Coyote's Pelicase Broadcast GS

[Coyote]

Nice, apart from the endless hours you've put in, how much has this all cost?

I dunno :)

The screen and HDD was part of my old laptop but lets say you wanted to buy it all :

HDD - £15
Acer screen - £28
Pi - £30
CCTV DVR - £30
Video card - £20
HDMI Switcher - £20
HDMI Splitter - £9
Panel Mount USB wire - £2
RCA Panel mounts - £8
TrackPad - £20
Arduino Nano - £3.55
Relay Board - £2.79
Buck Converter - £2.80
HDMI Leads x 4 - £16
SD Card - £10
4xz Zippy 5000mah 3S - £112
Other bits like LEDs Etc - £20

So a grand total of £349.14 if you had the case and bought everything ( which I didn't I just used spare parts )

It cost me £154 to actually build it.

[Lola]

That's really good I think. Some 7 inch screens with a vrx  cost that much lol.

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[Coyote]

Its not finished yet :)

I have to enable it to receive FPV streams, so to do this there are two options

1) Plug a spare ( if there is one ) feed of the pilots receiver into the RCA connection on the box

The problem with this is the wire lengths would be crazy as everyone will be spaced apart

2) Make a receiver module and transmit each stream on 5.8GHz to the module.

To do this I will be making 4x small self contained 5.8GHz 25mW transmitters which attach inline to the pilots main feed so no spare video outputs required, this is for people on 1.2GHz, 2.4GHGz if they are on 5.8GHz already then the receiver module simply receives their feed anyway.

So I am waiting for parts but as the batteries for the receiver module turned up and a few of the receivers I could begin.

The receivers I will be using are the RC832 x4



Battery wise I went with 3S 3P Li-ion which will give me 10.2ah. I chose this so the receiver module will have the same runtime as the GS so over 12 hours. 9.6ah hits the 12 hour so I have some to spare.



The same battery monitor will be used as was used in the GS case :



So in my break I designed a simple module bay, it will house the 4 receivers each facing out, the batteries will be housed on the inside bay, the lid will house the battery monitor in it. The base will incorporate a thread for mounting to a tripod : 

[Coyote]

The design I am happy with, but then running it through Simplify3D showed 28 hours for the base alone to print !!!!

OK some fine tuning of the way it's designed needed :)



Hollowed out the 4 legs, removed the box inside as it will take me 5 mins to cut 4 pieces out of ply instead and separated the top ring so no support material needed. Over 18 hours of printing saved by doing those few tweaks.

[pk-surfing]

A tidy 3D model, are you printing it overnight or while you're at work tomorrow?

[Coyote]

I've just ordered the filament so will have to wait, I'll do it at work though for the longer print.

[Coyote]

OK so started on the receiver pod, first cut the 5mm ply plates and covered with carbon film :



Started printing all the bits out, lots of hours printing :



The plates get glued to the inside, so the receivers can mount like this :



The two triangular sections are to let the large plugs through, then grip the thin cables inside the battery bay in the middle :



Tripod thread was fit and glued in place :



This is how it will look, only 2 receivers in so far ( more coming )



Waiting on 2 more receivers, 2 more Li-ion holders turning up and the battery health meter, then I will start wiring it up and making the battery holder which will sit inside.

[Lola]

That's coming along nicely 🙂🙂

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[Coyote]

OK finished part 2 of 3 of this GS :)

I got my hands on another 2 receivers so I could then wire them all up and make a bottom base that hides the wiring and neatens it all up. I then fit 4x RCA sockets to connect the video signals to the case.

I made the battery pack up from 9x Li-Ion 18650 3400mah cells. This can be found in this thread

It fits nicely inside with room to spare, I could have made the whole unit I tiny bit smaller width wise but I won't bother.



I then tested the power consumption of all 4 units on as well as the battery health meter and was disappointed that it actually takes 888 milliamps :(



I had factored in 800ma so that for 12 hours I would need  9,600ma of battery

Being 888ma instead meant that 12 hours of use takes it to 10,600ma so over my packs 10,200ma rating, bugger ! Nevermind, 11 hours + is enough I guess :)

So that is that part done, just the transmitters x4 to design and make now and then that's that done and some field testing required :)

[Lola]

Looks cool bud!

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