Kazetsukai's FPV CrossRC Emo X2

[kazetsukai]

Very cool! It needs this playing along with it

Haha, that's a pretty good choice for that clip...

I'm pretty new to streaming, I think there are some rules around copywrited material. I don't intend to monetize, so maybe there's no issue.

 

[WickedFog]

Haha, that's a pretty good choice for that clip...

I'm pretty new to streaming, I think there are some rules around copywrited material. I don't intend to monetize, so maybe there's no issue.

You can add any music to your vids. You just won't get paid for the vid. A lot of people do that just to get subscribers... by releasing a lot of shorts with cool music.

The vid looked great. I didn't even notice the lexan glare enough to distract me from the scenery.

 

[Doom!]

Really nice range of motion on the camera. Looks like it gets tricky when there is no clear path.

 

[kazetsukai]

Really nice range of motion on the camera. Looks like it gets tricky when there is no clear path.

It actually got stuck looking backward in the video for a bit (gimbal software bug?)- there's a channel that helps reset it (and locks it into the forward facing position) that I discovered later. It looks like spare bodies can be purchased on Aliexpress, but are a bit pricey (~200), so if I acquire one I might be a bit more willing to mod it, put a camera up top. Right now I'm considering cutting out the windshield and putting in a same-sized piece of glass in its place, maybe same with the driver/passenger windows to clear up the image.

The original idea here was to control a couple vehicles simultaneously to get that 3rd person view. Could also install a camera facing backwards...

Played around with the antennas today a bit, got range a little better but I'll have to wait for some higher quality short cables for the ground station to do much more. Seems like the magic bullet for range is elevation so far. Have a bit of a long weekend end of next week, might take it up to the park to try and reproduce my previous results with the UniRC setup (2500ft).

 

[Doom!]

I imagine a rear facing camera would be pretty helpful in situations like in the video.

 

[CertifiedMike]

This is a crazy build! I'm surprised and impressed by the FPV gear and the footage!
Great work getting things dialled in now too!
I'm pretty new to this stuff... WOW!!!

 

[kazetsukai]

I've been playing with antennas a bit... bounced back a little from my initial losses in range. The vehicle side orientation is quite important- possibly enough so that I will need whips up top on the body. Just moving them from flat mounted to vertically mounted on the body made a large difference.

On the ground station end, I went pretty extreme with some higher gain omnis (30") and low loss cabling:

This did virtually nothing for range in the 8km link mode. Think of it like a two way radio.... when you have strong signal, the radio will come alive on incoming transmissions. When weak, you have to hold the monitor button- and you get quite a bit of static. Higher gain omnis turn up the noise floor- including that static. It doesn't magically improve signal. Some folks will say I told you so, I'm still learning here. Now I think I understand why directionals work so well- its the high gain plus limiting that gain to a certain direction that makes things work the best- you only get the noise from one direction as well.

Aside from this I have successfully tested cell voltage and current telemetry on the FrSky system:

(I moved to a 6S 5200mAh lipo) This is pretty huge, it means I will never risk running out of power at range- the radio will alert me well in advance. Additionally, any cell getting too low I can detect- so I wont ruin batteries if one cell gets out of balance.

Wiring job needs a bit of cleaning though....

EC5 to XT60 to XT90 to XT60 split to XT30. Not super elegant. I'm going to re-head the battery and ESC to XT90, which is needed for the 100A current sensor, this arrangement is the best I could do on short notice.

Notice also the RF8G in the background- I think I'll be switching to use FrSky's redundancy bus, which can take multiple SBUS inputs. This way I can use the Tandem XE (tray) radio, or my RC8X, I might play with the FrSky TWIN X-Lite as well to see if that's a good compromise.

Next on my agenda is getting the MFD Mini Crossbow antenna tracker working. I have an 80% ish understanding of what is needed to link it to the HM30 for GPS signal from the car, using bluetooth. I don't yet quite understand what is needed to provide GPS location directly to the tracker- that's the final piece. I have some Maple Wireless directionals to test, I might do some "by hand" tracking first to get an idea of what to expect, but I hope this will make range much less of an issue with some terrain.

 

[RudyF6]

This stuff is so cool!
But so far over my head!!

 

[kazetsukai]

More on this... I really like the Tandem XE radio and telemetry system, but the tray form factor has proven to be inconvenient at times. So I tried a smaller version of the same system, the Twin X-Lite S.

This is a LOT more convenient, with more or less the same system settings. I made the four buttons bottom center into 2-positions that light up, the left two enable or disable throttle input so I don't send the car flying by bumping the controller.

Required me to switch to a TW receiver (dual 2.4GHz)... I kind of like the TD receivers (2.4GHz + 900MHz) so I'm going to retool the inputs here in a bit when some of the other cars arrive.

Getting access to components in the body interior has been a challenge, so I added a USB-C bulkhead to the body to give me access to the camera's port from underneath:

This lets me change the SBUS input channels for the various camera functions like gimbal control, start/stop record, return to center, and motion mode, as well as update the firmware.

Re-headed the battery to XT90 to cut down on the train of adapters shown earlier... I might finally be getting the hang of a soldering iron.

On the ESC side, I have XT90 in and XT60 output to go to the VTX.

This cleans up some of the mess:

I actually had a Rlaarlo MK07 come in I'll eventually start a thread on...

When I go to retool the wiring in the EmoX2 I'm going to mimic what they've done with wire loom. Super clean wiring- everything about that truck screams quality. I got a bag of the wire loom to try out:

Something really cool arrived today... the HM30 ground station I've been using, there's a bit of an elusive edition I finally got my hands on:

This is the repeater edition. Basically, you can turn one ground station into a repeater that will relay your video / control feeds. So I'm thinking of using one RC to haul around the repeater, and another paired to it- then when I get near the edge of signal I park the repeater and can go a bit further with the other car. There are limitations to that... because the repeater will be low to the ground.

Another possibility is finding a really high point somewhere to put it instead, like on a drone circling over the car, then you basically get the same range as drones do with this system which is 8km in low latency mode. I'll probably also try this with the Walksnail platform.

I have some more radio / control stuff I want to try so I'm waiting to retool the wiring on the X2 for that. Bit of a rat's nest when I compare it to the MK07.

I have two other CrossRCs that have been on order for a while from China... looks like they might finally arrive this weekend or early next week. I will open threads for those when they get here...