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Background

I am building a multirotor project similar to this one I built a few months ago. This particular multirotor will be geared for flying FPV (First Person View) which means that I will transmit a 5.8Ghz video feed from my aircraft to a ground station where I can pilot from the view point of the aircraft.

I am going to have three small cameras: one at the nose, one topside and at the rear of the aircraft, and one in the belly facing down.

What I would like to do is assign a switch on my transmitter that will allow me to toggle between the three cameras.

I already know how to read a signal value from the receiver on my aircraft to the Arduino and I can get three nice, clean values (1000, 1500, 2000) depending on the state of a three position switch on my transmitter.

Question

  • Given that I can read three distinct values from my radio control on one pin, and
  • Given that I have three different video signals coming in on three separate pins, and
  • Given that I have one pin that will output the video signal to the 5.8Ghz video transmitter

How do I dynamically switch which video input is sent to the video output pin?

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1  
Couldn't you use a simple multiplexer IC? (that would rather be a comment but I can't post any yet) –  Nicolas D Sep 26 '13 at 16:47
3  
Is it analog video? Digital? What's the interface from the camera to the radio? If it's analog then I'd suggest just getting an analog video switch IC. TI, analog, ST and several others make such switches. These switches have myriad interfaces including SPI, I2C, parallel select, etc. –  Doov Sep 26 '13 at 17:51
    
I believe it is a digital video feed. Here is the type of camera I am using: atlantahobby.com/Store/pc/… –  Matthew Patrick Cashatt Sep 26 '13 at 18:05
    
@MatthewPatrickCashatt looks like an analog output. "1Vp-p 75 Oms , Negative" It's either NTSC or PAL. You should be totally fine with any of the video mux IC vendors I suggested in the comment above. –  Doov Sep 26 '13 at 18:48
    
Why not transmit all three feeds on different channels & do the switching on the ground? –  John U Mar 27 '14 at 9:10

1 Answer 1

up vote 1 down vote

Considering it will most likely be composite video on these cameras, which are relatively low bandwidth (<10 Mhz at best), any common bus switch or multiplexer would work.

You need a 3 to 1 or a 4 to 1 switch. Most have simple analog control, two pins that are high or low, so you will need two spare pins on your arduino. You could also find i2c or spi based switches instead, if you already have spi or i2c parts on the multirotor that you are using, and add them to the bus.

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