RC FPV Gel Blaster Mod Test Magneticitist 2024-12-31 | Since it looks like air FPV might be taking a dump real soon maybe gel blaster FPV is what people need to get on haha. Using Walksnail Avatar on this 1/16 Hypergo rig that finally has a purpose. It's small, not really intimidating, and clearly shows it's feeding gel balls to shoot through what otherwise looks like a projectile firing barrel of some kind. That's the other problem though, a more purpose built rig should probably not make it so obvious that it's able to shoot something if you're riding it around all over the place. The barrel needs to be adjustable within a certain range on the pitch and yaw but it also needs to be inconspicuous so people don't freak out unnecessarily. The best way I can describe the gel balls and the FPS they are traveling from this thing is it's not something that's actually going to cause any physical harm unless it's being shot directly at someones face at close range. For that reason it doesn't need to be any more powerful. I plan on some shenanigans with this test rig for a little while to feel it out but I need to come up with good targets.
Typhon 3s FPV HEQ Gimbal Cruising (DJI O3) Magneticitist 2024-12-25 | Goggles V2 footage of what I see when driving. This is the 2nd HEQ Gimbal I'm testing out after deciding I want the butter smooth view on my Typhon. This one had all the same initial problems I was expecting so I went ahead and added the 3 penny counterweight to the back and upped the torque settings. This time I think I'm going 15000 pitch, 15000 roll, and 25000 yaw and I'm able to leave the FPV mode locked instead of just temporarily triggering it on with a momentary function. When the one on the Big Rock is left in FPV mode HIGH then it vibrates. By just temp triggering it there is no vibration and the yaw stays locked until next power down but the movement speed does not increase to what it's supposed to be in FPV mode. This one doesn't have that problem. These rigs also have a lot going on in terms of wiring so I was noticing a lot of noise jitter in the gimbal on the first test before I cleaned up the signal paths some. I think a clean rig with good settings will work almost perfectly. I'm totally fine with how this is working on the Typhon though and it's definitely much easier to drive fast with clear visibility on almost any surface. The C20-T gimbal looks like a promising alternative but to me it appears similar to the Caddx GM3 (for Walksnail). The GM3 offers out of the box usability without any settings or upgrades or extra control channels but you'll be dealing with a 3 axis follow that has a little bit of stabilizing (all 3 axes will be loosely locked from factory). If you add 2 extra control channels to switch modes and change the sensitivity I can see it working pretty good. You would need a controller with enough knobs and toggles though.
RC FPV HEQ Gimbal Run (DJI O3) Magneticitist 2024-11-30 | Goggles V2 footage of the Big Rock 3s rig doing a loop through roots galore park. Still using the HEQ G-Port gimbal with the 3 pennies stacked on the back as a counterweight (plus torque setting increase on the yaw) and it still works pretty good. First half I forgot to lock the yaw so steering is funky. Getting that time of year again where I have to knock the dust off some FPV stuff.
Another 60V 700W HFSSTC Magneticitist 2024-11-24 | UJ4C0750334KS7.5kV 100pF doorknob resonant capPrimary 6 turns 10AWG 95cm wide 85cm tall Secondary 43 turns 24AWG 3.5cm wide 70cm tall19nF Cgs100pF Cds9.4ohm gate resistance
HFSSTC 11.5Mhz 60VDC 600-700W Magneticitist 2024-11-20 | Finalized tuning on one of the circuits I made based around Steve Ward's designs. This one easily wants to pull over 12A at only 30V or less with a certain coupling and gate bias so I back that down to about 3.5V using the pot. With a tiny drop of glass on the breakout point the arc can easily hit about 7-8 inches at 60V/600W. That's actually about all I really want from one of these but since it only had about 300V on the drain I could probably push this one to ~100VDC no problem. Without the glass, the soldering iron tip electrode is no longer viable beyond about 500W. UJ4C075033K4S SiC fet100pF 7.5kV RF ceramic doorknob + primary 6 turns (10AWG 7.5cm wide x 8.5cm tall)16AWG secondary (3cm wide x 3.5cm tall)100pF Cds12nF Cgs4.7ohms gate resistance (2S2P 1W 4.7ohm metal film resistors)
Half Bridge Flyback/TC Driver 20-200khz Magneticitist 2024-11-18 | This is basically just a screw-around bridge that just has a driver I can jumper between schmitt trigger feedback and variable frequency drive. An old single phase 120VAC VFD is a good foundation for the power section. -1400V 150A IGBT Brick-100A 3p full wave rectifier module -2x 200V 3000uF caps for doubler-2x UCC2732_ gate drivers and GDT (I like to use T37 cores like B64290L0647X037)-TL494 set for 50% duty and 22khz-200khz operation.I believe the TL494 frequency range was easy to trim by placing a particular value resistor across the frequency potentiometer to limit the max resistance it could reach. To go well below 20khz you first need to make sure your GDT can pass that low of a frequency properly, and your actual flyback core won't saturate at the voltages you're driving the primary. I found staying above 20khz to be pretty reasonable. I should also be able to drive a Tesla Coil with this so long as the secondary is under 200khz or so. Got too many random bricks I need to do something with so I figured I'd try a half bridge and eventually wind a high voltage transformer I can drive with this. Was also curious if the UCC's would struggle with just the one brick up to around 200khz. Seems like they can do it. This test transformer only had maybe 100 turns on the secondary but it was hissing pretty bad at only about 150V pk to pk on the primary. It could probably draw some pretty good arcs before crapping out if it was in oil. Ideally I would have about double the primary turns and run it at about 250-300V pk to pk.
More Steve Ward HFSSTC Testing Magneticitist 2024-11-16 | 4 iterations of Steve's circuits I've shown now where they are all basically going off the general values of the coils and using the recommended SMD capacitors (Wardpowerelectronics.com). This is pretty handy because I'm pretty familiar with those dimensions from previous circuits. I had several 75-100pF small doorknob caps so I basically have a bunch of these plasma flame builds now. I can say that if you stick to these general values then you shouldn't have too much trouble getting one of these to work at several hundred watts or more. Now over time I'll be messing with each of these to see if I can tune them better etc.I'm not 100% sure what was going on when using the MLCC's as the resonant caps but it's either the general design of how I soldered them, or they are just too badass and the circuit couldn't handle the initial oscillation current. That immediate failure was twice on the same circuit and one more time on a different circuit. The other problem could have been using a double sided copper clad board and having the caps sitting right next to the coil. I found that just building it so that the coupling of the secondary could be easily adjusted, it helps allow for wider voltage ranges without losing the switching too much. Maybe that is a lazy solution for wanting to run it at 50V or less relative to 100V or above, and still being able to maintain switching that will avoid a lot of mosfet heating at the time.
