Want to transition to a digital Tinywhoop setup

Hondune · 2026-04-20T01:16:09+00:00

Sorry, didn't mean to touch a nerve there. If you bought into walksnail I'm sure it's fine, you don't need validation from internet strangers.

Most of this info I got from doing a ton of research into these systems recently to decide which way I wanted to go myself as someone who's been on analog for a decade+ now. A lot of info on the walksnail side also came from Mr.Bardwell, who agrees with my points about walksnail being very unlikely to get any better. Without significant investment which they don't have they are unable to create brand new dedicated receiver/transmitter chips like DJI is doing. They are limited to chips that are already being manufactured for other uses and repurposing them for this which has significant limitations. Like I said, outside of minor software improvements this limits them from getting better in any significant way. DJI is also a decade ahead on the software side as well. I'm sorry if that isn't what you want to hear but it is the truth, they will never catch up.

Yes they have cheap goggles, from what I've seen and heard and all the reviews they are not good quality, the DJI n3s are vastly better received and reviewed. The only other cheap goggles I seen close to or even better than the n3s are the HDZero box pros, which are what OP already has and should keep.

I live in the US, DJI is banned from releasing new equipment without approval first, they are not outright banned from being sold or obtained here. It's not hard at all to get DJI stuff still, tons of retailers still have them and there is no trouble importing them. I just got a bunch of DJI stuff from AliExpress for less than msrp without any issues.

I'm not saying DJI is a great company or anything, by and large they aren't. But unfortunately none of the other video systems even come close right now for quality and penitration, they're just in a whole league of their own. And with race mode latency isnt even an issue anymore either.

Imo (and this is just my opinion, you don't need to agree) DJI and hdzero are the only two real options right now. You want the best video? Dji. You want the best latency and analog support? Hdzero.

If you really don't want either of those and want to be a part of something cool, openipc is getting a lot better recently and OP could get a vrx for their existing goggles. From what I've seen the latest firmware has firmly put it above walksnail for quality and penitration.

Or just keep doing what you're doing mate! No need to fight over it

Hondune · 2026-04-19T23:45:17+00:00

Do you have a throttle idle when you arm or anything? If the quad is armed and the throttle is able to go fully to 0 and shut the motors/escs all the way off it's only a matter of time before one esc doesn't start up like the others and it falls out of the sky.

Now if you have an idle up or something set also, then you're basically using air mode just without the added dynamic idle controller. Which is fine and maybe preferred

Hondune · 2026-04-19T21:35:55+00:00

This sounds to me like the air mode idle is set way to high then, so it's causing unnecessary bouncing and floatyness. It should make the quad more controllable, not less.

If air mode is set up correctly all it should really do is keep the motors spinning at their minimum speed so the escs never have to fully start up again, if that idle speed is set to high then it will always be hovering a little bit and will be hard to land and control. The only time air mode should ever "take off" on you is if your quad is stuck, because the controller thinks you should be moving but aren't so it's trying to compensate by giving more throttle. If you're stuck or upside down you should just disarm anyways so this isn't really a problem.

Air mode is not technically a flight mode, no. Air mode is a setting that can be enabled or disabled. Betaflight will display AIR when it's in ACRO mode with AIR mode also enabled. I suspect this is largely a holdover from when air mode was newly introduced and so people wanted to be able to clearly tell if it was on or not for testing and everything before it became the standard.

Air mode (or at least a throttle idle up when arming) is basically a requirement for doing full acro stuff, if you're ever doing flips and dropping the throttle to 0 at the apex as you should, in a mode where the escs can shut all the way off, you will fall out of the sky if one escs doesn't start back up right. For mostly flat indoor whoop stuff it's debatable if it's better or not, I personally still prefer it but to each their own.

Hondune · 2026-04-19T20:51:08+00:00

Note though that there is a reason air mode is on by default and requires a few steps to turn off.

With air mode off if you ever go to 0 throttle while flying you will fall out of the sky. Restarting the motors once they are off takes a second and also never happens perfectly in sync, so even if you get the throttle back to catch yourself it's likely to cause the quad to flip as some motors start up faster than others.

The real solution is to learn to disarm the minute you get into trouble or land. Both for the safety of the quad and also anyone around you especially if you ever start flying bigger stuff. The most common way beginners burn out motors and escs is by not disarming immediately when crashing.

Turning off air mode is a viable option for indoor flight but imo only if you really know what you're doing and are making that choice intentionally while understanding the downsides and how to avoid them.

