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244 Bu il d Y o ur O w n Q u a d c o p t e r

Figure 9.19 Simple GCS.

screen. The receiver, LCD display, BOE controller, and battery easily fit into the aluminum
case shown in Figure 9.19.
A moving-map display from a laptop running Google Earth can show the quadcopter’s
position in real time. Relying on this display would be the ultimate way to improve
operational awareness. However, this mode of operation would likely involve another
operator who is available to continually input the latitude and longitude data that was being
sent from the quadcopter. It would be too much of a workload for a single operator to both
control the quadcopter and enter data, analogous to texting while driving.

Economy Video System

The FPV system creates excellent, high-definition video, but it is quite expensive. This
section looks at a much less costly alternative that can provide adequate real-time video but
does not have video-recording capability; however, I will discuss how such a capability can
be provided for at the receiving end. This economy system is typically one-fifth to one-sixth
of the cost of the GoPro system. Figure 9.20 shows the camera-transmitter module used in a

Figure 9.20 The RC310 camera-transmitter module.