11Mhz SiC HFSSTC w/Glass Magneticitist 2024-11-12 | Some more runs of the most recent one I made. The plasma loading changes the network so you can see how this works with the flame burning the glass drawing less power than without. It's more of a stringy flame with the glass and much thicker without.Probably going to make at least a couple more of these, one being for 150-200V using a 1200V fet. Maybe after 4 or 5 of these and playing around with them I'll have a better idea of how to tune them at any given time.
HFSSTC Class E 11Mhz 350W Magneticitist 2024-11-11 | I killed my other 1200V fets by not noticing my resonant caps were destroyed, probably when I soldered them, so I went back to this 75pF doorknob even though I needed 100pF instead. I'm using the *UJ4C0750334KS fet now (oops I read it totally wrong off the package first, now corrected). I'm using the same general dimensions as Steve's circuit for the LC but have the 75pF cap and the primary is 7 turns instead of 6. The secondary is about 40 turns of 24AWG on a 1.25" former. I started with 100pF Cds, 14nF Cgs, and 4.7ohm series gate resistance. I ended up with no external Cds, 5nF Cgs, and the same 4.7ohms which I might increase a little. From there playing with the coupling helped me get it to switch nicely at 60VDC but it's still not quite pulling enough current. I'll need to add a few more nF on the gate then decrease the coupling a bit more, then hopefully this will put me in a region where I can hit about 400W at 60V and still have room to push 100V or so.
Steve Wards HFSSTC Circuits Magneticitist 2024-11-10 | Check out Ward's website covering HF stuff at wardpowerelectronics.comWhile the general operation of the circuit can be made to seem as if you only have a few variables to deal with, it's a lot more complicated than that. My attempted replication that immediately failed could have been for many reasons related to slight variations I made.When I get some more 1200V fets to play with I'll go for the replication that will take closer to 100-150VDC. The circuit I made using the 750V fet seems pretty resilient so far for just running at around 50V 9-10A. I have another I'm making using the same fet but I'll also test the UF3C120080K4S circuit when I get some wire for a secondary.
4.5Mhz PLL HFSSTC 5 Minute Run 250W+ Magneticitist 2024-11-03 | Driving a 650V SiC fet with the IXDD630 + SN74LV4046A for PLL feedback using a CT. It's a lazy mans approach with only the single drive stage using an IC and the final SiC fet power stage. The SiC is made to be able to take +15V/0V gate drive. My first run of this circuit at about 43V max was switching a little differently but it was still running cool at about 250W. I just didn't trust running it much over 40V. I have a single tiny 1nF cap on the drain of this fet and if I recall it had a lot more gate charge and drain capacitance than I anticipated. Maybe double that of the ones I'm going to start using. For that reason I decided to leave this at 4.5Mhz and just call it done after switching to 15V gate drive. While this can be a more complicated approach than the self oscillating circuits I find it to be more resilient and I can play around a little with the tuning at over 40VDC without worrying too much. I hit about 300V on the drain with 50VDC input. To keep the voltage down to about 60VDC or under I could try playing with the coupling to see if it could hit about 400W or more at that 60V.
H-Bridge Induction Heater + Enclosure 410g Copper Magneticitist 2024-10-25 | I had to run test this one more time after putting it all in the enclosure. It's still a little bootleg but overall will work out better. I ended up cutting some copper sheets to fit the capacitor and soldered them to the pipe to mount the cap that way. It ended up being more difficult to route everything than I thought and I needed all the extra space. Adding the bricks onto little cooling blocks saved a lot of space but when doing that you really need to make sure the water stays cold so the big fans need to stay running full blast. When combining my previous melts to remelt the full 400+ grams I only went up to about 1100W toward the last 5 minutes. The top started melting before the bottom and I had to add another piece in there to see the point at which it fell all the way through liquid and hit the bottom of the crucible.
H-Bridge Induction Heater Resonant Cap Test 1200W Copper Melt 87kHz Magneticitist 2024-10-19 | This was the last test run using the aliexpress resonant cap I just got before transplanting into an enclosure. Went from a ~3.3uF cap (1200V 330nF bank) at 74khz to 2uF (600V 650A) and adding 1 turn to the coil. This brought me to right around 85khz. After adjusting for a better bridge waveform it was around 87khz. It seems like running it at about 1kW got the crucible hot faster and even to copper melting point faster than before. The big resonant cap also feels like it's getting slightly warm at only 1200W so it will definitely need better cooling. The coupling transformer was not getting warm at all after shielding it from the crucible. I don't think the diameter of the copper pipe I'm using for the work coil is really big enough to be running anything over maybe 3-4kW. Or maybe it would still work by just moving more water that stays colder. In hindsight I probably could have gotten away with 1500W using the cheap induction cooker caps in a smaller build just to melt copper in a graphite crucible. Just putting a fan on them seemed to keep them from getting above warm. After melting down my first piece again and adding my leftover scrap pipe it came out to 170 grams. For the full pound or something like 2 pound capacity of the crucible with this tuning I can see it would automatically go up to maybe 1400-1500W and probably take something like 10-20 minutes all depending on the approach.
H-Bridge Induction Heater Copper Test 1200W Magneticitist 2024-10-18 | It's kind of cold out right now so instead of running my heater I'm just running this thing. I did eventually have to stop running it because it was starting to burn the wood next to the crucible due to an opening in the ceramic insulation. I had a suspicion that I was running this thing a little too far above resonance and tuned around with it but I ended back up at 74khz as giving me the best tank current. I turned it up to around 800W with some copper in it and let it sit there for about 10 minutes. After that time everything was pretty red hot but the copper was still rigid. Then I turned it up to about 900W and quickly noticed slight changes in the surface of the copper. It was getting there. I went ahead and just cranked it to 1200W and let it sit for a few more minutes and that's when I came back and saw it was melted. I'm not sure how long it actually took, it could have been pretty quick. Either way it was a nice liquid pool and it seemed to melt the copper down about as good as the aluminum at 700W. It would melt copper pipe almost instantly and the thicker bus bar copper just took a minute or so. This is giving me some confidence that maybe I could melt down larger amounts of copper at only around 1500W. I'll have to actually see how long it realistically takes on the next run cause I let this one sit at 800W for a while before upping the power. I have a nice industrial PC case I'm going to put this thing in but I really need to finish it first.. but I also don't really want to run any higher power unless I have it in the case. I might just lay some more ceramic wool down over the nearby components. The previous runs I actually had a 6A fuse in the variac which eventually popped and confused me cause I thought it was a 20A. I was at about 12A when it did. So that 6A fuse was sitting there red hot the whole time while I was melting aluminum haha. What I've learned so far is the bricks I'm using seem to handle 74khz fine and the induction cooker caps seem to handle 1200W just fine, but that's with a different tuning than I had before. What seems to struggle the most now is the water cooling. If I let the 24V fans run at full power I would guess it could keep the coil no more than lukewarm at up to around 2.5kW. Any higher than that I would assume I'd need to upgrade the water cooling even more by adding another water block and fans. I could swap out the large heatsink and replace it with small water blocks as well.
