Oh my God, look how tiny it is! Good day! This is the Insta360 GO
stabilized sports action camera. It's been on the market since the fall of
2019 with the ability to capture HD photos and 60-second video clips. No big
deal right? Lots of cameras have that ability and what's
this got to do with FPV? Well, first of all, it's advertised as the
world's smallest stabilized camera. You know the smooth GoPro film videos using
HyperSmooth or RealSteady video stabilization you've seen from FPV
freestyle pilots? Well, the Insta360 GO has something similar called FlowState
stabilization. It works really well for cinematic type flight videos but locks
the horizon so when you're doing flips or rolls the horizon stays the same and
the video doesn't flip and roll with your quad. Iit makes for some interesting
shots but it doesn't give you the full effect of FPV aerial acrobatics. So, we
have a small HD video camera capable of shooting 60-second clips that won't do
flips or roles with our FPV aircraft. So why am I doing a video on this? Well, just
recently, things have changed. The folks over at Insta360 have given us FPV
pilots some features too good to ignore! Today I'm going to explain what those
Insta360 GO FPV features are, how you can use them, and with a couple short
flight clips I'll demonstrate for you why this is the most versatile,
stabilized, HD video camera available and ideally suited for micro fpv drones!
Sound good? Then give this video a "thumbs up" below, share it with your pilot
buddies, and subscribe to your TMac FPV channel - your home or your Journey to
Better FPV fun, flights and racing stuff!
So, here's the Insta360 GO. It's about the size of my thumb and the
advertised weight is 18 point 3 grams. Mine comes in at 18 grams. For comparison
purposes, here's a 2S 300 milliamp hour lipo which is normally used on a whoop-type
quad. This comes in at 22 grams. This is everything that comes in the
box. You of course have your camera which is a
good thing! You've got a card which states that it's ipx4 water-resistant -
not waterproof. However it does also state that it can be submerged for up to
10 seconds. You've got an Insta360 GO QuickStart guide which is 13 pages
in length but looks a lot thicker because it comes in various languages.
You have a micro USB to USB cable and you also have an OTG cable for use with
your phone. It comes with various accessories for
mounting to include a clip, this pad with a sticky substance on the back, as does
this have a sticky substance on the back. This is very handy because it's
adjustable to different angles. This part screws off so if you wanted to you
can mount this on a tripod. This of course is the charge case which is also
what you'll use to connect to your phone to use the associated Insta360 GO app.
This is a medallion which is magnetized which you can wear around your neck. This
goes under your shirt and then you stick the Insta360 GO on the outside of your
shirt and you can use it as a chest cam which could come in handy if you want to
videotape your transmitter sticks as an overlay to your FPV video flights. This
is the Insta360 GO app that you'll want to download on the Apple App Store or on
Google Play for your Insta360 GO. This app is how you control the settings for
your camera as well as how to edit your videos using your phone. There are a
couple other downloads that you may want to consider using for your Insta360
GO camera and you can get those at this URL on the Insta360 site. It's got the
camera control app which you'll need, but it also has Insta360 GO firmware for
firmware updates and also the desktop software for your Insta360 GO. This is
how you can edit your videos directly using your computer as opposed to your
phone should you choose to do so. Now within the Insta360 app description you
scroll down here and you'll see "what's new." Here they describe that you can
now shoot five-minute FPV videos with Bluetooth control (and I mentioned that
previously), but it also states that we now have FPV Stabilization mode
available for FPV videos. This is the most recent update for us FPV pilots and
i'll show you how to go ahead and activate that feature using the app
here in just a minute. If you go to the Insta360 site under support, product support, GO,
standalone operation, you'll see that the default modes are listed here. With the
camera powered off, if you press the action button once it's going to
activate the "QuickCapture" function. Or, if you turn the camera on and press the
action button once, it'll take a photo. You can also have
hyper lapse mode and slow-motion mode. The reason I'm describing these is
because when we go to FPV mode we have to turn off the QuickCapture function.
So if we go to support, product support, GO, camera tutorial, view more, FPV Mode, we
get the instructions we need to activate FPV mode prior to recording videos.
We need the app in order to activate the FPV mode. It also contains warnings about
how you need to start flying your quadcopter as soon as possible after
activating it to avoid overheating the camera. Because if you try to use this
five-minute FPV mode without air circulating around the camera, the camera
will overheat. So these are the instructions that we'll use prior to
recording any video using the Insta360 GO app to activate our FPV mode setting.
