a different kind of dashcam

[Gibson99]

an FPV (first person video) camera mounted in my rc car.

at first i "race" against a 3-yr old on a bike and a 4-yr old on foot, and let them win. then i pause for a moment to sit down and prop up my phone (FPV screen) on my lap, then drive slowly around the park to get used to driving FPV - this is the first time i've driven this car since adding the camera. then i go full throttle, lose sight of the edge of the pavement and drop into the mulch, lose control and flip - 360 endo w/ 180 rotation - i ended up facing the opposite direction, on my wheels. then i drive around at about 70% throttle for a bit, get a small bit of air going under the swings, then come home to clean some mulch out of the gears that's making some ugly sounds.

yes, i should probably aim the "dashcam" down a bit to cut some of the glare, but then again, driving at dusk, it's hard to get proper exposure anywhere. plus the camera adjustment would involve re-melting hot glue, so...

 

[SawMaster]

You need new shock absorbents on your new 'car'

You might be able to release the hot glue with a 'hot wire', thus avowing possible damage to nearby plastics. Devise a wooden "Y" or "U" shaped holder for the wire somewhat wider than the cam to free up your second hand to pull on the cam. Works in principle so it might work in practice

Phil

 

[kamkar]

Driving a RC FPV are pretty weird, but also extremely cool.

I have a link to a Aussie guy that did a lot of long range FPV driving, but sadly he have not posted in a long time.

 

[Sunny]

My eyes hurt.

 

[Bungus]

Pretty hard to see where you're going. Not much forward view.

 

[kamkar]

Yeah that's one of the issues, even if you drive a familiar place it look totally different as you are not used to see that place from 1 inch over the ground.

I once got totally lost steering my little slow 4x4 trick in among some trees, turned out the truck was only outside of hearing it range ( 15 M or so )

Also sort of the same experience we get when we go for a night drive with our little trucks, a familiar place look totally different in darkness or the 12 - 16 feet the car headlights light up. ( flashlights banned while driving )
Its not so bad for me as i have a pretty good internal compass, but my friend he can get lost even in the daytime so he often say " i hope you know where we are cuz i have no clue where we are or witch way back to the parked car"

One time i was a little lost as it was a pretty unknown forest and at night, but there was a little creek so i knew just go towards it and follow it back to where our cars was parked, but it was a little hairy at first as i could not hear the little creek at first.

 

[Gibson99]

You need new shock absorbents on your new 'car'
Phil

You joke but I actually do need new shocks. The rears won't hold oil so they don't do any damping. I stuck a couple o-ring rings inside the cylinder, sideways (vertically) to act as bump stops because it kept bottoming out so easily, and now the handling is much more neutral.

Then again, this is more meant for smooth surfaces, not rough bark mulch like what was in the playground.



It's a WLtoys A969 1:18 scale "short course truck" with a few mods like the lights and camera. I have some adjustable metal suspension parts on the way to help fix the drift to the left and add some camber for better cornering. Right now it understeers a lot even at half throttle.

 

[Gibson99]

Pretty hard to see where you're going. Not much forward view.

Thankfully my phone stretches the 4:3 picture to 16:9 and it looks a lot better, and a little easier to drive. I wish it did that for the recording but it doesn't. Could probably fix it with VLC or something before uploading to YouTube. Will have to try that next time.