Wifi FPV

Has anyone used a long range wifi connection to fly FPV, showing live video and telemetry feed? heres a lan card I was thinking about

and here is a servo command board http://endurance-rc.com/

they say with a high gain antenna you could get 50km los what you think? I dont know any visual basics and I have not made a fpv system before do you think this is feasible for a noob?  thanks

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  • I'm using a nanoststion loco m2 with its built in 8dbi antenna aimed down out the bottom of the plane and I have attached two more additional 5dbi antennas to the loco m2's little pci antenna ports. This will allow the plane to have more signal diversity. For more redundancy I have a simultaneous 2.4 link as well, I'm using a loco m900 with 5dbi antenna on the craft as well for the second link. On the ground I'm using a nanostation m2 and another loco m9.
    I have stp enabled on two radios.
  • usually stock ubnt will get you 3km range

  • Dal

    Forget the 50km link distance - that will be a theoretical link distance against a background of ideal circumstances, circumstances that are seldom defined by the manufacturer and which did certainly not include one side of the link moving/flying around. You'll be lucky if you get 5km. Don't consider that bad - it's typical in reality of most hardware that claims XXkm link distances.

    Dal - spend some time looking at Ubiquiti Networks (http://www.ubnt.com/) rf link options - they produce some interesting wifi hardware. I have no experience using any of it on RC/FPV/UAV type models, but I have experience using their 700Mhz and 900Mhz wifi hardware - and set up properly its good gear quite capable of 5km -10km plus link distances in the right cirucmstances.

    If you really want real world usable & reliable link distances of the sort you have in mind, then whatever hardware you use, you are going to have to use amplification - serious amplification, which is generally far more power than the average sized model will be able to practicaly carry: the battery mass will be so much that the model will have used it all up before anywhere near the theoretical distance is flown.

    Your other option: take a look at http://webx.dk/rc/rc.htm. Thomas has a well established reputation for producing long distance rf link hardware that works well and is within the budgets that amatuer/hobby flyers are willing to pay.

    Good luck

    Patrick
  • The idea is not so bad for us here in Europe and it's may worth an experiment. 'Legal' video links have only 10 mW (2.4G) or 25 mW (5.8G) of power and we cannot use 900 Mhz (GSM) or 1.2 Ghz (Aerial Mobile) frequencies.
    5.8 Ghz WiFi (only wifi, not analog video) can send up to 1000 mW / 26 dBm and you can get a Ubiquiti Networks 5G WISPStation for about 45$. As I can understand You can configure these as bridge or station. On the other side 5.8 Ghz is really LOS sensitive: anything between the antennas will eat dBm's.
    I will start some experiments with that hardware and a small IP video server (with 4 chanells) soon, because I need a 'legal' video link, and here in switzerland you can't use quiet nothing with a range higher than 500m in analog mode.
  • Possible, but not for a noob and forget about 50 km. Those numbers require ridiculously directional antennas that take days to align properly (read the story behind the 300km XR5 link for example)... and that's not happening if your target is flying circles around you, is it.

    Another thing to consider is reliability - losing a link at 50 km from base is not a good thing. It won't be legal to fly away from visual range either :-)

    You will get units of km from this rig at best - the datasheet specifies the best sensitivity being -90 dBm at 1 Mbps and maximum TX power of 20 dBm - assuming you use the 3 dBi dipole antenna on the aircraft and a directional but still aimable patch or yagi with say 10 dBi of gain you end up with a usable range of a little over 5 km (with 5 dB of fade margin left - barely enough for a stable link). That would be the outskirts of your UAV range and you will fear to thread too close to it :-)
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