H-Bridge Induction Heater w/Pure Graphite Crucible 700W Magneticitist 2024-10-17 | I looked it up and realized I was using a silicon carbide graphite crucible before, which apparently works but just wasn't being heated up enough to help melt the aluminum all the way. This new crucible works much better and actually loads it down quite a bit. It's able to get red hot easily and then the aluminum inside also easily melts. The speed at which I could fill the crucible was kind of surprising. I can see how at twice the power or more it's just going to basically instantly melt down into the pool. Once the crucible gets hot enough at about 700W it seems like it could be filled to the top in just a few minutes. After cooling, the chunk was easily removed by just pulling it out. I can smell the presence of enough sulfur in the aluminum slag to make it smell like dookie so this is definitely not something I want to be doing without a lot of ventilation. There's basically more crap you end up with when melting aluminum alloys than I thought. Maybe one particular mix of alloy I added in there is what caused the sulfur smell because the other chunk I made about 1/3rd the size didn't smell at all.
H-Bridge Induction Heater Alu Nug ~600W Magneticitist 2024-10-15 | Looks like a lot of slag in that nug for the amount of aluminum I put in there so I'm guessing that's mostly from the foil. I should have a better sized crucible tomorrow to try again and hopefully fill more in it. I'll probably try 800W max for some time before waiting on the better resonant caps. I also tried some pieces of copper but it wasn't coming anywhere close to actually melting. I would need everything to get about twice as hot. It would get red hot but not pliable. While the Aluminum would increase the current draw, the copper did not.
H-Bridge Induction Heater Aluminum Test ~500W Magneticitist 2024-10-13 | Added another CT to give me feedback again so now this is running with PLL feedback, has the LC OCD, and also has the line input OCP.Barely melting a small aluminum heatsink here at about the 450-500W RMS region. It took about 10 minutes of running at that wattage before the fat crucible and small heatsink started to turn red hot. Another 5 minutes or so before the aluminum started to sink down on its own. I'm guessing it would take at least a couple more hundred watts of power for that to turn into a molten pool over some course of a few more minutes. I can imagine based off that, some input closer to 1kW would easily melt larger amounts of aluminum for me without needing tons of supply amps. I still have a test rig here with caps I don't want to push too hard and some 10A switches but otherwise everything seemed to run great with this setup. I'm glad I added the current trip because my tank OCP is not really tuned yet and there are times the input current will start shooting up pretty quickly. I haven't tried yet but I imagine I could detune the PLL quite a bit and be able to crank the input voltage a lot higher. It's nice to be able to somewhat melt aluminum at only about 10A but I bet I could get that 10A at closer to 100VDC input with detuning and actually melt it.When I add the legit resonant cap and retune everything I'll need to then play with the windings on the coupling transformer. It looks like I'd be hitting close to 20A+ at only 120VAC. That's the only way I'd ever push over 2kW on 120 at home but I'll try to limit to around 15A for 1800W since that seems like it would melt a lot of things no problem. I don't really have a need for melting steel aside from being tempted to make evil security bolts. Luckily I would like to melt some copper and that should be easier than steel.I saw the crucible on scamazon for like 10 bucks so I grabbed it, but it has a strange shape which tapers in toward the bottom and it barely jams into the coil with the ceramic wool around it. I went ahead and got another one which is perfectly cylindrical all the way through and isn't quite as a big. That should make melting aluminum a lot easier. When I get my resonant cap in I still actually won't be able to run it cause I don't want to add like 2 more turns. I just need to dbl check all the dimensions etc then figure out how to stack 2 in parallel for 4uF. These random bricks works but it's already sort of an undertaking building this thing and I'd like it to be able to easily do a couple hundred khz. Not really sure how I'll pull that off without stacking a bunch of 247's but I need to make it all work well enough to cram into this old computer case I'm going to use for the enclosure.
Easy Digital Overcurrent Protection + Precharge Magneticitist 2024-10-11 | Some basic current limiting with the help of a digital trip is pretty inexpensive these days. Being able to precisely set a trip current can save fuses, having to reset breakers, or possibly even semiconductors if the circuit can be opened fast enough. Make sure to add blocking diodes to any control coils. By latching the contactor the only logic needed is the isolated sensor board in the CT. If I didn't have the CT module already I would just use a regular CT and make another comparator circuit and trim it to switch. Since you can get one for less than 20 bucks that has the relay+trimmer+indicators that's a pretty good deal. Since I already have an OCP circuit for the induction heater portion itself, this contactor on the front end could just help me out if something goes wrong in the bridge since I wouldn't be using a 10A breaker anymore. Another more complicated but maybe more useful approach is to use a current transducer which can also be found on amazon for cheap these days. It's basically a sensor CT also but instead of relay logic it will give you a scaled output voltage or current. That could be used for more complex current control on an induction heater for example using the transducer signal to adjust the frequency. There are tons of ways to go about precharging circuits but I see the basic limiting resistor and shorting contacts used a lot. The other important bit there is that I have a bimetal thermal switch on the precharge resistor so if the relay contacts go bunk one day then the switch will close and then open up the main contactor. I will worry less about that using a more legit relay or small contactor rated for 20A or more. Either way the precharge is basically needed since I'm using a digital current trip and will have a big capacitor somewhere down the line in most circuits I'm powering. The delay circuit I'm using now is going to be replaced with something I can delay to about 1 second exactly.
H-Bridge Induction Heater & DRSSTC Driver OCP Test Magneticitist 2024-10-09 | I'll end up using Brian's approach eventually since he has already run tested it successfully for a while but for now I'm just playing around with it. Brian also pointed me to some awesome resonant caps I can put cooling blocks on so I have one of those coming. It's better to take this approach the same way I've done with other PLL drivers where I'm just adding a PLL feedback into a schmitt trigger feedback circuit that uses a flip flop. Basically Steve Ward's DRSSTC 1 driver with OCD with the difference being that it's not using an interrupter and always running in continuous wave unless being current limited. In my case that basically causes the current limiting to do more of a noisy 60khz chopping instead of one modulated with interrupter pulses at much lower frequency and limited on time. The amps go way down and the tank is limited but it still pulls something like 20% power switching erratically.
