Introduction to FPV Systems

            Introduction to FPV Systems

Affordable FPV systems have appeared within the last decade. FPV system flying is a rapidly growing trend in the various RC hobbies, and for good reason; it takes the beauty and energy of flying, driving, piloting a boat, and packages it in a relatively safe and less costly package. For many, this is the draw of flying rc models.

Until recently, however, setting up an FPV system has been very time consuming and required a lot of technical skills. Now we have companies such as flysight bringing a ready to fly, FPV multirotor to the masses, requiring no prior knowledge. While it may be more convenient to buy flysight F250, plug in your tablet, and fly, it is still crucial that you know how these FPV systems work.

The current technology boom keeps this subject alive and forever interesting! Screens, goggles and glasses continue to evolve. Video transmitters and receivers have improved and become more reliable. Antennas and antenna tracking systems have improved. GPS accuracy has improved.

There are heads-up display systems, head tracking capability and return-to-home features. There are apps that work in conjunction with your equipment to view video and GPS information.

No matter what FPV system you get, they all have the same basic components. Even the flysight F250 with its completely self-contained setup has these components, you just won’t be able to see them or fix them.

The three basic components of the best fpv system are, in no particular order, the camera, the video transmitter (VTX), and the video receiver (VRX). The camera connects to the transmitter, which sends the signal on a radio wavelength determined by either the manufacturer or you, which is then picked up on the receiver.

How you then view it is based on your setup. Sometimes it’ll be through goggles, others it’ll be on your phone. While most of the times, this signal is analogue, in the case of the flysight F250 or other similar setups, its actually done using a digital WiFi link. There are various pros and cons to this, which we’ll get to later.

Now that you know roughly how FPV goggles work, and have decided that you want to try flying in first person, you need to know where you want to start. Really, you need to start not flying with FPV glasses at all. Flying Line of Sight (LoS) is a crucial skill.

Before even buying a Phantom or building yourself a plane, you need to know how to safely fly without goggles on.

First Person View signals can fail, and if they do you need to know how to fly without them. Not only that, but LoS flying helps you learn how to fly and control your aircraft while seeing everything, not just what’s in front of it. Once you can fly Line of Sight you can start looking into the best FPV drone goggles setup.

Figuring out what you want to fly using FPV goggles, after you can fly line of sight is actually fairly simple. When reading through FPV goggle reviews, pretty much anything with a nice camera on it that uses a tablet for a screen (like the flysight BLACK PEARL) will be fairly laid back and easy fpv setup while anything with a thin carbon fiber body and racing plastered on it will be agile for an fpv setup.