Inspired and informed by the Raspberry Pi-based FPV project started by Philip, I'm putting together some software that will run a RasPi FPV rig, complete with an OSD based on data pulled from a Naza GPS module tap and an MCP3008 analog to digital converter for voltage and current.

It's based on the GStreamer media library, and will be designed to work with two Raspberry Pis – one on the airframe itself, and one as the ground station, with an Oculus Rift for the display.

The software's not yet functional, being still under heavy development, but I thought I'd make it available in case anyone else wants to join in the development, as my time's a bit limited.

Here's the Github project: https://github.com/monsieurpod/raspifpv

The software comes in two parts: A binary for the TX side, based on the airframe, and a binary for the RX side on the ground-station. The TX side is split into a number of modules: a main entry point that sets up GStreamer video transmission, and telemetry gatherer and transmitter. The RX side has its own entry point that sets up the receive functionality, along with a telemetry receiver, and a renderer to display OSD data.

The TX side is almost complete, missing only an integration of the Naza GPS tap module and a bit of spit-and-polish.

I've encountered some trouble with the RX side after discovering Gstreamer has a very inefficient pipeline for overlay rendering with Cairo, which is prohibitively expensive for the Raspberry Pi's processor. Instead, I'm investigating an EGL implementation that creates the EGL display context for GStreamer, then performs the OSD rendering in hardware. In addition, I need to find a way to apply a pixel shader (or whatever works) to the GStreamer video to split the video into left and right sections for display on the Oculus Rift. This work is in a very early stage; I'm using the SubtitleRenderer.h class from omxplayer for guidance, along with the eglgles GStreamer plugin (which seems to have been replaced by the new glimagesink module, which I've not had a chance to look into yet).

I plan to get some more work done over the next weeks, but if anyone wants to take a crack, please do – and do get in touch so we can coordinate.

Edit, Sun, May 11: Some more work done this weekend - I've got it to the point where it's building and running with the custom EGL display context. Just need to write the rendering code in egl_telemetry_renderer.c and find a way to split the display into left and right halves in gstreamer_renderer.c now.