Comes with Controller.
Camera:
Eachine TX01 Camera £21
FPV Goggles:
Eachine VR 007 £41
And that's it.
@Byrn - you'll need a DSMX module for your Taranis. You can build one or buy one for £26.
In the future, you might want to get more batteries and a better charging solution but this is a SUPERB way to get going.
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Was just having a look and if you use the code "12xmas" it drops just under £70
Ace, thanks Fish!
The soldering btw is very easy - attaching the camera to the copter, which has nice big pads to solder to.
I was actually thinking about this, as it's a good price.
Then I remembered that I got motion sickness watching a video review of Coaster Planet yesterday.
Oh wow. Perhaps there might be a way to take the composite video out of the headset and to your laptop via a USB capture card. That's how I captured the video here. Also, the quad is good fun for 13 quid even if it's not FPV.
Not sure the feed to the laptop would help...I'm just very susceptible to visual movement cues not directly linked to my own motion/actions (car sickness, sea sickness, park swings, and I've had it triggered from FPS games before where the motion was very slightly off-sync to the inputs (Red Steel on the Wii, and some cartoon-y shooter we tried at one of the Blondecon's)).
I probably have enough toys/hobbies etc to keep me going!
I thought the Eachine E010 wasn't DSMX/spectrum but that it used deviation protocol or something close which requires a different module to use on taranis
https://oscarliang.com/binding-eachine-e010-taranis-tx/
it's the inductrix that's dsmx I think
oooooooooooooh. Good point, cheers EMW
I picked up an eachine e010 the other day since my practice in the flat fpv nano quad has died
So after the few weeks it takes to ship from china I got it the other day and got it all kitted out with the camera and so on. I don't have a devo transmitter and my little orange t6 doesn't have a module bay so only supports dsm so I added some extenders to the little remote which makes it more flyable. At somepoint I'll probably invest in a taranis but until then this will do.
I noticed the flight time was a bit low it was discharging the battery quite quickly running for maybe two minutes a go maybe less. I realized I'd gotten the wrong vtx the one I have is a tx02 which is the 200mW one so that's probably leaching away all the battery in short order. I'll look at swapping that out since 200mW is really overkill anyway.
Still the setup is working even if it's a little bit fly for a minute or two then recharge. Really bulletproof little quad smashed it into all sorts of things and the worst that happens is it lands upside down.
I get 4 minutes in a warm house with a 25mW. How big are your batts? Mine are 205mAh.
the stock 150mAh supposedly I should get 3min or so on them 4 if I use the prop trimming mod.
Currently I just about get my eye in and can do some proper flying and it runs out of juice :D
I've found a 25mW vtx that is also slightly lighter than the tx01/02/03 (3g vs 4.5g) so I'll give that a go. I might look at getting some slightly bigger capacity batteries usually the whole power to weight ratio cancels that out on something that small (ie bigger battery just weighs more so needs more thrust to lift so doesn't last any longer) but maybe there's some room there the eachine uses some weird nonstandard connector tho so I'd need to rewire that.
picked up the new vtx the arris 25mW and wired it in seems to work a lot better it's smaller and slightly lighter plus less power hungry had to make a new mount for it which meant I only got one test flight but it was for a much more reasonable flight time.
Need to look at doing the prop mod for even more flight time but that needs some sandpaper
Are you going to get Goebish’s module so you can use your Taranis with the E010? Having used the little black controller, I found the muscle memory was difficult to get around.
An alternative is to get a new flight controller. I've heard peeps using the BeeBrain on the Inductrix and I knew there was one for the E010. I just Google'd it and found that Oscar Liang has a post! What a legend. The Acrowhoop isn't cheap but will work with FrSky out of the box.
I don't have a taranis
I think replacing the flight controller on one of these is daft better to build something like the whoopee from scratch