DVR to record OSD video

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The GoPro provides beautiful video by almost any standard (full sized DSLRs not withstanding). But when you're flying FPV with an on screen display like the IOSD Mini give you, there is a lot of info that would be nice to relate to the video you are watching (how long into the flight, altitude, distance from launch point etc). So in addition to all the other goodies I've been putting together this week, I also wired together my $35 DVR and connected it to my diversity monitor.

This DVR was a true ebay beauty. Looks like lots of different sellers had these going on. http://www.ebay.com/itm/261222817434?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

All I needed to do was hook it up to my 5802 Diveristy monitor and I was ready to go. Of course that meant finding a combination of plugs and cables to get from one end to the other. I ended up with RCA jacks, an old Playstation video/audio cable set, a BNC to RCA adapter. Basically 6 feet of cable and connectors weighing a quarter pound to go 6 inches. Oh yea, I also needed another micro SD card for this thing that I bought at Target that cost almost as much as the DVR. Finally, I had to solder together a female JST plug so I could connect the DCR to a LiPo battery I had laying around.

The good news is, it all worked. The P2/GoPro video came out of the monitor to the DVR and even came back out of the DVR onto the Monitor screen. Now all I needed to do was figure out how to operate the DVR. The supplied manual was shall we say a bit difficult to understand? I recorded some video and plugged the card into my computer. It was interesting to note the files were dated like 1980 or something. Now I had to figure out how to get to the set up menu to fix the date. Problem is, the unit's language was Chinese by default. By a process of elimination I was finally able to get the system language set to english, set the date, and set the record to VGA as standard. I was very proud of my self. Almost like I had built my first Interositer.
islandearth2_zpsf6d11283.jpg
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Anyway, the video was interesting to watch. I didn't go for a very long flight because its very windy today. Earlier today I made my longest flight to date (about 1/2 mile), but turned around because it was so windy the Phantom was using a lot of power to keep up. In addition to time stamps, its also cool to see velocity and heading data and battery status as you go along. I put the following video together of the flight with the OSD data in an inset window. The video breaks up a lot, mainly bacuase the monitor likes to stay with my patch antenna for some reason as opposed to the Spironet on channel A. Its possible I don't have something set right. With all the antennas and the DVR and extra LiPo the monitor was getting so heavy I decided to take it off the mount to my transmitter and put it back on a tripod. This also gets the monitor away from the interference I was seeing when the Phantom transmitter was turned on. Of course if the patch antenna is not pointed at the Phantom when its up close, the video breaks up. Once I'm flying I just have to point the antenna in the general direction of the Phantom and the video stays pretty good.

You may notice the inset video is not completely lined up time wise with the GoPro video. I synced them up at take off, but they seem to drift apart as time goes on. That's probably normal for two completely different, unsynced video sources.



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