Syma X5 low-cost, low weight, high-res FPV setup

After several crashes of the big quad because of my inexperience I wanted something small, cheap and indestructible! The Syma X5 was the perfect fit for a trainer so I bought it off from ebay for about 60€. Hundreds of flights later it's still working as it should! I even went out and put a 808 #16 v3 Keychain camera on it and it was able to fly quite well.

That gave me the idea that without all the Keychain cam's battery and casing it should be possible to add a fpv transmitter as payload without increasing the total weight! As I searched through different kinds of transmitters I found one extremely cheap and lightweight FPV-TX, the Boscam TX5813 Module! These come as an all in one chip with soldering pins but without surrounding PCB which makes it extremely lightweight (~ 2g). The range is fairly small but will exceed the range of the RC Transmitter of the X5 without a problem.

ISO

Side



Front

This post will only explain the "flying part" part of the FPV Setup, the ground station (Receiver and Screen) is not part of it (maybe I will cover it in a later post).

So here's the setup

• Syma X5 (don't buy the X5c version, you can spend your money better than that) ~ 60€

• Keychain cam 808 #16 v3 ~40€

alternative:
Keychain cam 808 hq30 ~33€
or any 5V Video Live Output cam like this ~ 10€

• one TX5813 Module from here or elsewhere ~8€

• the cheapest step-up 5V module you can find like this ~ 2-3€

500mA should be enough to power the transmitter and the cam

• DIY Cloverleaf 5.8 GHz Antenna, here is an awesome tutorial ~ 3-4€

• Some HK 750mAh 1S battery's from here ~3€/each

 That's it! So in total your would have to pay 26€ without shipping for the cheapest setup and only 50€ with a real HD ready recording function! Since many RC-hobbyists already own a keychain cam or a 5V cam the actual transmitter mod would cost only 16€ :O

Despite the low price you can experience the full DIY feeling, which includes soldering, bending measuring and all that fun stuff :P

Tools and consumables needed

• a soldering iron
• screwdriver
• some cables to connect things ;) about 10cm each
• optional: pinheader and crimps, but you can just solder it directly
• a magnifying glass
• a tweezer

To build the Cloverleaf Antenna more materials are needed, just follow the link!


Step by Step

Before starting to unscrew the X5 the FPV-Transmitter TX5812 needs to be soldered:

If you want to change the Band of your TX follow this tutorial.

This TX5813 .pdf should give you all the information needed. It includes the pinout names and an application diagram.

First solder your cloverleaf antenna to pin 9 (GND), 10 (ANT), 11 (GND) as shown in the application diagram (the three pins up right when looking on the chips front). Make sure to not short the ANT Pin with the metal sheet.

Next solder the red wire to Pin 4 (VCC), one black wire to each GND Pin (3 and 5) and one yellow wire to Pin 1 (Video). Solder the other end of the red and one of the black wires to the corresponding output pins of your 5V step-up module. To power your camera solder one more red cable to your step up modules output pins (long enough to reach the cam from the inner X5 casing).

The yellow and the other black cable can be soldered directly to the matching wires of your camera, the red wire coming from the step up module as well.

Now open the Syma X5 by unscrewing each pair of the outer screws (don't unscrew the three screws under the propellers, those aren't necessary) on each arm. Now unscrew the 4 screws under the landing gear. At last remove the two screws at the lipo input. The top should come off quite easily, if not, check if you really removed all screws.

Take a closer look at the Syma X5 mainboard:

The three wires (red, black, yellow) that you see at the bottom are normally used for the X5c's camera control, but we are going to use the red and black cable as a power source for our step-up module. So just desolder the yellow wire completely and solder the red and black wires to the step-up module's input pins. Now just store the step-up module inside of the X5 and fiddle the output wires out of the casing. Now simply put all the screws in it's place again and store the FPV-TX and the camera where you want it to by taping it  (not very elegant but that's the way I did it :D).

Of course I did not come up with all of this myself so here are the resources that I used:

• Alex Greve's awesome build tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgAfNltlsX0 but with different TX and cam
• Cloverleaf build tutorial from David Windestål http://rcexplorer.se/diy/2011/08/the-cloverleaf-fpv-antenna/
• B-Band TX5823 (similar to TX5813) tutorial http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1787178&page=8

If you have any questions just use the comment section!

Have fun building!