TMac lap two, twenty eight point two eight three seconds. Want to improve your
flying and racing skills and track your progress? In today's video, we're going to
show you how with a PIDFLIGHT Lap Timer-stick around! What is this thing?
Let's crack it open and find out! This orange cylindrical object is a key
component of this device, very technical in nature, it's a cardboard tube which a
poster came in that was shipped to me a long time ago. I found it in my garage. That's
the only reason I'm using it. What is special is the stuff inside this tube.
PIDFLIGHT Lap Timer. We'll go over the components inside. Okay, we're going to
quickly go over the components here. We'll start with the brains of the
operation which is this Arduino chip, the RX 5808 receiver and this Wi-Fi module.
We also, we also have three resistors- these blue resistors they're 1kilo ohm
resistors, and this is just an adapter cable that I hooked up to the pins
coming out of the PCB. The printed circuit board, or the PCB, is a PIDFLIGHT
Lap Rev 2 which I ordered from Seed Studio. Its not necessary, but it just
makes the build cleaner. To power this, I have a mini USB to USB cable attached to
a step-down 5 volt regulator. The whole PIDFLIGHT Lap Timer is powered from 5
volts but what I wanted to do is to be able to provide power from any of my xt60
lipo batteries which obviously have more than 5 volts. So, I just made this adapter
from an XT 60 to the 5 volt step-down voltage
regulator, to the USB to mini-USB connector, straight to the Arduino chip.
The main components, once again are the Arduino chip, the RX 5808 receiver module,
and three 1000 ohm resistors. This is a buz . . . this is a buzzer that is not
required and this is a Wi-Fi module. You can also use the lap timer with
Bluetooth or direct connectivity. The instructions for all of this are going
to be at a website which I will link below. It's PIDFLIGHT.com, developed by a
gentleman by the name of Christian Mengler. So, I'll put all the links in the
description below that you will need to access the full schematic and
instructions and whatnot on this PIDFLIGHT Lap Timer. Alright, what I'd like to
do now is to go over the concept of the operation of the PIDFLIGHT Lap Timer.
What we have here is a diagram depicting the received signal strength indicator
value over time. We also have one PIDFLIGHT device, although two are shown
here, it's one device separated by time. The PIDFLIGHT lap timer operates from
an application which there are two versions of-one's a free version which
has a limited number of laps that can be timed (I believe it's three at this
particular point in time) and then there's a premium version which expands
upon that as well as other capabilities. On either of the versions, the user needs
to input just a few variables. One of the variables would be the video transmitter
frequency that the quadcopter is operating off of, the minimum time
expected to complete a lap. So, if you normally run the run the lap on the that
particular course in 20 seconds you might want to put a minimum time of
about 18 seconds in. The RSSI value, threshold value, which is depicted here
by this dotted line, is actually calibrated automatically through the
application on your mobile device but it can be manually overridden by the user
just by typing in a different value. What I normally do is if it's calibrated at a
value of say 240 then I reduce that by about 20 and
type in 220 and that way the PIDFLIGHT lap timer I know will be sensitive
enough to pick up the VTX frequency as the quadcopter passes through the gate
or the area in which the PIDFLIGHT device is. So, we've got the frequency,
we've got the RSSI threshold value calibrated or user-defined, the minimum
time to complete a lap, and the number of laps in the race or practice. So, if
you're gonna run five--if you're gonna run say seven laps, then you want to put
in at least seven, you know, perhaps ten and that way you're ensured that the PIDFLIGHT
lap timer will count all of the seven laps that you expect to complete.
The concept is pretty simple. As the quadcopter approaches the PIDFLIGHT
device, the RSSI value is going to increase as it gets closer to the device.
At some point, it's going to cross over the threshold value and it's going to
peak out and then as the quadcopter departs from the PIDFLIGHT device along
its path on the racetrack the value of the RSSI is going to decrease, fall below
the threshold value, and the quadcopter continues along the racetrack. At some
point, the quadcopter is going to be approaching the PIDFLIGHT device again.
