Flying with live video

[BlackhawkBeagle]

Hello Everyone!

I am new to quadcopter's and know there is MUCH to learn about them. I have been flying my MJX x400 for about a month now and slowly getting better each day, but have not mastered it yet.

My questions is with flying the drone by only looking at the live video stream. How? lol

Is there any tips and tricks to this? I know this may sound extremely simple, but I seem to be having an issue properly navigating my surrounds when I am not actually physically looking at the drone itself. Not to mention the .5-1 sec delay in video streaming is making me question if this is even possible with this drone. Through the camera itself I cannot tell how much room I actually have on either side, nor can I properly judge the distance I am away from the controller.

Any tips help!

 

[Dugdog47]

I've been flyin. R.C. helicopters for ten years and can do line of sight flying fairly well.

What you are talking about is FPV flying (first person view).

Fpv is a while different ball game that throws line of sight flying out the window.

The only solid advice I can give is to ditch the wi fi camera and get a 5.8g setup that transmits in real time-no delay.

 

[BlackhawkBeagle]

I've been flyin. R.C. helicopters for ten years and can do line of sight flying fairly well.

What you are talking about is FPV flying (first person view).

Fpv is a while different ball game that throws line of sight flying out the window.

The only solid advice I can give is to ditch the wi fi camera and get a 5.8g setup that transmits in real time-no delay.

Hey Dugdog! Thank you for the advice! I am actually already looking into a camera upgrade. Do you have any recommendations for a 5.8g setup? Also, I expect there would be a weight difference with a camera upgrade. How may this effect the flight of the drone itself?

 

[Dugdog47]

Hey Dugdog! Thank you for the advice! I am actually already looking into a camera upgrade. Do you have any recommendations for a 5.8g setup? Also, I expect there would be a weight difference with a camera upgrade. How may this effect the flight of the drone itself?

Well I'm not sure about upgrading a camera on a wi fi drone, it might be possible if you're good at soldering which I am not.

What I did was buy a new quad that already had a camera that transmits on 5.8g and bought a display screen that clamps onto the controller.

I don't think many of the toy wi fi quads are really intended to upgrade the camera, but I could be wrong.

 

[Spork]

I don't know the specifics on your quad, but based on the build videos I've watched on youtube, you may be able to just buy a new 5.8 transmitter and hook your camera and power to it. Another option is an "all-in-one" which combines the FPV camera and the transmitter in one unit. Again, as @Dugdog47 mentioned, you will need to know how to solder and should at least have a basic multimeter to test things. If you've never soldered, it's easier than it sounds if you watch a video on good practices (like pre-tinning the leads and the pads to which you will solder the wires to). When I first watched a set of quad build videos, they were pretty intimidating, but after I bought a $20 soldering iron and some wires and cheap parts to practice on - I've found it doesn't take much practice to get half-way decent at it.

There are many channels out there doing quad builds, but I think these two: Painless360 and RCModelReviews and are great for beginners because of how much detail they go into and the "why" - not just "copy me". At least one of those guys have a soldering tutorial as well.