Freewave Radio Moving live H.264 Video, with 10 PWM Channels and GCS

Test Airframe: Senior Telemaster 8'

Boards:
APM
Oilpan
Arduino Pro
Freewave Radio
Eflight ESC & Motor
H264 Video Server

Joysticks that work:

Logitech G940 (no yaw on foot pedals yet) - Working on getting trim math working in the code.

Logitech Attack 3 (Tested all control surfaces working)

Other:
2 Cameras, 1 foward facing, 1 PTZ

Using Laptop with UBUNTU and Logitech Joysticks.

Phase 1:

a. Working Joystick Controls all surfaces of Airframe, Various buttons on Joystick change APM flight mode.
a. Completed

Added:

b. Working on integrating Logitech G940 Flight System

no yaw on foot pedals as off yet, does n't seem to show in the PYGAME librarys.

work to be done.

Phase 2: Complete
a. General Test - Live video through radio and video server.

b. Need to test and measure various bandwidth requirements for H264, frame sizes etc...

Phase 3: Complete
a. 4 Mile Test - 74db signal level Great video quality control surfaces respond instantly.
b. 15 mile test coming shortly.

Phase 4:Working on it.
Test GCS with waypoints.

Phase 5: Drop everything neatly back into airframe.

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Comments

Dano March 8, 2011 at 7:41am

We broadcast VDO @ 640x480 just to keep frame rate from lagging and log the higher resolutions on the airframe to a large SD card
I.S. March 8, 2011 at 7:34am

just put the remote camera recording a digital watch with chrono (with ms on display) and display the wireless vdo stream on a screen. Put the screen beside the watch and record the setup with a second camera, webcam, or alike.

It will record frames containig the actual value of clock and an image of the screen with the past status of the chrono.

Did I managed to describe the set up properly?

Beware: if you stare at the set up for a long time you may suffer from time crunch or hazardous distortion.
Developer

John Arne Birkeland March 8, 2011 at 7:06am

Do you have any way of doing onboard recording? If so you could compare onboard and ground station recordings side by side to look for delay.
Eraser March 8, 2011 at 6:56am

I found the issue with uploading video.. I am going to have to recapture some video with VLC, I did some test captures and got the format worked out..... So maybe after work today I can get some video posted.

As far as the delay, Anybody have any good ideas to measure that? If I really pipe the resolution up, the delay is quite noticeable. . 640 x 480 and down things seem to be great. Any thoughts?
Eraser March 8, 2011 at 6:37am

@David Found a place to power it internally..... As with everything else I have stripped off all the cases to save weight. If you prefer not to mod anything pick up an axis 247S...

Here is a picture of the inside of mine.Although this model states POE only that little green 4 position phoenix contact connector...left to right

1 - GND
2 - Power Output Can be used to power auxiliary equipment.12V DC, Max load = 50mA
3 - Digital Input
4 - Transistor Output

If you give pins 1, 2 more than 11 volts it will power up the board.

And you can do this without pulling the case off.
I.S. March 8, 2011 at 2:46am

@frederic

Certainly. China is no more an industrial backyard of low quality counterfeits. They are developing its own products that keep up to date with new tech trends.

RC transmitters modules are some example of that.
frederic reblewski March 8, 2011 at 2:16am

I don't know that particular motor so may be its quality is bad but I have been using other from the same source and disassembled some and the quality is not that bad at all. assuming that there is a QA difference, does that justify 15X the price? in particular for brushless motor remember that a large part of the chinese population is using electric scooter for transportation so they really have the experience of huge volumes on that type of product. I have been spending time in China recently and I think more generally that we are underestimating the pace of their industrial improvement. of course you still have tons of low quality low cost "stuff" but they are also developing more and more pretty good and smart products. all that being said if you can afford it, a $600 motor is not that big a deal
I.S. March 8, 2011 at 1:04am

Regarding the motor, yes we can find dirty cheap China made motors.and certainly they deserve a try if you are in constrained budget. However if you want a reliable, dependable engine (and a company pays the bills), I will probably go for the "overpriced" ones. Quality control is expensive.

AXI motors are Czech made and looks like high quality motors.

I think each product have its market.
David March 8, 2011 at 12:42am

I'm curious, how did you power the video encoder? From what I read, it appears to be powered over PoE (Power over Ethernet).
frederic reblewski March 7, 2011 at 8:25pm

for such a project airframe design is key and especially 2 aspects : weight and drag. good designs can fly efficiently a payload as heavy as the airframe. 2 examples in full scale aviation. the cricri a full scale plane <170lb, cruise at 120mph range 280miles with 2x 20-30hp engines, and the arnold ar5 >210mph with 65HP! if you want long range why did you choose electric motor in the first place? anyway too many things to discuss on a forum thread... where is your base?

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