We simply connect our GO to our phone via the charge case (which I demonstrated
earlier), open our Insta360 GO app, Settings, camera button settings, and then we turn
off the QuickCapture mode. Select the button prompt we want to use to assign
the FPV mode to, choose standard video, and set the recording length to 5
minutes. After choosing the settings we
disconnect our GO and press the assign button prompt to turn on the FPV mode
and start recording. Start flying as soon as possible after we start our
recording and that's all there is to it for FPV mode. Now, FPV stabilization mode
is a little bit different. We do that through the editing function of the app
after we've recorded our video. I'll go ahead and demonstrate that now since
we're already talking about the app and then I'll wrap this video up with our
demonstration flights using the Insta360 GO FPV features of
FPV mode as well as FPV stabilization. So, let's go ahead and take a look at how,
after we've recorded the flight video, we can use the Insta360 go app and edit
our video with FPV stabilization and basically unlock the horizon. Okay, to
demonstrate the activation of FPV stability as opposed to FlowState
stabilization, I'm going to use the Insta360 Studio 2020 desktop software
application. First thing we need to do is connect our Insta360 GO charging case with the
Insta360 GO camera in it to my desktop computer. Now what I found is it
doesn't work for me when I go through a USB hub - I have to connect the USB cable
directly to a port on my desktop computer. So we'll go ahead and do that
and upload our file. When we do that normally it takes two to three times of
the computer trying to connect with the camera before it actually makes the
connection. Let's go ahead and give that a shot. So now with our file loaded from
the Insta360 GO camera to our Insta360 Studio desktop application we can go
ahead and do minor edits with this particular software. It's not a fully
capable video editing software program like Adobe Premiere at this point
in time. However, it does do some basic editing capabilities. Specifically what I
wanted to show you here is it's got the ability to change from FlowState
stabilization to FPV stabilization which will unlock the horizon. Now when I make
this change it's going to rotate this video orientation 90 degrees. In the
desktop application, I have not figured out a way yet to rotate it back. So, prior
to exporting we're gonna turn on FPV stability mode then we're going to
export it and then in order to get back to this same orientation we're gonna
have to use a different editing software program to return it to its normal
landscape orientation. But for now let's just show you how to go ahead and
activate FPV stability mode. We do that once we've captured the video
using our camera and uploaded it to our desktop or our phone app. We go over here
and we can turn on and off FlowState stabilization, or we can turn on FPV
stabilization. Remember FlowState stabilization is going to lock the
horizon and won't follow our flips and rolls, which as I mentioned earlier is
good for cinematic flights without acrobatics. If you're going to be doing
freestyle acrobatics and you want the video to follow your maneuvers, then
here's how you activate FPV stabilization. You just toggle this on. It
rotates the video as I mentioned which means once we export it we're gonna have
to use a different software program to reorient it to its landscape position.
For now we've got FPV stabilization activated and we're just going to export
it.
So now that our file has been exported from our Insta360 Studio 2020 desktop
application to our folder on our desktop computer, we can edit it however we want
and share it to social media or YouTube or what-have-you. For now we're done
here. Let's go ahead and take a look at
different mounting options for our Insta360 GO camera with quadcopters.
Of course for forward-looking shots we could use one of the accessories, or a 3D
printed mount from Brain3D, or rubber bands and foam, which works on
2" quads, or a horizontal 3D printed mount. For rear shots, we can turn it around, or
zip tie it to the bottom of an arm, or look straight down using zip ties. Now
let's do our flight demos with both FlowState and FPV stabilizations.
So that's the Insta360 GO sports action camera's FPV features. Tiny in both
size and weight, with both FlowState and FPV stabilization, capable of shooting
five minutes at a time, portable between all of your quads, and
with unlimited mounting options to capture whatever perspective you want
for any of your flights! Let me know in the comments section below your thoughts
on its uses for FPV. Aare you gonna get one? Make sure to hit that "like button"
below to help the YouTube algorithm show it to other FPV pilots, subscribe and hit
the bell to be notified every time I publish a new video. For more good info
to speed you on your "Journey to Better" FPV fun, make sure to check these out
next. Thanks for your time. I'll see you next video.
Clear skies friend!