Optimizing our supply chain allowed us to make our Sky Drone FPV 2 system available at a dramatically reduced price, starting from USD 299.- for the Europe/Asia version and 329.- for the US/Verizon version. The previous price was 699.-.
Sky Drone FPV 2 is a HD camera system for drones that transmits over the LTE network providing an unlimited range and low latency video+data link.
Digital High Definition Video
The Sky Drone FPV 2 system uses a high resolution camera with a wide dynamic range. It provides you with an amazing live video feed of up to 1080p at 30fps.
Telemetry and Command & Control Link
Besides the video link, Sky Drone FPV 2 provides a bidirectional data link between your drone and your Ground Control Station. This can be used to visualized telemetry data and/or control the drone. We support the MAVLink protocol as well as any generic protocol that interfaces via RS232/UART.
Unlimited Range
By using existing cellular networks, the Sky Drone FPV system provides you with virtually unlimited range. The only requirement is cell tower coverage. The system is optimized for the 4G/LTE network to provide best video quality and lowest latency. It does however fall back to 3G or even 2.5G networks by automatically adjusting video parameters without interrupting the stream.
Low latency
By using our own highly optimized video processing pipeline, the system is designed for lowest latency video from scratch. The typical end-to-end latency is less than 150ms.
Groundstation Software
The Groundstation to receive Video from the Sky Drone FPV 2 unit runs on Windows and Linux with version for MacOS, Android and iOS in the pipeline to be released in Q2 2017.
Interchangeable Lenses
The Sky Drone FPV 2 system is using high quality lenses that are interchangeable. Instead of locking you to a specific lens, you have the freedom to change the lens for specific use cases (wide angle lens for best overview or narrow FOV lenses for artistic flights with less distortion).
Security
The video stream and meta data are fully end-to-end encrypted making it impossible for third parties to eavesdrop the transmission or interfere with it. Rather than reinventing the wheel, we rely on open and proven standards including Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) and Secure Real-Time Protocol (SRTP) using AES128.
For more information see https://www.skydrone.aero/products/sky-drone-fpv
Comments
I ended up ordering one so hopefully I can report how it is in a few days. Yes, I know full well what the hardware is and that it's COTS. The problem that I've had is that I've been looking and asking for a 4G connection for months and there are absolutely NO tutorials on the subject. Everyone claims that setting up a 4G connection is easy, but nobody is willing to share how they do it...so I have to resort to something like this. Yes, there is the UAV matrix solution, but that requires two 4G modems. At least I already have a Verizon 620L modem on my Verizon plan so I was able to knock off a couple bucks.
Is this an ideal solution? Not at the moment, but I'll use it until something better comes along. I'd rather have a system that connects to an AWS server with a static IP so I can login from any computer, but this will have to do until something gets integrated with APSync.
All in all, you're paying $100 for hardware, and $200 for convenience. Apologies if I sounded negative, it just irks me when people/companies try to hide the nature of a product with spin. If they'd just said "Pi 3 optimised for LTE video streaming using an external UDP holepunch server" I'd have said "cool".
@John, I think you overestimate but honestly hope you are right. My guess based on specs, images, and sale pitch deflections is that you'll find that this is a readily available single board computer with USB camera, in a nice black case, with a proprietary/non GPL script managing the discovery/handshake. @skydrone - details/corrections welcome.
@Auturgy, reading between the lines I figure they use some variations of an LVDS cable with raw data from the camera, and do all the video encoding on the 'motherboard'. The problem with having native encoding in the camera (Logitech 920 etc.) is that you cannot control and adapt the encoding bandwidth fast enough for variations in transmission conditions. And also since they have a similar version with HDMI input, they must do video encoding in the link box.
@Marc I'd be confident that any 1080p30 h.264 native (ie 2mp USB camera with onboard h.264) UVC camera would have similar performance, and I doubt that the software would even know it was a different camera. A higher resolution camera, even with onboard h.264, would have a little more latency that the 2mp camera (which doesn't need to downscale). The USB bus (SkyDrone please correct me if you aren't using USB, but it appears you are) would generate some EMI, but more likely to effect a telemetry radio than the LTE modem. USB3 is worse than USB2, so if you need UHD I'd recommend looking at GigE rather than USB3. MUCH less EMI, even using the same camera. From my experience with C1, XU, XU3, XU4, Odroid's are pretty bad for EMI in general, so if this uses one as its brain I hope they shield it.
@SkyDrone: the "typical" latency you claim (150ms), can you provide the test conditions? Is this figure true only when both Rx and Tx are on the same network, or can you achieve this across LTE networks? I think it is important, and should be explicit in your sales pitch, as a lot of people will have existing devices on particular networks that will differ from the networks you seem to be aligned to. For instance, I'm in Australia and use Telstra for my phone and mobile hotspot, but Optus for my airborne LTE modem. As these are under different NAT's, establishing a peer to peer pipe isn't possible below the NAT, only above. To articulate a little, you have a server (AWS or the like, whatever you can access) matching the two devices (endpoints), if these are different ports on the same NAT then once matched the communication occurs endpoint1<->endpoint2, below the NAT == fast/low latency. If endpoints are on different NAT's, you can't bypass the NAT. Matched communication occurs between endpoint1<->NAT1<->NAT2<->endpoint2 = not quite as fast. Do you have latency figures for both configurations?
@Marc The system does not have an analog output. Also we have a highly integrated video processing pipeline to guarantee low latency. That's why you can't change the camera. We do have a different product called "Sky Drone Link" that offers HDMI input though.
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