I’ve been introduced to a technological out of body experience that is nothing like anyone in the preceding million years of human evolution could possibly have imagined. Until only recently, literally flying around your garden has been the domain of mother nature and her feathery offspring. But now, with the advent of microprocessors, seemingly precognitive programming, industrialisation and mass production of incredibly finely engineered components and technology, has it been made possible.
My little Tiny Whoop drone has been abused for the last 2 years flying (and crashing) around the house on a regular basis. Its possible to fly around outside, but its range is limited, controls twitchy and power mediocre against any sort of winds. I have therefore expanded my little fleet with the addition of the Diatone GT349 HD – a 3 inch (referring to the diameter of the propellers) quadcopter that last year was “The Fasted Ready Built Quad You Can Buy”. I figured, I may as well buy something ridiculous if I’m going to get involved at all. Other than that, its sub 250g flying weight means it comes under the laws governing drones and means I don’t need a special licence to fly it.
As promised, it’s ludicrously fast and has taken several weeks of practice on the simulator to be even remotely competent at piloting this little ripper. Of course, I’ve crashed it, but it’s robust and has taken a few knocks impressively. But, what I have noticed, is that my video feed is TERRIBLE when compared to any of the pilots showcasing their flying on YouTube. While in all cases, the crashes are my fault, invariably, the video feed has contributed to the calamity. Also, I own a good controller, nowI own a good drone, I should have goggles to match so i can continue to evolve this hobby that has hooked me in.
Up until now, I’ve been using some Eachine EV800 goggles which were very cheap and very basic box goggles. Literally, a screen in a box that you put on your face. It strains your eyes a bit because the screen is so close to your eyes, so lots of other people go for diopter screen goggles that have a screen and lens per eye which are much better. When I was just getting into the hobby, I didn’t want to spend too much so the diopter goggles I could get had teeny tiny screen sizes, like looking at your phone screen across the room. So for the money, the box goggles were more screen size per £££ and did the job just fine, especially because I was only flying indoors and never more than 20m away from myself.
But this drone is in another league, it’s RI-DONK-ULOUSLY fast so it needs a large area to really enjoy its full capacity. It also has a HD camera that records to an onboard SD card. The camera is really quite good when you look back at the recordings, plenty good enough for showing off my stylish crashes on YouTube! But when the image is reduced to STD definition and sent back to the goggles over analogue transmission, and then displayed in my crappy goggles, its like running thru the woods with tracing paper over your eyes – you are definitely going to crash.
So I bit the financial bullet and bought the Skyzone 04X goggles. An (almost) top of the range set of diopter goggles with OLED screens and an impressive receiver module that has impressed many of the FPV community leaders. I was eager to try them out, but the changeable April/May weather was not allowing me to get out there…Literally, I had the batteries charging because it was nice and sunny, and as soon as they were done, it was already raining.
Eventually, I got a chance and experienced what my money had bought me. The contrast and colours were fantastic, thanks to the OLED screens, and they looked as physically large as the box goggles I had been wearing but without the eye strain. They were everything I had hoped for as I took off and swooped around. The clarity was incredible too. I could see the power cables leading up to the house and could easily avoid them. With the box goggles, I just had to remember to stay low enough and occasionally, I had hit them because I just couldn’t see them.
But midway into my second flight something unexpected and critical happened – the video went all skwoofy (its the most accurate word I can think of to describe what happened – you get it) I just about managed to keep it in the air and not lose it until the video came back and I could come in and land. I tried again and about 1 min into another flight the same thing happened, but this time I was REALLY high up and travelling fast towards the houses on my row. If I had tried to keep flying it would have gone way out of visual sight in seconds, probably into the woods which would have made finding it a ballache. So I had to cut power and let it fall. Luckily it landed in a soft grassy field just in front of the house and there was zero damage.
This is very annoying since I just spent so much on these goggles. I’m not sure why this happened, but I have a hunch based on absolutely zero experience and knowledge of radio systems… so its about as accurate as asking the internet, which is my only other option…. The receiver module picks up the video radio waves and displayed them on the screen. Back in the day, receivers only had one aerial, so if you flew far out or behind some trees, the signal would be disrupted and you’d get static or a break up in your video feed. Manufacturers decided that 2 aerials would be 100% better than 1 so came up with a receiver technology called Diversity, where the signals from 2 aerials would be analysed and the best signal would be displayed. This definitely improved things, but you get a white flash as the module switches between signals, which is a bit distracting. Now another type of receiver has been developed and produced by Immersion RC called Rapid Fire and now Skyzone called Steadyview or Rapidmix which takes the best bits of both signals and blends them together to give the clearest image available. This is part of the reason I bought the Sky04X goggles, for this module as its currently the leading technology and would give me the best image possible, with the ability to change the module in future if better tech was invented.
My completely unfounded hunch is that because the Steadyview module is blending signals, both the antenna need to be picking up exactly the same radiowaves at the same time for them to be displayed correctly. If one aerial is slightly longer or positioned differently, it might not be receiving information in phase with the other and this might be confusing the module. My reason for this thinking is that when the image when skwoofy (totally a word thats going to catch on) there was still sort of a usable image there, but its was scrolling up and down the screen and very fuzzy. This makes me think that signal was being received, but not processed correctly….. What do you think? I wish I had an SD card in the goggles recording the feed, but alas, I was unprepared for a brand new set of goggles to do something strange.
I’ve not given up on them however, the picture quality is fantastic and they are vastly better goggles overall. I’ve since updated the goggles and module firmware to the latest release and will test this out to see if the same thing happens. Hopefully this will fix the issue.