See Through The Eyes of a Champion

I wanted to get this posted before the end of the FPV contest, but I missed the 9AM deadline. Oh well..

I got to the range yesterday and recorded some video. Unfortunately the video out from the headset was not working so I mounted the headset on a stand, set the mobile phone camera pointing at one eye display and looked at the other eye display.

I started with this 25mm M12 lens. Either the lens barrel or the camera female threads are not long enough to focus correctly. The focus at 50 ft was ok, but anything closer than that was significantly blurry. I don't know if they make M12 lens extensions or if I just got a dud lens.

Here is a 50 foot 5 shot string with a Feinwerbau 22 pistol and Aimpoint Micro red dot scope.

Here is a 50 foot 5 shot string with a RRA 1911 45 pistol and Aimpoint Micro red-dot scope, including an oopsy shot.

And for those of you open sight shooters, I tried 2 lenses. First the 25mm lens, which needs to be focused closer than the threaded barrel will allow. This is really quite useless.

I then tried a lens marked '45°' which I think is about 8mm focal length. The resolution of the target and sights just isn't good enough to shoot accurately.

Version 1 is a quick prototype using a bunch of old parts. 

RunCam Phoenix Camera

My camera is an older version of the Phoenix. It is a 1/2" sensor and has an M12 lens mount. This is important since we need much higher power, and smaller field of view to work in this application. The primary area of interest, the sights and target, are less than 1 degree wide. The strongest lens I have is labeled 45 degrees. I am waiting for a couple of stronger lenses to see what works best.

The smallest and cheapest cameras have M8 lenses which have a lot fewer lens options.  

The camera and transmitter are mounted to a small piece of plastic. The plastic carrier is Velcroed to the front of the headset so it can be moved around and positioned right in front of the eye.

Fat Shark Transformer Binocular FPV Headset

Unfortunately the Transformer has been discontinued. I like it because it has a nice flat front face that makes it easy to mount the camera and it can be detached and used as a monitor to replay the recorded video. BangGoods claims to have it available (as of Dec 30, 2022) but I am a bit suspicious. Let me know if you buy one.

Lumenier TX5GS Transmitter

A transmitter isn't necessary, and probably not desired. I used it in the first prototype because I new it would work right out of the box and it does. I am going to wire the video signal directly into the display and will re-purpose the transmitter to make a target view camera feed that can be saved separately or inset in the recorded video feed.

Batteries and wires

The headset display operates from 7-13V so a 2S li-po is a good choice. I got a Fat Shark 2S battery holder with the headset. The camera and transmitter operate over 20V so my first pass uses a 4S li-po I had laying around.

Next Steps

It works as it is now, but the lens is too weak resulting in low resolution of the bullseye that doesn't allow accurate aiming at the target. As soon as I receive a stronger lens I am going to the range to try it out. 

The wiring needs to be cleaned up. It is pretty much just a hodge-podge to get something working. I want to wire the Video Out from the camera to the headset display and power both the camera and the display from the same battery.

This video was made 20 or more years ago. This is what I hope to be able to do on a fraction of the budget and with better quality. I was told the AMU (Army Marksmanship Unit) used a beam splitter and old camcorder parts to record this. 

AMU Rapid Fire (YouTube)