RTFQ Camera Control Board

by Corey Snyder

Ok, In this video I'm looking at the NEW Camera control Add-on board from ReadyToFlyQuads. So you may have a seen some of the newer flight controllers coming out, like the CL Racing F4S, with a feature called Camera Control. Does this mean you can change your camera angle mid-flight? NO.. it simply means you can access your camera's on-board menu for changing settings like the OSD, Black and White mode, or other image/sensor related settings through your radio instead of using the provided dongle. It's a convenience thing. So for all of us with builds using Flight controller's that don't have this feature baked in, RTFQ has released a tiny little wire harness & board for $1.99 that allows you to add that same type of functionality to any flight controller, provided you have an extra PWM (motor) output, extra timer, or LED port not already being used.

Notes:

  • Even though you're controlling the camera through the FC, this does not use the FC OSD.
  • The FC is really only simulating the button presses of a joystick.
  • Flight controllers OSD not required.
  • There are safeguards in place to make sure that the Betaflight OSD & Camera OSD don't show up at the same time.

Is it worth installing?

This past weekend in Cincinatti, Ohio to race with CQR at their drone racing facility in an old Jim Beam factory. Being indoors, with the windows blacked out with tarp, and LED gates as the only form of lighting, it required particular settings of the image sensor to get the best picture. Oh and you have to fly up through the rafters. When I first arrived I did a video check and found out my video was pretty bad. So there I was standing out in the warehouse adjusting settings with the joystick really wishing I had already taken the time to setup this camera control adaptor. It required me to pop the top off of all of my quads and connect the joystic to the back of my camera. On some of my builds I had already cut the adaptor off so I had to strip the wire back and stick it into the adaptor. It was such a PITA.

After this weekend I'm totally sold on it. Whether you're adding it to an existing build or building new, you're talking about less than 5 minutes of work to add this adaptor and save yourself at least 5 minutes of work down the road trying to find your joystick and changing settings.

Getting it setup is 2 very simple steps.

  1. Wire it up (2 wires)
  2. Configure it in Betaflight CLI

Check out the video below to see how I set it up, configure it, and show it works.