I’m a big FPV Fan when it comes to planes. When I saw the Traxxas TRX4 Sport come out I thought, what a perfect platform for a FPV RC Car. I put a FPV Camera on a Traxxas X-maxx and that was fun but very scary. Too fast! I feel like crawlers are the perfect platform.Because they are more scale when it comes to speed.
First time I thought a nice small micro VTX and 1 cell battery would be perfect. So I bought 2 sets. One for my truck and one for my sons truck.
Here is the design. 
The VTX (video Transmitter) slid in front
And the little 1s lipo in the back
So we put these on the roof of the TRX4 Sports with Velcro and tested them out. It was a blast. I really liked the view from the camera being on top of the truck because we had a great view of the front hood, which made us feel like we were actually in the trucks. We had limited range but they were a ton of fun and very immersive.Battery life of the camera’s was not real long, especially if compared to the battery life of these trucks (which is like an hour). We started being a little more aggressive with our trucks and we were rolling over quite a bit. Not long after that one of the antenna’s snapped off.
I knew I wanted to take this a step further. There were a couple problems I saw.
– Visibilty : I always knew I wanted to put the camera on a servo to let me look left and right.
– backing up : backing up blind is was hard and I wanted the ability to look behind me to see if my son was on my tail.
– Battery life. I needed it to be directly tied into the battery system of the truck.
– Range : I knew a real full sized Video transmitter would be a huge help.
– radio range : Stock traxxas transmitter did not have hardly any range. (most of the time you are standing right next to the truck, but I wanted to be able to sit in a chair and explore.
So I decided to start designing again.
I found the smallest runcam camera available the runcam nano
Then I Bought a nice 200mw VTX and made a custom mount for it.
The mount can be screwed down.
Also made it so a small fan will fit in the mount, need to keep the vtx cool
I am a big 3d printing nerd and I love designing custom 3d printed parts. So I designed a cool camera mount that would sit on top of a roof mounted servo.
Here is my design
I had to reprogram the servo’s to be able to turn 180 degrees. That way I could look all the way right then all the way left.
I wanted to install a back up cam. Something that I could use to see if my buddies were following me and get me out of a pickle.
Here is my design
I liked the idea of seeing the bed of the truck from the
camera, that way it would give me some perspective to back into tight spots.
I now needed a video switcher to switch camera’s from the front to the rear.
This is the one I found. A 3 channel video switcher that can be switched remotely by plugging it into an aux port on the receiver I didn’t want anything taped to the body so I designed a 3d printed mount for this.
The mount fits the switch perfectly and it can be screwed on from the back.
Radio Range and available channels was a problem. I needed to have more channels to control my video switcher and my panning servo. I decided to buy a Spektrum DX5c This radio is easy to program (shares programming style from the airplane radios that I am very familiar with.
The first time I went to plug everything in I was very frustrated, because there was a lot going on, and I don’t like the complexity of putting the body on and trying to plug everything in. In giant scale r/c airplanes it can be a pain plugging in all the servos when you put on your wings. So I decided to buy a triple servo harness.These make it real easy, you plug one plug to connect 3 servo’s.
Now I have one plug for all my connections to the body. I love it !!!
After trying some rock crawling I soon realized it was not easy to go up a steep rock because my camera pointed straight up to the sky. I couldn’t see a thing. Made it nearly impossible to climb. I decided I needed a 3rd camera, I needed to see when I was climbing and see what I was about to run over (rocks ect…) I designed a pretty sweet bumper cam mount. Using the same nano runcam. The mount fits where the wench was and takes very little modifying to fit. You screw it in using exhisting holes.
This was a game changer.We are now able to see when climbing steep hills and rocks. So so much fun.
Ultimately this is the funnest with a buddy, that is why I built 2 of these trucks, one for my son and one for me. So far I am yet to break anything. The top mounted camera mount is super robust, and If the mount does break it is easy to just print a replacement.
Check out a video of the FPV experience in the trucks.
Let me know what you guys think. I am in the process of adding lights to the truck that will be able to be switched on and of with the transmitter. should make for some fun realistic night crawling.
Here is a part list of all I put in these trucks. Kinds of went overboard. But I don’t know how not to.
3 - Runcam Nano Cameras
https://www.getfpv.com/runcam-nano-fpv-camera.html
1 - 200 mw VTX
https://www.getfpv.com/lumenier-tx5g2r-mini-200mw-5-8ghz-fpv-transmitter-with-raceband.html
1 - Lumenier AXII Stubby 5.8GHz Antenna
https://www.getfpv.com/lumenier-stubby-axii-5-8ghz-antenna-rhcp.html
1 - 3 CH RC Video Switch
https://www.getfpv.com/3-ch-rc-video-switch.html
1 - Maclan 30mm HV Turbo Fan (high Voltage)
https://www.amainhobbies.com/maclan-30mm-hv-turbo-fan-mcl4016/p506552
2 - On Off Switch Connector Plug JST Male Female Wire For RC Li po Battery
https://www.ebay.com/itm/192640714684?ViewItem=&item=192640714684
1 - Triple Servo Harness - 6" Male/6" Female
http://northwestrc.com/Triple-Servo-Harness--6-Male6-Female_p_206.html
1 - HS-5245MG Servo
https://www.amainhobbies.com/hitec-hs5245mg-digital-metal-gear-mighty-mini-servo-hrc35245s/p10550
1 - Diatone 5V 2Amp Voltage Regulator
https://www.getfpv.com/diatone-5v-2amp-voltage-regulator.html
You will also need various servo extensions and wire.
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