PLL Full Bridge Induction Heater Feedback Test Magneticitist 2024-09-29 | Almost ready to push higher power from mains on this thing. Might be able to actually do 1kW or close to it using the caps I've got on there. I'm using a random 1500:1 CT I pulled from some big VFD or something so it's a 60hz core but seems to work for now. I have the VCO set to swing from around 49khz up to about 73khz or so. That 73khz region is where it wants to run when I put aluminum or copper inside the work coil. With steel or no load it will run around that 63khz region I was setting it to before with the signal generator. Unless I change this thing around it looks like an issue I'll need to work out is current limiting the no load operation. From 120VAC the no load current would probably be a ton. Tank current is about 300A pk when I have my DC supply maxed at 10A.
Full Bridge Induction Heater Low Voltage Test Magneticitist 2024-09-27 | Got inspired to build this a while back from Brian @ SciTubeHD's videos. Pair of IXDD614CI's powering a GDT to drive the bricks. Not sure what I'm going to do about a resonant capacitor though so might have to do like others and stack a bunch of small ones on plates. So far it works ok with the driver not really being done yet so that's cool. I haven't decided on the best approach for feedback but I'll probably research more into what has worked for others before finishing it. I also didn't try to impedance match anything and just wound a length of wire I had on the toroid for the primary so it does seem like a toss together can kind of work. I never felt any heat accumulating on the primary wire at a tested max of 250W. The coil is about 2uH and the caps add up to around 3uF. That ballparks to the 65khz range. I basically just need to find some kind of crucible I can put in it for testing higher power to see if I'm able to do enough over 1kW at ~170VDC. Otherwise the idea is to just use the 3p rectifier and feed it 3p 208 for close to 300VDC. Either way at only 120VAC on a 15A circuit it seems like an easier approach to 1kW+ than a ZVS driver unless you already wound some high current step down transformer for it.
RC FPV Walksnail Avatar GT From Living Room Magneticitist 2024-09-23 | I tried to do some better longer range and obstruction tests with the GT but haven't had much luck so here's a test from the living room like I've done with other systems. It's not so much that everyone sucks but I always manage to park some place where some employee or resident just happens upon seeing what I'm doing. Sometimes I'll find a spot where it's hard for people to figure out who's driving but I have to sneakily bring it back to me eventually somehow. The more secluded the hiding spot the more immediate obstruction there is. The receiver is just mounted on one of those phone holders about 5ft off the ground pointed in a random direction. If you have a sunroof then you can also have it poking out of the car and feeding into a screen for better range etc. When I first tried this test all stock it didn't go so well. I started dropping a lot of signal the second I went into the drain pipe. I feel like I could have gone all the way in now if it wasn't flooded. It's not so much the VTX antennas but the ones I put on the receiver, which are two double AXII 2's and an iFlight Crystal HD patch set. The signal doesn't really bounce around like it does with the DJI. It either stays at 25Mbps, or drops off to 14Mbps, then eventually to 7Mbps where from there it might fluctuate down to 1-2Mbps before losing video completely. The car I'm using kind of sucks and I didn't want to get it stuck but it did about as well as the DJI the places I went. DJI can still go further but I can't easily just view it from a big screen like I can the Walksnail. I first had 800mW 1.3G setup to do this where I could just easily get audio and video from the living room onto a TV. It just didn't work like I wanted and noticed 2.5W 5.8G analog performed about the same. With the Walksnail I still get clear audio using the 1.3G alongside it, but I get much better video the whole time from the Avatar GT. I would flat out just do this with DJI alone but it still requires some app where just a screen won't work.
RC FPV HEQ G-Port 3-Axis Gimbal Fixed (No Jitter) Magneticitist 2024-09-08 | V2 Goggles footage showing only gimbal stabilization* Important thing I forgot to add.. currently there may be an issue when toggling FPV mode on. In my case I had forgotten about it because it works for me, but I turn FPV mode on by just momentarily switching the Home channel high. If I leave it on there is bad vibration in the gimbal. So basically it can't be switched back and forth between modes without cycling power. It starts up in Normal mode, but then momentarily triggering Home sets it to FPV mode and it stays there. There is a difference between this mode of operation and leaving the FPV mode switched HIGH though. When left high the yaw speed is increased. By doing a temporary trigger like I am, the yaw stays locked but the speed is not increased. I put this gimbal on another car and it doesn't have that problem. I leave FPV locked with the signal high.*I wanted to give this one last test a try cause I had a feeling balancing the gimbal itself better would make a difference. I noticed that when rocking the truck side to side, the gimbal would fling the camera with it. The gimbal itself is 'front heavy' with the camera installed. To balance it out I stacked 3 pennies together and taped them to the back of the gimbal. This made it so I could no longer slingshot the camera side to side. This got rid of all my jitter problems at least for everything but severely rough terrain which I still need to test. So far so good and it's great to not have to physically lock the yaw anymore. When testing just the new firmware alone without trying to balance anything I was noticing the jitter just going fast on grass, but didn't notice any on road. It seemed improved but didn't solve the problem completely. I have the torque for the Yaw set all the way up to 30,000 and both the Pitch and Roll are at 20,000, and combined with adding the pennies I get pretty butter smooth stabilizing the whole time.
3S Typhon FPV Goose Wars Magneticitist 2024-09-01 | I managed to win the war by not giving in to the urge to smash the goose demons top speed. I can't say if it's because I know some people were around or not.
Walksnail Avatar GT vs DJI O3 Test 2 (Ground Level) Magneticitist 2024-08-24 | Clip of Walksnail HDMI out to an IPS screen - youtube.com/watch?v=eNNo7Nl7z9cThe first test was using the stock Walksnail antennas on the receiver which are basically trash. I put Lumenier Double AXII 2's on the top and replaced the built in patches with iFlight Crystal HD patches I used to use for DJI. I could actually go around a building in front of me after that but it still wasn't beating the O3. I was also able to barely go around the building behind me so with good antennas and a good receiving location I can see how the range can be pretty decent without LOS. In my first test I mentioned the Avatar video not being as good as the O3 but now I can see it's at least equal or better. It's the crap skyzone goggles that give me the poor video. When using the HDMI out on the receiver into some decent IPS monitor the image looks crystal clear with good signal. It does get a little hard to see at below 7Mbps though. I would definitely put the GT on a better car especially since it can easily do HD to a screen and works good at night. The O3 still holds up better to me as far as the overall image quality vs signal and I can go around more things with it. If I wanted more absolute range on the ground I'd go with the O3. If I wanted more absolute range in the AIR, and more features as well as an overall easier process to it all I'd go with the GT.
