I was looking for a light weight good quality camera for Quadrotor FPV and came up with this solution from china got immediate reply from sales it is just 120$(sensor board+wifi+lens)
Complete accessories and price list is here ipcam.PDF
And product is listed at
Never purchased anything from china before so little bit scared for loosing my money However if this device really have all these specs then it is a great replacement for costly Go-Pro,What do you say???
Comments
"Significant" time lag doesn't mention a number. I can elaborate, as I did significant amounts of testing for video signals over wifi. If you go with consumer-based devices, it will be really difficult to get a latency below 150ms.
The cam usually takes around 1-2 fps for post-processing (autogain/wb/backlight compensation), so this takes around 66ms. Wifi is always jittery, so a jitterbuffer on the decoder is required at a minimum of 60ms. Anything lower increases the number of digital artefacts. Decoding latency is around 40ms or so. If you get a camera that has more fps, this allows you to shave off a couple of ms of latency. In my case, I use a 45fps@720p, so I have 44ms latency produced at the camera. It is with this camera that I achieve the 150ms latency mark.
When you use wifi, you don't want to configure this for the highest bitrate. A bitrate of 19Mbps is enough for reasonable quality 720p (even at 45fps). This allows you to use more favourable modulation types and error codings that increase the reliability of the signal, requiring less retransmissions, thus reducing the jitter buffer size and so on. You'll also be able to fly closer to sources of interference. Keep in mind that wifi modules play "nice" with others and reduce their bitrates automatically when others are on the same channel.
The camera doesn't mention anything about auto white-balance, auto-gain and backlight compensation. That could be quite important when flying around in bright skies, etc.
If you can only use this cam over wifi and the wifi is not configurable, I wouldn't go for it. Find out if there are connectors you can use to hook it up to a different wifi module. I didn't see any RJ-45 in there for example.
As a scientist this is not an acceptable test.
1) We don't know anything about the video systems other than power. Are the frequencies standardized? Are the Antennas standardized?
2) There is no measure of video lag. You cannot say anything about FPV unless you are going to mention video lag. We don't use digital systems due to video lag.
3) We deal with flying objects. Most of that noise is probably due to intervening buildings on the ground.
Digital vs. Analog Wireless Video Transfer
In the following video they have compared a 500mw digial wireless output vs 2500mw analogue wireless system
upto a distance of 600 m Diffrence is pretty much clear in analogue system u have to tolerate noise
http://youtu.be/ImW_z3QBMw0
Looks good and it has a CS lens mount so you can put changable lenses on it, and take advantage of different focal lengths. That alone is a huge advantage over a gopro.
Wonder if the wifi-board be changed or hacked? It looks like the camera/wifi boards are just stacked one after the other.
@Andre - there are a million different Sony 1/3 inch board cams out there. Most are pretty good. I have a 540TVL version, that one is higher TVL, but with the cheap lenses on them you may not notice much difference.
Also worth considering are the new Pixim Seawolf chip based cams. They are apparently much higher dynamic range, which helps with bright sky/dull land flying situations. I have one on order from security cameras 2000 so I'll be able to see how it goes first hand in a few weeks.
Hi guys!
And how about this one?
http://www.goodluckbuy.com/700tvl-1-3-sony-super-had-ccd-color-came...
Has anyone tried it?
Regards,
AS
I think I already said that if one was using one of these devices on a pre-programmed route it would be "acceptable" .... there are a lot of folks that think these are suitable for normal FPV and that just isn't the case. The AR drone is proof of this. I've never tried to use one of these devices professionally, but honestly there probably is a way to get an FCC certification or just ignore it all together. One is certainly ignoring the FAA regardless if one is sending up a drone for commercial reasons unless you have a CoA. As far as I know team blacksheep has managed to get insurance even though they are totally analog....
It also isn't just lag. Isn't the range quite problematic with digital devices or is that just a function of the frequency they use?
David, I think there are some people who are willing to tollerate the lag inherent in these wifi cams. We'll be flying mostly, or completely automatic mode with APM, using the camera mostly to do a job, inspection, see where we are, etc. So the lag will be tollerable.
But yes, people need to be aware, doing high performance FPV with these systems is a problem.
However, the big problem with analog systems is... well I don't know of any that have an FCC cert. So using them professionally is a big problem.
The debate about sending a signal digitally for FPV has been had a number of times. The consensus is unless you are willing to tolerate a significant time lag (e.g. you are flying a pre-programmed drone) do not attempt it. This is very unlikely to be suitable for FPV.
Well, the gopro1 is selling for $130 now... and if you power it externally and remove the cam from the case it's only 1.7 ounces... Just sayin'
Wifi module is 150 mbps 802.11 n/g/b as described in accessories and price list I have attached above
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
of 4 Next