Sky Drone FPV + Oculus VR demoed by Sky Drone Team

SkyDrone_aero

Junior Member
The Sky Drone team has demoed their Sky Drone FPV system with the Oculus VR set. Therefore, the FPV video of a drone/UAV flying in mid air can be distorted in real-time and shown inside an Oculus VR headset. Keep in mind that this is only the beginning of our development process for the Oculus VR - many more features to come (e.g. 3D, Headtracking).

Watch the Sky Drone FPV + Oculus VR video here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sky-drone-fpv/x/3767302?c=activity

P.S.: If we don't reach our funding goal we will still go ahead with Sky Drone FPV. While sticking to our timeline of shipping the Sky Drone FPV sets in December 2013, we will only have a groundstation app for Android at start. Other platforms will be supported later (free of charge). The only way to secure the Early Bird price ($349) of a Sky Drone FPV set, is to purchase the Early Bird perk before this Indiegogo campaign expires. If the funding goal is not reached, Early Bird funders will get discount information to order from our website later. We are 100% committed to our technology and we will prevail.*
 

gearwolf

Junior Member
I know this is a little late but I don't think there is much latency or the rift wouldn't have been made for gameing. They need low latency just as much as we do for fpv.
 

SkyDrone_aero

Junior Member
We have just launched our new website and want to give you some updates on Sky Drone FPV:

- Better camera an optics
- Oculus Rift support incl. headtracking
- Groundstation support Android and Windows 7/8
- Faster Camera to CPU interface to further decrease latency
- Case

Sky Drone FPV is available for pre-order now.
You can check out our new website here: http://www.skydrone.aero

More videos to come soon.
 

rockets4kids

Senior Member
If you want to get *my* interest, you will need to demonstrate the following items:

1. Show the actual latency of the device under real-world conditions

2. Show the bandwidth requirements.

3. Show the results when bandwidth is restricted.

4. Show recovery time when connection is lost and needs to be re-established.

While this may be useful in countries with decent cellular coverage in bandwidth, it suspect that it would be useless in the vast majority of the United States which suffers from lack of coverage and oversubscribed bandwidth.
 

RoyBro

Senior Member
Mentor
For me, there are two huge problems. First, Montana has only about 25% cellular coverage, and of course the coverage is in the more populated areas where I don't want to fly. I want to fly FPV in the less populated areas. Second, I'll have to maintain a separate cellular account just for the Skydrone. It might be different if I could piggyback the Skydrone on my current phone account, but it appears that I will have to have two separate accounts. Way too expensive for my taste.
 

eagle4

Member
Hmm, doesn't seem to have a large range of motion. Have you got settings that can you can dial in to fix this?
 

RoyBro

Senior Member
Mentor
Hmm, doesn't seem to have a large range of motion. Have you got settings that can you can dial in to fix this?

Yes, the attitude of the camera doesn't match that of the head at all. The "pilot" has to exaggerate his head movements to get the camera to move just a little. I'm surprised he didn't get a case of whiplash. Or maybe he did.
 

eagle4

Member
I'd love it if Skydrone_aero would be here answering questions.

I wonder if its possible to have a skydrone basestation and have it plugged into my fatsharks, that way I don't have to shell out for an oculus rift.

Has this system been tested over populated areas? how does it go when you go behind buildings and hills? has it been tried in different countries that may have different mobile phone carriers. I guess it works on a phone's data plan. How much data does it use?
 

RoyBro

Senior Member
Mentor
Has this system been tested over populated areas? how does it go when you go behind buildings and hills? has it been tried in different countries that may have different mobile phone carriers. I guess it works on a phone's data plan. How much data does it use?

The system is cell based not radio based. So it doesn't matter if there is a lead shield between you and the plane, because it is talking to the cell tower and then being forwarded to your receiver, which is also cell based. That's why you need two wireless phone accounts for this to work.

As for the data plan, I think it has to have its own account. Maybe if you have a pooled family data plan, as long as it has its own account / phone number, it would work. You'd probably want to get an unlimited data plan and hope your carrier doesn't throttle the data speed as you use more data.
 
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eagle4

Member
it'd suck if halfway through a long flight your data was throttled or blocked due to excessive use or whatever the telco's could cook up.
 

SkyDrone_aero

Junior Member
Hi,

We'd like to give you an update on the latest developments of our Sky Drone FPV project.

As some of you may have noticed, we had some delays on getting the first Sky Drone FPV units out.

We made some improvements on the hardware side, for example instead of 3d-printing the Sky Drone FPV case, we
switched to a professional molded case for better structural integrity, faster production process and of course better looks (see below).

By now, all hardware components for our first batch have arrived and are being assembled as we speak. Due to some slight hardware changes we still have to do adjustments on our version 1.0 firmware before it can be shipped.
We expect to ship the pre-orders this June.

For all Oculus Rift Enthusiasts: after Oculus announced the new Dev Kit 2, we immediately ordered one and will make sure Sky Drone FPV will support the new High Resolution version immediately.

For those of you who wanted to watch The Pearl Report “Eye in The Sky” in which Sky Drone FPV appears, but could not watch it online due to territorial restrictions – it is now available on YouTube: http://youtu.be/MTr-hsYbw10?t=7m54s

Best Regards,

The Sky Drone Team
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