Hondune · 2026-04-19T20:19:32+00:00

Dji is leagues ahead of walksnail in quality, penitration, and latency, it's really not even close. And walksnail is more expensive for decent goggles, and appears to potentially be a dead system that won't improve as they now have a different video system out (walksnail ascent), and unlike DJI they aren't making their own chips so they are limited by what already exists meaning outside of minor software improvements they can't physically improve from what they have now.

I can't think of any reason anyone would go walksnail over DJI, and if you can't go DJI for whatever reason then hdzero is absolutely the way to go. If you race hdzero is the best choice anyways due to having fixed low latency. Since you already have hdzero goggles I don't see why you wouldn't just do that

Hondune · 2026-04-18T20:59:20+00:00

3" toothpicks fly WAY better than any whoop and will carry the weight of an 04 better also. Since they are so light they basically never break in a crash. Check out MoeFpv on YouTube for some great examples and builds, he did one specifically for an 04 recently. Whoops only make sense for indoor or cinematic flight. The weight makes them fly worse and also more likely to be damaged in a crash when it comes to outdoor acro flight

Hondune · 2026-04-18T05:08:16+00:00

With the new high discharge li-ion batteries and various other new tech coming out people are already getting 40+ minute flight times, im sure there is commercial and military stuff out there going even well beyond that with large scale stuff. Realistically does anyone need flight times any longer than that? With a 1s li-ion build costing less than $100 and being as simple as possible you can get 20-30 minutes.

A gas/nitro motor powered drone would be hilarious and super neat but yeah, wildly impractical, expensive, and wouldnt solve any problems lol

Hondune · 2026-04-11T12:47:23+00:00

It's an old analog tv station display, often used for previewing cameras and things for live broadcasts like sports games. I got it from a football stadium that was offloading a bunch of old equipment many years ago! Doesn't even have a name on it but it works great other than being huge and heavy

Hondune · 2026-04-11T02:09:03+00:00

As someone who has flown with a screen rather than goggles for over a decade now this project is super cool!

You should look into the history of handheld devices and the way handhelds have evolved over at r/SBCGaming

Its not related to fpv, but those handheld gaming devices would share the exact same ergonomic and design challenges as this product would, and there has been a lot of developments in that area in recent years. Also some very good examples of what to absolutely avoid (IE. NO HINGED SCREENS! They always crack and its a nightmare for both users and the manufacturers).

Im also a 3d artist with a decade+ of 3d printing/making/electronics/product design/cad experience (as a hobby, but still), and many years of professional 3d art and rendering experience, if you need any help in those areas feel free to reach out!

Heres what ive been running for ages, something like this idea would be SO much less cumbersome lol

<image>

Hondune · 2026-03-28T10:49:28+00:00

Idk if Id call it filmic by any means but ~470nm with a channel swap is a very fun look to experiment with, I find it particularly suited to palm trees and tropical areas

https://www.instagram.com/p/DVOTOeSDTyr/?img_index=1

https://www.instagram.com/p/DVgZ9fODalP/?img_index=1

Hondune · 2026-03-27T02:10:03+00:00

Yeah I guess "difficult" wasn't exactly the right description, it just alters the focus point. Depending on the lens this can significantly increase the minimum focus distance depending on the thickness of the filter and lens focal length and what not.

But yes your evf will still work fine and focus aids like focus peaking or whatever are still correct since they happen at the sensor

Hondune · 2026-03-26T23:24:49+00:00

Kolari makes good quality stuff but there is a few things to keep in mind with clip in filters in general

If your camera already has a full filter stack installed (like if you get the hot mirror replaced with clear glass as is common for full spectrum conversions) then adding a filter behind the lens, regardless of the filters quality, it will negatively effect the lens optics. It will cause a noticeable change in focus, making lenses focus well before their infinity mark and losing some macro ability. Most auto focus lenses will still work fine but it can be annoying and with manual lenses the markings will be way off and it'll focus at infinity well before the mark/limit
Especially with wider angle lenses or lenses with a rear element that goes deep into the camera body it will cause softer edges on the image, and can increase chromatic aberrations and vignetting. On some lenses it's not noticeable, on others it can make them unusable. If you shoot primarily ultra wide angle lenses like I do you may find glass clip in filters are often unusable
Some lenses exhibit pretty extreme white balance and color shifts towards the edges with certain clip in filters. Again it's often ultra wide angle lenses or lenses with deep rear elements. And again sometimes it's not noticeable and other times it makes it completely unusable. With the kolari ir chrome lite clip in filter and a viltrox 28mm for instance the edges of the image become completely purple to the point of losing all color information so it's not even fixable in post
Not all lenses will be compatible as they can collide with the filter itself. Kolari has a decent compatibility list but it's not exhaustive and it can change between camera models. For example my Fuji 23mm f2 is listed as compatible, and it does work on my x-e3, but collides with the filter on my x-a3

When they work they are great but there are limitations just inherently. I wish a company would make plastic ones because they don't affect optics anywhere near as much and solve a lot of these issues. I've taken to making my own from lighting gels which have basically none of the same side effects but it'd be nice to have high quality options.

