The Eachine H8 mini quadcopter (here on Banggood) is without dubt one of the most popular quadcopters, both for its low price (10-15€) and for its good performance in terms of speed and flight time.
This quadcopter does not include a camera and therefore it cannot be used to flight in FPV (First Person View) mode… in this post I’m going to show you how to modify it to add this feature with few euros (or dollars 😉 )!
Shopping list
To modify your H8 mini you will need:
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In addition you can buy a dedicated antenna, but you can also replace it with just some wire.
Smoke test
Before working on the miniquad, let’s perform a smoke test on all the components to verify if they work individually.
Let’s start with the camera and the transmitter: solder the camera’s yellow wire to the VIN (Video IN) pin of the transmitter and the black wire to GND (ground). Now solder a piece of wire to the ANT (antenna) pin of the transmitter and, using a 5v external power supply, power both the camera and the transmitter:
Using a 5.8GHz receiver you can verify that they work fine:
Now test the step-up regulator. Connect a 1 cell LiPo to pins + and – and verify with a multimeter that the output of the regulator is near to 5V (voltage required to power the other components):
Quadcopter
Once verified that all the components are working, you can start modifying the quadcopter.
With a screwdriver remove the 4 screws to open the plastic case and remove the printer circuit board:
Identify the two pads connected to the battery and solder two wires; you’ll use them to power the new components:
Connect the outputs of the step-up converter to pins GND and VCC of the transmitter, then solder the two wires to its input pins. I also added a small switch to be able to turn the FPV system on/off independently:
With some hot glue stick the converter and the transmitter to the bottom of the quadcopter and the camera on the front of it. Connect the camera to the transmitter as already explained during the smoke test and solder the antenna. If you chose to use a wire as antenna, you can add a small plastic tube to keep it in vertical position:
Your H8 mini is now ready for its first FPV flight!
please advice where i can find a similar AV transmitter like the one you mentioned,
Hi! Banggood has a lot of different VTX…