HEQ Gimbal Final Test (new firmware) Magneticitist 2024-08-17 | This is one last test of the HEQ gimbal after I tried their new firmware. I ended up using their firmware to just help me go back to locking the yaw mechanically like I was before. It was the most reliable way for me to go about it without ever having to worry about random jitter. If this was just an on-road car then I would just outright use all 3 axes and set the holding torque higher. I also wanted to test how it would look driving around with a piece of thin polycarbonate sheet. It didn't work out so well because of the voltmeter reflection so I later put an angled cover over them to block that. I figured I would try to use a simple cover like that just to protect the gimbal from getting caught on things in the woods. The new HEQ firmware comes with more features but it also allows you to adjust the motor holding torque from standard 10000 value up to 30000. I tested the gimbal out again with the torque all the way up and noticed most of the jitter went away and it was pretty smooth. It was almost perfect until I started going over rocks and sticks etc. I got tired of messing with it and just went back to locking the yaw and using my own servo. I figured since they now allow me to reduce the torque on the yaw then I can worry less about locking it. I later realized there's probably a fix I have yet to try or maybe won't even try cause I don't care anymore. The gimbal is weighted such that the camera makes it front heavy. I think this is why it was struggling with the yaw a lot for me because it would easily sort of slingshot one way or the other. If the higher holding torque almost fixed it then maybe it just needs to be better balanced. I think I stacked a couple pennies or dimes on the back of it and thought it had about balanced out but I never tested that theory.
RC FPV Walksnail Avatar GT vs DJI O3 (Ground Level) Magneticitist 2024-08-12 | Goggles footage of each unit with bitrate. The subtitles are still a pain to deal with so I had to render each test separately and then render them again. See Test 2 video for better comparison.Walksnail:Avatar GT at max power with TrueRC LHCP Matchstick antennasAvatar HD Receiver, 25Mbps, 7 channels, stock antennasDJIO3 Air Unit at max power with Lumenier O3 Dual AntennaGoggles V2, 50Mbps, 3 channels, Lumenier patches and stubbiesTested two Avatar GT's for good measure and did notice the second one seemed to actually work properly, but did not seem to improve the overall range I had with the first, at least not enough to really notice I guess. Walksnail seems to have better looking colors which can give the impression of a sharper and clearer image, but I'd say the colors are about the only appeal. The image quality of the O3 is still far better in the V2 goggles because there are no jagged edges. I can't blame Walksnail for that though because the image it provides is very good with a good screen. Apparently the processing ability of the O3 is also still far superior as far as I can tell because it doesn't seem to get as hot, and still manages to go behind a lot more obstacles before losing signal. With the stock Walksnail I get the impression that I wouldn't want to go over 150 meters out because then I might lose signal just going around a car or something. I would say it's still reasonable enough to where I could drive around at night some places without worrying about it. I'll do a final test on it with better antennas on the receiver to see if it helps but there's no way it's going to outperform the O3. When it comes to tests in the air I'm pretty sure the GT is only beating the O3 because it has no hard range cap.
Big Rock FPV DJI O3 + G-Port Gimbal Test 3 (4K 60fps) Magneticitist 2024-07-08 | Here's a higher quality view of how the HEQ gimbal is working. This is a test that is giving the gimbal a really hard time, and not what I would say the thing is intended for. That said, it seems like companies are not far off from completely solving these issues. Maybe Caddx already has. You can look in the rear view mirror to see what an unstabilized view looks like. I realized that the natural vibration of this truck when moving fast on road or at any speed off road likes to produce a good amount of side to side movement. Since I've locked the Yaw axis that basically just means that I have to deal with any Yaw vibration as I've prevented the gimbal from trying to do anything about it. Unlocking the Yaw does greatly help reduce all of the vibration, but then it allows that random hard twitching to come in at times and it's hard to steer properly with it compensating. Without adding some type of cage over the gimbal though, it's over with from one crash. The gimbal and air unit are both likely going to be destroyed. I worry less about that now though since my eyes are able to deal with the image a lot better.This is about the third time I drove the gimbal around like this for about 10 minutes each giving it some rough terrain. You can hear how bad it must be bouncing around given the noise the radio is making banging against the truck. I haven't had any problems with it so far, at least as long as the gimbal is not disturbed while running. If it gets hit with a stick or something and gets thrown off balance, it seems like its able to correct itself if you just take it to level ground and let it sit there for a minute.When I call out on the radio asking for Squatches you can actually see the pitch on the gimbal going a little nuts. hmm..
RC Car/Truck FPV DJI O3 Stabilizing Gimbal Test (HEQ G-Port) Magneticitist 2024-07-06 | The bad vibrations caused by FPV driving are what turn a lot of people away from it cause it can be nauseating. Stabilization technology is getting closer to being able to completely solve that problem. Shout out to Chadd Rains for showing off this gimbal and testing it in his latest video. It indeed works pretty good with some major issues to work out. I noticed the same jitter issues and it becomes much worse in FPV mode. It's manageable at slow speeds but that's not going to cut it. I'm not sure firmware updates could totally fix that given the gimbal is having to do a lot more work on an RC car. The 'fix' I went with actually worked better than I thought it would on the Big Rock. That thing just has too much jitter for me to think any gimbal could stabilize it completely but it handled it well. At the higher speeds I could see some bad vibration come back but that might actually be due to the slack in the pan servo I didn't get rid of before the test. Aside from these issues which are probably mainly at the ground level, the gimbal itself is an impressive piece of engineering. It's pretty small, has a nice build quality, stabilizes well (when not jitter bugging), and is extremely easy to configure using their application. After getting it wired up properly you can get it all updated and configured in just a couple minutes or less. Doesn't take any special gimbal knowledge or anything, but the downside to that is you do not have full control over all the limits and what not. You're setting control modes for 3 channels and that's about it. The second test showed that I was able to get a 'locked' FPV mode without too much jitter in the Yaw until I really started to give it trouble. This truck produces a ton of bad vibration when it gets up to speed because of the tires. I'm surprised the gimbal can actually keep up to some extent and make it bearable. On a buggy with really smooth suspension I feel like it would work almost perfectly on or off road. Maybe some other option will come along that proves to work flawlessly but until then I'll stick to using this setup with the annoying tape caveat. If they ever fix the issues with a firmware update I can just change a couple connectors around and use the then disconnected pan servo to just trim the front facing alignment. As far as mechanically locking the gimbal Yaw there are probably a ton of different ways to go about it that don't involve tape. Some type of small locking clamp for example.