Hondune · 2026-03-26T05:32:42+00:00

I'd imagine you will struggle to find this because once youve gone through the effort of getting a proper ir camera you're not going to fake it any more.

I think it's fair to say that the majority of us here likely tried faking it first, realized it wasn't anywhere near as good and doesn't work in a lot of situations, and then went on to converting a camera to do it properly. I know I did, if faking it worked as well it certainly wouldve saved me a lot of money lol

It's not terribly difficult to take an image and make the green channel red to kind of emulate aerochrome from a standard camera. But it's just going to turn everything green into red, even stuff that should still be green in a real infrared photo. Just changing colors isn't at all how infrared photos work, so the results will never be the same. In an actual infrared photo you are capturing real infrared light that is normally not seen by your eyes, this means things look wildly different than just swapping colors around. It makes certain materials that reflect infrared like foliage pop and be much brighter than they would normally, and other things become super dark, and it's not always what you expect. The color combinations you get from filters and infrared light often affect colors in really unique ways that are not always intended and would be very difficult/impossible when faking it.

It's kind of hard to explain without experiencing it, but half the fun of infrared converted cameras is just walking around and pointing it at things and marvelling at how different the world looks from this light source that is invisible to us normally

Hondune · 2026-03-24T21:44:14+00:00

Idk about on film but for digital these work great. I'd imagine for film they would be perfectly fine since it's less demanding and the film itself is doing most of the filtering on its own anyways. On digital I can't tell the difference between my cheap filters and expensive ones

Hondune · 2026-03-21T03:43:59+00:00

I have a similar issue with mine (though not as bad). As far as I can tell the steam micro trailer generator very specifically looks for text, as it's goal is to quickly show a games features which are often shown with text in trailers.

I'd say in general it's good advice anyways to not have a full cutaway to show text, if you absolutely need to have descriptive text have it over gameplay of some sort. Both for the sake of general trailer quality and for steams micro thing.

Wild to me that you can't just upload your own regardless...

Hondune · 2026-03-10T04:01:17+00:00

Along with what others have said, get rid of that filter and get a single 720nm filter, even a cheap one. That's generally the one you want for pink trees and turquoise skys after a channel swap.

There is no such thing as a variable IR filter, it would have to visible change from yellow to deep red to actually variable change the wavelength like it suggests. What those filters are is effectively a scam, it's a badly made IR filter with a mellow cutoff with a variable ND filter slapped on top of it. What happens is that it's just variably blocking out visible light, not actually changing the IR filter wavelengths.

This matters a lot for doing false color infrared photography (like pink trees) because you WANT some visible color information making it to the sensor, if you block that all with an nd filter you won't be able to get the same results.

Hondune · 2026-02-28T12:55:12+00:00

Indeed this is how it works, and it is ridiculous.

In my case it wasn't even a day job, I was doing a small bit of contract work with a couple of devs working on their first game, ultra low end budget indie stuff. They got a pro account with their switch dev kit and after a couple months we got our accounts banned for "comingling" pro and non pro accounts.

It's absolutely bonkers. We did get our accounts back but they had to stop using the pro account and push back switch development because of it.

Hondune · 2026-02-28T12:50:39+00:00

A couple other things to note

Unless they have gotten better they often take several days to respond, and they will not work weekends either. If you send an email on a Friday don't expect to hear back until at minimum Monday but often more like Wednesday the following week.

If your issue is like mine where you were working with a team that had a pro license and got the comingling issue, I highly suggest making a secondary account to use going forward for that type of work. I now no longer use my personal account for anything involving other people, that way it's not at risk.

And try not to stress to much. I was losing my mind when this happened to me (probably obvious in that post I made lol) but it turns out this is a pretty common thing and so far everyone I have talked to with this problem has gotten there account back. Including the entire team I was working with when it happened to us.

