I want to transmit oboard video of a go kart back to the pit so that I can project/play it on a screen. I know I need a camera, a TX, an RX, antennas, and power. What's the easiest way to do this? I don't know crap about electronicals.
Stupid question because I'm confused: You want onboard video from the drone of the go-kart on the track, or onboard video from the kart?
Sounds like video from the kart itself.....live..... while racing......sent to phone/tablet Shouldn't be hard to do Cant you just buy a replacement camera/gimbal from one of the drone manufacturers and mount it above the drivers helmet in a bracket, or on the front of the cart? Install their app on your phone and boom, you're done. Perhaps look on Ebay for someone's crashed drone and remove the camera
You basically spelled it out in your post. Are you looking for specific equipment recommendations? The quality of video being sent from a drone to fpv goggles is pretty low. It also is very low power which can have issues. It all has FCC issues. Especially if you up the power. I don’t think there is any way you can do what you want to do legally. That doesn’t necessarily stop people.
The question is how much you wanna spend? Heres a couple basic bits that'll get you thinking... VTX kit Discover the Excitement of RC Hobbies with Grayson Hobby Avatar HD Camera VTX Kit - High-Quality FPV Drone Camera System | Grayson Hobby Your Ultimate Destination for RC Hobbies and FPV Drones and Radio Control Cars and Models Goggles with USB-C video out Discover the Excitement of RC Hobbies with Grayson Hobby Fat Shark Recon HD FPV Goggles | Grayson Hobby Your Ultimate Destination for RC Hobbies and FPV Drones and Radio Control Cars and Models Then you'll need all the supporting gear like a monitor, batteries, cables, voltage regulators, chargers, etc. AND a way to mount it. Based on my racing drones, I don't think you'll have a problem with FCC compliant transmitting levels on a cart track, especially if you always have line-of-sight. You can even get external antenna for the goggles to make the signal even more solid if necessary.
OP, it depends on what you're hoping for. Digital transmission from a high-resolution camera will be expensive, relatively-speaking. Bluetooth connection won't cover the whole track (range at most ~20ft). IP over LTE/5G is going to require a SIM and basically a cellphone attached to the camera (some of the higher-end photography quadcopters/drones will have this, but not FPV). FPV quadcopters/goggle systems use analog TV (like we had in the '70s) on a carrier wave, and everything @thrak410 is saying is true. These systems have ~20-80ms latency (lag in the picture scan) because they progressively scan from the top left to the bottom right, taking a few dozen microseconds to traverse each pixel (so that those pixels are a grayscale average of what's surrounding the center), this takes time to complete each screen. It's also analog as mentioned before, so subject to a lot of noise (you can compensate by increasing the signal strength, which is where you begin to get into gray areas with the FCC), is about 99.94% likely to be grayscale only, grainy, and the contrast is going to be poor unless you do a lot of signal processing on the receiving end (which will also increase latency/lag). If the track has great WiFi coverage, the digital camera/cell-phone option may work, but I don't know too many tracks that'd cover the actual racetrack with WiFi instead of concentrating on the pits/infrastructure.
It’s been a few years since I was into racing quads, so things might have changed. However, I think someone might not know that we usually run two cameras. One is the fpv camera connected to the goggles. Its quality is total crappola as described in the post above. The other was a GoPro or something similar. It recorded in hd and provided beautiful video. Almost all of what you see on YouTube is the hd footage which is retrieved after the flight.