Another Plasma Donut Circuit Magneticitist 2024-06-27 | Just trying to make the donut on another HF oscillator circuit of mine since I didn't have any more knob capacitors like I thought. It had a much smaller diameter primary and was still even able to make the donut, but it was only a small one that hugged the windings. The fields were too small and concentrated. After making the coil wider it still made the donut but it was also a little too hot to run for long periods since I don't want to damage the glass. I can probably just try to tune the thing to run at less current but before that I might as well also play around with modulating it also. While I don't want to make it seem easier than it actually is, I will say that I was able to get this one going without a lot of effort just like the first one.. but it did take a little more tweaking. It was difficult to maintain a donut on this one when increasing the primary inductance too much and leaving all other values the same. It likes about ~18mhz with a 100pf tank cap. I've also got this copper strip on the gate running over with a 90 in it to the cap that also could be making a difference. I think at the time I first made it I was playing around with trying to shift the phase relation of the gate and drain voltages. I'm also using 1/8" copper tube for the other circuit and just solid 12awg on this one.
Big Rock 3s FPV Frisbee Park Journey Magneticitist 2024-06-27 | Testing various things here:My crossfire tx has been doing some strange little twitches now and then so I needed to see if I could still rely on it going further than usual. Still holds up at least on this truck.This was in 95+ degree weather so doing a 20 minute run is a good test of both the O3 Air Unit and the Copperhead 10 ESC. Big Kaiju tires and the 13T pinion are still working for me and it seems like I could even put bigger tires on if I wanted. That park has a fairly large wooded area and it seems like the only reason I wouldn't be able to roam all of it is because it's not flat enough. I put a Baofeng radio on the truck so I could talk to it. I set my TX power to low (not sure what that is) but it didn't come through clear when I said "what's up" to the guy I saw walking by the playground. I think I jump scared the crap out of him anyway. I'm guessing with high TX power it would have worked but not sure about at the full range of the truck. I've tested those radios before with the stock whip antennas and they seemed to work fine with a lot of unreasonable obstruction up to about 500-600 meters.The Lawmate RX I'm now using on 1280Mhz also gave me good audio for the whole run except for a couple areas with the most tree obstruction. This was with an analog cam also hooked up so even though I wasn't looking at a screen to see the video feed I could assume what it would look like. Fairly clear video up until I hit the woods, then in the deeper parts of the woods looking like crap. I'd say the Lawmate still did ok though since the antenna is sitting pretty low on the truck, and my receiver antenna is just the small CP sitting on the dash.
Typhon 3s FPV DJI 03 + 1280Mhz Audio (Lawmate RX Test) Magneticitist 2024-06-24 | So with my DJI rigs I'm basically using RMRC transmitters at 1280Mhz just to get live audio, but my DJI video range would still always exceed my 1280 audio range a little bit. I finally found a Lawmate RX-1260 for cheap on ebay cause I kept reading old comments on forums saying "Get a Lawmate." For the first time my audio range exceeds my video. In these tests there was no audio breakup I could hear at any point. My only chance of that before was a wide open area with little obstruction. Either the Lawmate has a much higher sensitivity or the 6+ receivers I've tried before were all trash. RMRC advertises a custom tuner with a better SAW filter but I had to strain to really notice differences in reception between it and any other random lookalike receiver. I also tested the 1280 video using the Lawmate and while it was better, I still consider the O3 far superior. It still seems to penetrate/bounce better when it comes to giving clear image. The noise rejection makes that possible even though the 1280 wavelength has superior penetration. So the Lawmate receiver makes it possible for me to mod a setup to throw less noise from the fans and allow me to hear speaking voices at range. Right now the fans drown it out making it hard to hear unless someone is speaking loudly into the microphone. With the Lawmate and a quieter setup I can put another radio on the truck for 2 way communication.So after some months of testing I still believe DJI digital is still far superior to 1.3G for FPV. It seems like 1.3G can get impressive range with expensive patches and big wide open areas.. but then if you just wanted to sit in the car with a small omni and drive around, you're probably getting a fraction of the range and there will be a lot of noise in the video much of the time. I have enough trouble as it is driving fast with HD video, so these guys hauling ass with analog feeds at long ranges are pretty much just throwing up prayers that there isn't some small thing they don't see on the road. The only downside to the DJI still seems to be no audio but now I feel like I have that all figured out. I still use the same portable RX+speaker setup that I bring with me when doing DJI FPV but just swapped out the RMRC receiver with the Lawmate. I'm also going to try one last TX that's 2W max, so maybe paired with the Lawmate I might finally get some 1.3G FPV video going that's actually worth it.
Plasma Donut + PWM Magneticitist 2024-06-22 | One more tinker session with the donut after remembering they run pretty good modulated. I think on the cheaper bulbs which were easy to form self interrupting donuts it was easy to get some bit of clear audio at really low volume. It was never good for more than basic midi or visual modulation from what I remember but IDK for sure. I did find the bluetooth module and tried that for a while but forgot I couldn't play the music and record videos at the same time without finding my other damn phone. It worked as a cool way to get the donut to dance with the music but other than that it was hard to get any decent audio going. Maybe midi would work ok. Either way I just find it more beneficial to just modulate the input via both frequency and on time with any given donut to sort of change around how it's acting at the time.
Plasma Donut + Flickstart Magneticitist 2024-06-22 | More playing with this xenon globe after I cleaned it a little. I must have forgot to buy the caps cause I don't have any more for tuning right now. Just did what I could to this circuit and left it alone for the time being. I was able to modulate the cheap bulbs to get cool plasmoid effects but IDK if that's going to work for this globe. That will be one of the next things I try just using a buck on the front I can PWM various ways.
Xenon Plasma Toroid ~15Mhz Magneticitist 2024-06-20 | Purchased the globe from LJQSTONE store on aliexpress. Next time I need to wash that damn thing so my dirty ape hands aren't getting it all dirty. Finally got one of these though thanks to another user with the heads up. Since I have some leftover copper tube from what I used to make an induction heater work coil I'll try to use that as the primary after I rework this thing. I first had this LC tuned to give me some pretty good RF power at the 20V region using the smaller diameter. After changing it up there was considerably less RF power it was throwing but it still managed to get the toroid going so that's cool. You don't necessarily need a very powerful circuit basically. You'll need it to have a big or active cooled heatsink, or tune it well to run it for long periods though.I'm just going to use my TC gun but I'm sure there are other easy ways to kickstart these.