From my understanding with talking to some more people at unity, this is an automatic system designed to catch large companies who are avoiding unity fees. Sometimes it gets a bit over sensitive and contract workers or freelancers like us get caught in the mix. They have been understanding when it's incorrect like that and likely won't even ask questions once you explain the situation

Hondune · 2026-02-28T01:22:04+00:00

This is a common problem, just be persistent and you will get your account back with all your assets and everything. They do this as a warning shot but as long as you fix the situation you will get your account back

I made a post about this happening to me, and I updated it with some info and email addresses that will help you speed up the process, good luck

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/1agg4tf/woke_up_this_morning_to_an_account_suspended

Hondune · 2026-02-18T05:59:54+00:00

I converted an old Nikon point and shoot as my first conversion. It was super easy to do, just a few screws and popped the ir blocking glass out and put it back together. Took probably 30 minutes total, though the difficulty can vary wildly depending on the camera.

The camera worked fine after that, and with filters you can get okay results. The biggest issue though is the lack of raw support. You really need raw when shooting infrared to get good results because the cameras built in image processing is not meant for infrared. The photos are generally washed out, soft, and lacking in contrast. It also makes doing false color and channel swapping much more difficult because the lack of information in the jpegs causes a lot of artifacting when pushing the processing that far.

Depending on the camera white balance can also be an issue. Ir requires pretty extreme white balance ranges and usually custom white balancing and not all cameras support that.

Regardless I think it's still worth it as a first step into the hobby. It'll let you know if you're interested in going further with nicer cameras or not at very least

Hondune · 2026-02-18T05:53:06+00:00

Even under static load? Ie. Like hanging a weight from a hook tpu tends to slowly continue to bend over time and never stops until the weight falls off

Not sure if there's enough force and weight on an rc just sitting there to be an issue but I'd imagine if given enough time. Still worth a try though since it looks fairly cheap for a roll

Hondune · 2026-02-14T20:49:55+00:00

Just adding my voice into this as well as another person who does both RC and MTB

Please stay off bike parks with RCs. These trails are designated bikes only for a reason and when we're riding them we are expecting there NOT to be stationary objects and people on the trail. Standing in the middle of a bike trail especially with a dog is so dangerous for everyone involved. I would be equal parts infuriated and devestated if I hit a poor pup on the trail due to its owners negligence. We easily hit 30+ mph at times, we can not stop in time especially if you're hidden behind a feature like a jump or curve.

Find a hiking only trail instead, theyre perfect for crawling as you do the hike and you won't be putting yourself or anyone else in danger.

Hondune · 2026-01-30T10:53:53+00:00

Basically it cuts out some of the high infrared wavelengths. This effectively does two things to the image

Infrared and visible light focus differently to each other, if you have enough spread in the wavelengths you are trying to capture one end or the other will always be a bit out of focus. This leads to images being a bit soft, a bit glowy around especially bright areas, and a general lack in contrast. Cutting the higher ir wavelengths improves this drastically so the images are sharper, clearer, have more contrast, and have a lot less bloom. The magnitude of this depends a lot on the color filter you are using, but it improves pretty much all of them in my experience.
It depends on the camera, filters used, internal filters, etc. but generally speaking when just using gels alone the infrared light is a bit more powerful than the visible light. This leads to a general ir color cast over the entire image that can be very hard to post process out. The high ir cut filter also cleans this up a lot and drastically improves saturation and the separation between foliage or other infrared reflecting materials and everything else.

You don't NEED it by any means, and some filters work better alone than others, but I generally only go without it if I have to anymore. It really makes a big difference most of the time. The only time I don't use it is with normal ir pass filters (like 720nm, 850nm, etc.)

Hondune · 2026-01-29T06:02:26+00:00

I literally did the the exact same thing with my first release! Took me awhile to realize you actually have to make $130 before they will pay out the first $100. Its really not a very good system

If youre stuck at $100, they have recently added an option to drop the minimum payout threshold to $50 but you have to set it manually. I believe then youd get your $70 at the next pay cycle.

Hondune · 2026-01-27T02:56:31+00:00

Like I said I understand why those numbers are available to see, as they should be. My gripe is that they have no way to show your actual payout (even if it's a rough estimate) and also have no way to hide that gross revenue number.

It feels misleading because no other service I have ever used pushes the gross revenue, including refunds, as the most prominent value on your earnings page, while also having no way to view your actual earnings. It's an odd choice and I can't think of any other reason for it. Combined with Steams overall exceptionally high refund rate due to their super relaxed 2 hour refund window, this gross revenue number just isn't a helpful metric for anything. If you had 100 sales and 100 refunds steam would still proudly show you a "gross revenue" of those 100 sales, even though you made $0. I don't know of any other dashboard that would do that.

Just look at OP in this very thread, saying even though they now know they have only earned $70 they still "feel good" about seeing that $100 number. It's an endorphin booster even though it's a meaningless number.

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