The RSSI signal is therefore going to increase in value until it once again
crosses the threshold, peaks out, and declines and goes below the threshold
value again. So, the concept is as the quadcopter approaches the PIDFLIGHT
device the RSSI signal value gets-gets increased peaks out and decreases and
what the PIDFLIGHT device does is it measures the amount of time between the
two peaks of the RSSI value. That will be considered your lap time. Alright, let's
see how this simple concept is put into practice with a PIDFLIGHT application.
After you've set up your mobile device with a PIDFLIGHT Wi-Fi or Bluetooth,
then go ahead and plug in your lipo and in your mobile device settings choose
the PIDFLIGHTt Wi-Fi and connect to it. Open the PIDFLIGHT app, click on the
Wi-Fi icon in the upper right hand corner, and the PIDFLIGHT app will say "Connected."
From there, your device screen will come up. Click on the Device 1 text and the
screen will come up that shows pilot name, channel frequency, RSSI
threshold, minimum lap time, and maximum laps. You can go ahead and type in
whatever pilot name you want. The default is "Pilot 1," but as you can see
in the screenshot I've renamed mine to TMac. Below that is where you input your
channel frequency that your quadcopter is operating off of, below that is your
RSSI threshold. Now what you want to do at this point is power on your
(obviously) your transmitter and your quad. You want to place your quad on the
opposite side of the gate from the PIDFLIGHT device and then just push
"Calibrate." The application will automatically calibrate the RSSI
threshold for you. Now, once again, what I normally do is I take that value and
then I subtract ten or twenty from it and manually type that value into the
RSSI threshold. You also want to put the minimum lap time in so if you're running-
normally run twenty second laps then I would suggest putting in a number less
than that so that it actually captures the lap--just in case you happen to
be flying great that day and also the maximum the number of laps which we've
gone over. Once you're done inputting the various parameters into this device
screen, click on "Save." From there, click on the circular arrow to reset your lap
timing and a screen will pop up that says Reset Lap Timing? Yes or No. You
want to click Yes and what that does is it clears out all previous laps from the
previous races and then at that point you are ready to race. You're ready to
start flying or practice and you click on the stopwatch icon at the upper part
of the screen . . ."Less than 5"...5,4,3,2,1
and you're ready to go! Once you've started flying and are up in the
air, then you just listen to your lap times throughout your flight and
attempt to better your lap times on each lap which is what this is all about. "TMac lap one
thirty three point five eight seconds. TMac lap two thirty two point six nine
eight seconds. TMac lap three twenty nine point nine four seconds. TMac lap four
thirty point seven one seven seconds. And then when you're done with your laps,
you can click on the Lap tab and view each of your individual laps and then you can
also click on the Race tab to view a summary of your laps to include your
last lap, your fastest lap, and your total time for all laps. That's it! It's as
simple as that! Not bad for about fifteen dollars to
build and a few dollars per year. That's a very small price to pay for improving
and tracking your progress on your journey to better fpv fun, flights, and
racing. I wanted to personally thank our fellow fpv brother Christian Mengler for
coming up with and implementing this whole idea and for making a tool such as
PIDFLIGHT affordable and accessible to most FPV pilots everywhere. Now, for the
special announcement. We're gonna do a giveaway. For this particular giveaway, if
you're interested, we'll be giving away one of these PIDFLIGHT Rev 2 circuit
boards to one lucky winner--no, let's make that two lucky winners. And also
we'll throw in a few resistors to go along with it. The rules are simple--you
have to be a subscriber. If you're not a subscriber now, click on the Subscribe
button below. For this particular contest, you need to make sure that your
subscriptions are made public, or publicly available for view, so that I
can verify that you are a subscriber. Secondly, you've got to click on the "Like button"--
the "Thumbs Up" button below-- smash it! And lastly, you need to make one
and only one comment in the Comment Sections below. We'll use a random
comment picker on the 24th of August to pick our two lucky winners for the
printed circuit board and the few resistors go along with it. My hope is
that you will use those to build your own PIDFLIGHTt lap timer and improve and
track your fpv flying progress. If you liked this video, click on the thumbs up
button below, share it with your family friends and coworkers,
make sure to subscribe to YOUR channel for our Journey to Better FPV fun,
flights, and racing stuff! And, if you want to get notified of when future videos
are posted, ring that bell below. I'm TMac and we'll see you in the next video
Happy Flying!