QCWDRSSTC 370Khz Miniblocs More Testing Magneticitist 2024-06-19 | This is the build using a full bridge of miniblocs and a drsstc driver with PLL feedback. Combined with a buck on the front and 10,000uF of caps + Finn Hammer's arduino ramp generator it's a dual resonant QCW with crappy tuning so far. I been on this thing for a while kind of hoping I'd land on a specific tuning that got me a big enough improvement to be happy about. That sort of happened with my first one, but then going back and playing with it I just wasn't too impressed with it. The ramps weren't as clean as what I'd recently been used to and there was a sound in the arcs I didn't like. I don't have any of those problems with this build but the arcs aren't even as long at higher voltage. At first I would notice longer arcs at lower voltages, combined with no appreciable increase at higher voltages. So then I thought I had an idea about the tuning to where I'd be looking at shorter arcs at the same lower voltages, but they would increase in length appreciably at the higher voltages. I never actually saw that outcome to any acceptable degree. I'll probably take it through one last stage of tuning where I try to see how it runs at 300VDC ramps. Right now it's basically just a random primary length and cap bank tap I stuck with cause none of it really made much difference anyway. I think I'm at like 15nF right now. Could be the resonant caps but IDK without replacing them. Adding the bigger topload and tuning it didn't make any positive difference. Neither did trying lower or higher primary impedance. No matter how I changed it I could always find the tuning region again and tweak it, but never end up with anything better than I had at first. If I can't improve it I'll have to scrap it and rebuild since it's too heavy right now anyway.
Big Rock 3s FPV Exploring Magneticitist 2024-06-18 | Nice vacant area to drive around. O3 runs out of storage @ and goggles footage takes over from there. I actually shrunk myself down for this one and drove the truck around in person. Not gonna do that again cause I almost got snatched up by a hawk.
Big Rock 3s FPV Squatch Returns Magneticitist 2024-06-17 | Sneaky bastard came back recently and it almost looks like it started a new life here. Bold of it to just set up camp right out in the open like that. I also got a couple UV-5R's for putting one on a car. Works pretty good for transmitting audio to the car wherever it might go. Would work well for someone who has 1.3G working properly. Just need to route your build to where the fans are powerful enough to keep the VTX cool but also minimize the noise. It sort of drowns out the live audio for me where it's hard to hear talking. I can probably filter it out a little bit where 1Khz and above has a dropoff but better engineering would probably do it.
Typhon 3s FPV Night Drive Magneticitist 2024-06-16 | Another night test with the O3 Air Unit @4K 60fps. I guess so long as you are in an area with street lighting it's not bad at all. Nearby surfaces for light to reflect etc and it's pretty easy to see. It's when I go out somewhere with little to no lighting that I feel like the O3 needs a legit 10W flood light to see well.
RC FPV Analog 5.8G More Testing Magneticitist 2024-06-16 | I'm going to set up my HyperGo 1/16 with a more sturdy rig that I can flip around no problem. It's just a single axis servo gimbal now with front and rear cams. To save battery I used a DPDT relay to switch power and signal between cameras instead of just the signal wires. This prevents an instant clean switch but I'd rather do it that way than possibly stress the VTX's 5v supply trying to power 2 cams at the same time (since it's like 90+ degrees now).The video is coming from the DVR on skyzone goggles and it's using the 2 modules at the same time for 4 antennas. I have 2 patches and 2 omnis. So far the best setup I have found is using Lumenier double AXII's on the receiver and the TrueRC Matchstick on the transmitter.
Big Rock 3s FPV and Rocks Magneticitist 2024-06-16 | As expected, piles of rocks served as heavy signal obstruction. Rarely can the Big Rock limbo under a fence though. I'm still kind of stuck on the fact that these huge tires can power through almost anything, but I also have a hard time seeing clearly most of the time. Grass is about the only surface that looks ok. Everywhere else those big fat nubs on the tires just create too much vibration. I need to find tires the same size with different treads I guess.
Typhon 3S FPV Parking Deck Magneticitist 2024-06-16 | Just more riding around.So far this Typhon has a 17T pinion upgrade and 140A ESC + 3200kv sensored motor. I also added metal diffs and a metal driveshaft. That works well with 3s but I think it might even handle a 20T pinion without overheating. It seems to run fine in the 90 degree weather on the 17T full throttling it and riding around on grass. IDK about for 30 minutes straight though.
Typhon 3s FPV Spotting Material Snatchers? Magneticitist 2024-06-16 | Seeing these guys out there is hilarious to me because usually I'm the one with the bad luck. Can't find some place to just park where there isn't some weird stuff going on right next to me that makes me not want to put goggles on. What are the odds these guys are out there at the same time early Sunday morning with a guy driving an RC car around that has an HD camera on it haha. Makes me wish I had a siren on the car so I could chase them out.
QCWDRSSTC Miniblocs 420khz First Test Magneticitist 2024-05-17 | This is how it runs from initial JavaTC tuning. Since I know my other build is pretty similar in almost every way then I get the impression I can be expecting the same output at a little more voltage.I remember my first build was hard to tune, like it was counterintuitive or something but I really can't remember. I just eventually landed on decent tuning. If I don't see anything I don't like in the waveforms on this one at these voltages then I'll probably play around with the PLL a little before shielding it and going higher in voltage. If it gets too annoying I'll just go back to secondary feedback and crank it.
QCWSSTC Miniblocs Test 300khz 100VDC Magneticitist 2024-05-14 | Swapped the Fuji 2MB1200U2F 1200V 200A bricks with these IXXN110N65B4H1 110A miniblocs. Was more difficult to route everything using those miniblocs but I think they'll be worth it. The total gate charge on one is the same as a 247 package 60N65 I like to use. Aside from the current capability they are otherwise fairly similar switches that take up less total space.I had to rewind my GDT a few times trying different numbers of turns and tighter coupling in order to get a halfway decent waveform with 10 ohm gate resistors. Tidying up the wiring might further improve it but these gates were not liking that GDT. Or it could be something with the driver output I've yet to discover. I've had good enough luck with similar gate waveforms in the past so I'm just going to run with what I've got now. The miniblocs will allow me to run higher frequency around 400khz whereas the bricks would probably start switching too crappy. Either way I'm pretty happy with the performance of those bricks at 300khz. They just seem like big dumb sturdy switches that can take a beating and still get the job done even if they aren't the most ideal. To be fair they are also pulls from industrial equipment so they are probably not like what someone might get off aliexpress. The miniblocs are not made for 400khz either, but they should at least be able to switch that fast without a lot of headache.I'll have to put the smaller topload back on the coil to see if I can get it back up to around 350khz at least, then try to wind a primary that can utilize my MMC with enough parallel banks to make it beefy enough. Might end up with a lower L and higher C than I really want.
