Hey everyone. I thought I could get impartial opinions here from Ardupilot users than I’d get on the vendor channels.
I’m thinking about trying open source video as the latest versions of OpenIPC and RubyFPV are now reported to be flyable and consumer usable.
Of the four open source FPV projects, OpenHD seems the most serious. They’ve developed custom hardware (air unit only) which they claim had successful Beta a year ago, but are now being totally silent about it and ignoring requests for updates. Seems suspicious?
OpenIPC is the first to have got to market with some nice looking hardware from Runcam and EMax. The project has now gained serious momentum as a result.
RubyFPV is similar to OpenIPC. It’s developed by a “superstar” developer. I guess he got frustrated at slow progress and decided to go off by himself. RubyFPV seems ahead of OpenIPC in some ways. The developer is doing some interesting things like looking to support additional bands.
There’s an interesting LTE version of OpenIPC in Alpha stage. It uses cellular network instead of direct radio link. It flies, but needs a SIM card, a private server, so some effort sure needed, and I assume there’s risks in using it.
The fourth project is WiFi Broadcast NG, I thought it was dead but I found an active GitHub repo the other day. I don’t know much about the project except that it uses bare metal architecture instead of the WiFi and IP stack.
I’m currently using DJI as my drones are too small for the likes of Herelink. It works but I’m tired of DJI ignoring it’s users. They still haven’t fixed their font issues despite requests from other vendors. Their combined control link has some real outdated behaviour that they have zero interest in fixing. Not to mention that they do some suspicious things like exclude head tracking from their SBUS outputs, either out of negligence or to trap people in their proprietary eco system.
Interested in your thoughts.
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