As I fly LOS (line of sight) for around half year and seen some youtube videos with nice FPV (firts person view) by Mr Stele, Le Drib, Ummagawd and so on, I decide to try FPV as well but low budget as possible.
basically I want to use my toy-Syma X5C drone and add some camera with video transmitter on drone side and LCD display (googles) and video receiver on my side.
As with FPV you can fly further I also decide to extend range by modified antennas.
This is the first part of post with extended range and the second one is about FPV mod.
Part 1 – Extended range:
Original SYMA antenna is just cheap piece of wire with not so precise length. But to get the best range it is important to tune length of active element on antenna to specific length which depends on transmitting frequency (in out case it is 2.4Ghz) is around 25-32 mm.
Basically for extend range you need to modify and replace two things:
1 – transmitter antenna
2 – receiver antenna
Transmitter side (controller):
- You need to de-solder original antenna and solder RP-SMA cable with socket instead
- fix RP-SMA cable to hole of original plastic cover of antenna. I’m using metal spacer to fix socket into bigger plastic hole. Should looks like this:
Than just screw antenna on the socket
Basically you can use most of the wifi-router antenna, but just just needs to be sure that antenna is standard 2.4 Ghz dipole and not some crazy antennas with spring based concept tuned to specific circuit.
Example:
That’s what you can order:
RP-SMA socket and 2.4Ghz antenna for radio transmitter
2$ (2x)
Receiver side (drone):
And on the drone side you need to replace wire to better wire (coax with removed insulation as active element)
- Un-solder original wire and solder a new one like this:
2. Get it out from the body (mine just hanging out from bottom) but be sure that active element is straight as possible.
and thats what you can order:
2.4ghz antena (cable) for Syma
3$ (5x)
Results:
During first range test I get around 200m of easy controlling and than I lost video signal on my FPV setup (25 mw). So I’m sure it can handle much more but for me is quite enough.
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