The Mobius camera is the big brother of the 808 camera. It features 1080HD quality, a wide angle lens, easy of use, light weight, storage on SD card. I recently got one and decided to try an FPV setup by using this camera together with a Fat Shark Immersion 250mW 5.8GHz video transmitter.
Since it took me a little while to figure out how to establish a correct cable connection between the camera and the transmitter, I thought I would share here how I did it, it’s an easy and quick FPV setup.
First let’s have a look at the immersion style cable that comes with the transmitter:
In this little tutorial we will limit ourselves to connect the video component only, constituted by two wires: the video wire (yellow) and the ground (gnd) wire (black). However, by following a similar approach, it is easy to also hook up the audio and power wires, so as to provide power to the camera directly from the battery of the aircraft.
This is the transmitter cable connected to the Fat Shark video transmitter:
For the mobius camera
it is easy to buy a special usb cable for video and audio out and power in. It looks like this:
What we want to do is connect the video and ground wires of the USB connector to the video and ground wires of the transmitter cable. We could simply cut out the connector for the video and ground wires from the usb cable and solder them directly to the corresponding wires of the video transmitter cable. However I opted for a little more flexible setup that would leave the usb cable intact, for an eventual different use in the future.
The mobius cables set (optional purchase) not only includes the usb video out cable (photo above) but also an RCA video cable that can be connected to the video connector of the usb cable. It looks like this:
In the cable in the photo above the video wire is white. I actually used a very similar cable in which the wire is yellow instead.
What we will do is to cut out the connector from the video cable and solder it to the corresponding cables on the video transmitter cable. Here’s the final result:
Job finished. All you have to do now is connect the camera to the usb cable, then the video connector of the usb cable to the newly attached connector to the video transmitter cable.
This is the final complete FPV setup:
This is a first test mount of this setup on a Lotus RC T380 quadcopter.
Questions or comments most welcome.
Edit April 25, 2014
Here’s a picture in which the power wires were connected along the video signal wires. In this case the wires from the mobius video cable were soldered directly to the wires of the molex, with no connectors in between:
Hi,
Great info. Two questions.
1. What is the part between the battery and video transmitter? Part number?
2. Can you power the möbius camera with the external battery?
Thanks
Troy thanks for your comment!
1) this is a lead balance plug for powering the TX from the balance cable of the battery, 2-4S:
http://www.getfpv.com/filtered-balance-lead-power-supply.html
It actually came with the 250mAh TX, I did not buy it separately.
2) Yes easily. You have to solder together the ground cables for power and video, and then connect them (solder directly) to the ground cable of the TX. Then you connect the red cable from the camera to the red cable from the molex connector that goes to the TX.
The trick is that the ground for the video and for the power, from the camera cable, both go to the same ground input on the TX (to which only the video ground is connected in the tutorial above).
Thanks for that…Ive had partial success!
Ive got exactly the same leads as you.
Soldered the two black leads from power and video to the black ground lead from the Tx then soldered the two red cables together as you suggested.
If the mobius is charged up everything works fine, but if it runs out of charge then FPV is gone…seems like the mobius isn’t receiving power via the battery balance port.
Have you any suggestions as to what I’m doing wrong?
Jon not sure what you are doing wrong. I have recently tested this setup, including power connection. When the cable from the (powered) TX is connected to the mobius (shut off), a led on the mobius turns on, as when you are charging it. So I know the mobius is getting power. I connected the cables just as described in my reply to Troy above. So this could be a test: power the quad, connect the TX, then connect the mobius without turning it on. Does the mobius led lights up? If not, something is not right. Can you check, with a volmeter, that you are getting the expected 5V out of the TX power out leads? I would guess it could happen that a TX is defective and does not send voltage out. Triple check your connections. Keep me posted!
Thanks for your reply!
Things started to pick up after I put an SD card into the Mobius!
The situation now is that when I connect power to the transmitter with the Mobius turned off, a blue LED on the top blinks at a 4 sec interval.
If the Mobius has been previously charged everything works fine, but if I deliberately run the internal camera batteries down and then connect to the powered up Tx, the blue LED still blinks at 4 sec intervals and the video display in the Fat Sharks comes on for a fraction of a second every 4 secs.
So I seem to be almost there….I feel that I am missing something fairly obvious but cant put my finger on it…its driving me crazy!
Have you any further thoughts?
Jon I can imagine that the camera draws power from the battery. So when you power the camera through the TX, what you are really doing is recharging the camera battery, rather than powering the system directly. Recharging takes time, too much time to feed the system in real time. So if you use the mobius charged, you will get video AND the battery will still be recharged at the same time. So while the battery will discharge at a slower rate, because it is being charged at the same time, the camera should last much longer than if you did not feed power in. However you might still run out of power for the camera, after enough time of use even if the camera is powered.
I am not sure this is the way things work, just a speculation also based on your observations.
Hi and a Happy Near Year.
I have Mobius camera.
Have hooked up cable as per diagram.
No go.
Do I have to alter any settings in the Camera?????
Thank you
Hello Keith happy new year too! I did not have to activate anything in the camera, do not even have the software to do it. With the 808 #16 camera I had to enable video out in the software, not for the mobius. Mind that video out only works if you turn on the camera with an sd card, won’t work with camera switched off. Is this of any help?
hi personal drones,
im new to fpv and was going for a simmilar build,
i was wondering if it mattered that i did’nt use the lead balance plug?
Hi Remi, the lead balance plug is handy if you want to use the supplied power filter for the TX, which comes with balance leads inputs. You can also power the TX directly from the distribution board through a JST plug for example. The balance lead is just a possible option.
Hi, I was wondering if you could help me with an issue I have with my Mobius ActionCam. I have set up the wiring as per your drawing from your website but the camera does not display on my FPV goggles. Would you know what could be causing this problem please? I look forward to your response.
Best regards
Alan
Alan check out if video out is enabled on your mobius and if you have the latest firmware. See this link for details and software download. Also, did you try all the channels of the goggles?
hello i am trying to setup my mobius with a LawMate 1.2GHz Transmitter Module but its not working and i coneccted as you did so can you tell me what can be the problem?
Juan have you checked the order of the wires, it could be slightly different in the Lawmate with respect to the immersion.
Hello,
I see you website has lots of awesome information about the Mobius Action Camera. I have a quick question about the photograph mode. Do you know how I can set a time interval in taking photographs for a timelapse project. I believe you can set the intervals to .25, .5, 1, 3, 5, 10, 25, 60 seconds but don’t have a clue how!
Thanks,
Morgan Spence (14)
Setting the time interval on the mobius is quite easy – especially if you have an android tablet or phone! If so, download the Mobius app and connect your mobius – then you can set it.
They also have a PC program which can set the Mobius – if all else fails, you can even do it by changing the settings file on the Mobius in a text editor. RC groups has the original thread with all these instructions:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1904559
Note that once set, you go into the still photo mode by pressing the M (mode) button on the Mobius – twice. This cycles from the Video 1 setting through the Video 2 setting to the Still photo mode.
Screen shots of those settings in the android app at:
http://droneflyers.com/talk/threads/mobius-hd-sport-dashboard-and-aerial-camera-first-look-and-review.178/
Scroll down that thread….
Droneflyers great info, thanks for your reply. By the way nice website there, everyone now visit: http://droneflyers.com/ 😉