QCWSSTCs More Testing (200A Bricks 300khz + 120A 247s 450khz) Magneticitist 2024-05-09 | I bought 100 10nf capacitors I plan to wire up in something like 5S 10P for 20nF or add another S for around 16nF. I added a generic phase lead on the schmitt trigger to see how I could get it to run without PLL feedback but decided I was better off with the PLL given how much the arc loading probably changes the phase shift. Tuning the phase lead at max voltage is probably the way to do it but I can't hit that with the primary streaking anyway. Going to eventually convert this over for 120VAC line input. I'll just use a couple transformers to isolate my control voltages and double the 120VAC for about 340VDC into the bus caps. I'll probably have to use a basic precharge circuit for 20,000uF. You will trip a breaker trying to slam 170VDC pk onto that so I have a 3p contactor on the input that closes the line input to the bridge rectifier when control power is on. For precharge I just need to bypass that contactor with some resistance and only have it close (bypassing the resistor) when the bus reaches a certain voltage threshold. To run it in any kind of mode all I'd have to do is bypass the buck circuit after the caps for smoothed or switch out the buck entirely for unsmoothed. The smaller 4s battery powered setup looks like it could hit 3ft arcs with a little higher ramp voltage. I tried winding the ZVS transformer so that it could charge about 6000uF to around 200VDC tops pretty quickly from a 16V supply. If I ever find a perfect enclosure for it I'll rework it using smaller caps and it will be pretty awesome. I think a lot of these switches are able to handle 1-2ms or so of some incredible peak power and since the arcs are fairly slow in the BPS and still satisfying, you can probably get away with a whole lot with some small ~60-100A switches. The next one I want to build will probably be real small and use 200V mosfets for about 150VDC bus voltage and maybe 100V ramps tops. That one can also be 4s powered and I'm thinking somewhere around 1-2mhz.
QCWSSTC PLL ~300khz 200A Bricks Magneticitist 2024-04-30 | I first had an issue with very low output even up to 100V and this was because of my feedback. Using the PLL circuit helped resolve that problem and now it works similar to the first build I made using the dual full bridge of 60N65's. I forgot to just add phase lead to the driver but that would also probably work. I wouldn't think the extra 90ns or so of delay the extra stage of drivers I added would make that big a difference but maybe it does. I can't say it runs good at 300khz, but it runs. The bigger topload also helped. Aside from that actually shielding the PLL circuit completely was also necessary. I think since this build ended up so heavy I'm just going to leave it as a screwaround rig and use the miniblocs on another build I try to make smaller. I guess I can try to wind a lower frequency secondary and set this one with the bricks up for primary feedback at ZCS and try to really push it. I might also just hard switch it higher and higher just to see what happens. I'll learn my lesson for the next one and actually source an enclosure before I start building it. Plan will be about 15,000uF in smaller caps. I think I'll also try a small GDT for the buck this time so its driver is completely isolated and I'll have some negative drive.The brick PN is 2MB1200U2F-120 and I got them from old VFDs.
QCW Driver + Bricks First Test ~300khz Magneticitist 2024-04-24 | So far not a success like I was hoping but I guess I can't be mad cause it does actually work for the most part. Probably should be testing this driver out on a smaller bridge or at a much lower frequency. I just need to figure out if there is some issue with the driver or it's just not cutting it with this full bridge at ~300khz. I think first I'll try replacing the bricks with the minibloc bridge and see what happens. If it still seems to run crappy I'll have to start messing with the driver circuit. I can also try to steal a larger coil I have which might run at about half the frequency. There is also a chance I just need to shield everything better and solve the mystery popping problem and then just crank the voltage up a lot higher. Not really sure why streaking was becoming such a big issue at times since the coupling is pretty loose and it's just running regular single resonance with secondary feedback. I know interference is a problem though because I grounded out my OCD input and it will still trigger if I set the pot too low.
Tesla Coil Driver for QCW Magneticitist 2024-04-23 | Check out stevehv.4hv.org/drsstc_design.htm to understand this driver better. There is nothing specifically catered to QCW with this driver, it's just what I'm using because it has always worked well for me. It's also a lot less expensive to build than buying a UD driver or clone. I'm using an A3120 at the interrupter input. It's powered from the 15v rail and uses a 270 ohm resistor in line with the emitter which is powered straight from the interrupter output. The output from the opto gets clamped to ~5V through the 1K resistor into input 5 of the schmitt trigger just like in Steve's circuit. The gate drivers I'm using instead of just UCC2732X's are the IXDD614CI's. They seemed to work fine for my dual H-bridge of the 60N65's. If you really wanted to beef it up you could use the 30A drivers at 24V and ratio the GDT. I'm going to try a 5A switching regulator at 18V to power the IXDD's. The CT's will also be small T37 cores. There are a couple smaller variations of QCW I'm going to try both half and full bridge but I'll just use what's basically Steve's 'Mini SSTC' driver and not worry about OCD. Got to do the finishing touches on wiring this one up and will probably give it a test run next couple of days.
Typhon 3s FPV Lot Surfing Magneticitist 2024-04-22 | Put the stock tires back on cause the Hoons weren't absorbing bumps enough. I think I'll save them for if I convert it over to 4s and drop the pinion down a little. Wanted to hit these lots early in the morning to try to scope it out before driving around people, but somehow I forgot that's not possible where I live. Also started to rain a little but it wasn't too bad. The recording stopped and didn't show it all but right at the end some white VW had pulled up beside me and just sat there looking at me for like 5 minutes. I eventually drove up to it and stared back with the Typhon doing the wheel wave and it finally left. I think it was the same car I passed on the road earlier and it started following me. That's where the new goggles would come in handy if they do have both FPV view and let you see your immediate surroundings. I had to take the goggles off just to make sure a crazy person wasn't going to make me send them to Jesus. Signal was pretty strong but also fluctuating now and then which is why I'd want to scope out the full distance with no one around. Water droplets will also just happen to land right in the camera. Tried putting rain-x on it but it didn't do anything. Sitting so low to the ground it feels like a car could back out into me accidentally so IDK if like the whole parking lot thing.
