Shooting Still Images with a GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition and a DJI Phantom Vision I Quadcopter in FPV

Correction 2-11-15: I've been incorrectly calling the "Phantom 1" quadcopter the "Phantom Vision 1" quadcopter.  I've corrected this below.  There is only one Phantom 1 quadcopter.  There are two Phantom 2 quadcopters.  The Phantom 2 Vision quadcopter comes with a DJI-designed video and still camera.  The Phantom 2 (non-Vision) quadcopter does not come with a camera and is designed to be used with a GoPro Hero 3 or 3+ camera. 


Quick summary:
If you, like me, purchased a Phantom I Quadcopter and wish to shoot high-quality still images with it using a GoPro Hero 3 camera using First Person View (FPV), then this post is for you.  The below post describes how to set up a GoPro Hero 3 or 3+ Black Edition camera on a DJI Phantom I Quadcopter to take still images while you see what you are shooting, in real time.  The gear, settings, and solutions that I describe may or may not apply to other GoPro models and Phantom quadcopters.

Longer summary:
You'd think that taking still images with a GoPro Hero 3 camera mounted on a Phantom 1 quadcopter would be easy.  If you aren't ambitious, it can be pretty easy.  I started off by setting the GoPro to take a still image every 0.5 seconds and flying the Phantom around, without seeing what I was shooting.  This worked OK, but I really wanted to see what I was photographing in real time.  I thought that this would be easy, but it was far more complicated than I initially thought.  Of course.

First, to see what you are shooting in real-time, which is called First Person View (FPV), you need to buy some gear and do some soldering of connectors.  I bought (thanks to Eric Cheng's recommendations at skypixel.org) a Boscam 353 400mw transmitter ($60) and a Pearl Diversity monitor ($229).  I also bought a USB-video out cable (on Ebay for $5) which attaches to the USB port on the GoPro and has a connector on the other end which outputs the video signal.

Pictured are the Boscam transmitter, GoPro USB video out cable and plugs, and 9V battery to power the transmitter

 

The Boscam 353 transmitter is a small, light electronic box (with an antenna on it) that takes a video signal from the GoPro Hero 3 or 3+ Black Edition camera and transmits it to a receiver (such as a Boscam RC805 receiver, $30).  The receiver then inputs that video signal into a monitor.  You can buy a separate receiver and monitor, but the Pearl Diversity monitor has the receiver and monitor, along with a battery to power everything, all in one package.

You will need to buy a cable (I found mine on Ebay for $5) that fits into the USB port on the GoPro and provides wires for video and audio out.  I used a standard 9V transistor battery (Duracell, for instance) with a standard connector that you can buy at Radio Shack, to power the transmitter.  By my calculations, a 9V battery should power this transistor for a couple of hours. I used Eric Cheng's recommendations at skypixel.org and bought a bunch of male and female JST connectors and pre-wired JST connectors at hobbyking.  By buying a bunch of connectors at once, I saved several trips to the local electronic store.

Here's where things got more complicated.  Details are below, and here is a fairly quick summary.  The GoPro won't transmit a video out signal if you set it to take still images every 0.5 seconds -- or if you set it to take stills.  It will work fine and will transmit a video out signal if you set it to take videos.  But if you are like me, you are experimenting with this first fairly inexpensive ($479) Phantom 1 model and you don't have a gimbal, which is just about compulsory to shoot decent video.  You just want to shoot still images.

After much trial and error, I found that the only way to get decent still images from the GoPro is to use it at the following settings.  These settings ensure the highest quality stills but only take one still image every five seconds.  The video is not interrupted when the GoPro shoots still images, but you can't use the highest quality video settings in this mode.

Set the GoPro Hero 3 or 3+ Black Edition camera as follows:
My settings were as follows: set video to 1080p 30fps.  Set the camera to shoot video and take a still images every 5 seconds ("video plus still mode").  Turn off ProTune mode.


Here are the gory details:
I have a DJI Phantom I quadcopter.  It does not have a gimbal, which stabilizes the camera for steady video shots.  I am more interested in practicing with this quadcopter, and taking still photographs with it, rather than getting smooth video at this time.  I wanted the best stills possible, and this meant using a GoPro Hero 3 or 3+ Black Edition camera.

Here's what I discovered.  I wanted FPV (first person view) so I could see what the camera was seeing.  I didn't necessarily want to see through the camera, but the GoPro does allow viewing of what the camera is seeing through its USB port.  You need to buy a USB-video out cable (on Ebay for $5) which attaches to the USB port on the GoPro and has a connector on the other end which contains the video signal.  I fed that video-out signal to a Boscam 353 400mw transmitter (thanks, Eric Cheng from skypixel.org) which transmits the image to a receiver.

You can either buy a separate receiver unit like the Boscam RC805, which has a video-out port that you can attach to a video monitor like the Prism (DIGITAL PRISM ATSC-710 7" 480I EDTV-READY LCD TELEVISION, on Ebay for $55 to $100), or you can buy (again, thanks to Eric) this cool monitor: Black Pearl Diversity Monitor, $229 on Amazon.  The Black Pearl is a monitor that has a receiver built in to it.


The GoPro Hero 3 and 3+ Black edition has a USB-out port for video out, among other things.  I connected the video out signal on this port to a transmitter, and this worked well.  I had to fiddle with the settings on the Boscam transmitter and the Pearl monitor, until I got a stable video picture on the receiving monitor.  The Boscam transmitter has four DIP switches which select what channel (frequency) the transmitter will send out.  The Pearl monitor can be set to different bands and channels.  I found the following settings to work for me and did not experiment further.  For some reason, the Boscam's printed frequences at the settings did not match the Pearl Monitor's supposed receiving frequencies, but hey -- this worked.

Boscam transmitter: DIP switches 1 and 2 in the UP position, 3 and 4 in the down position.  Binary 1100 -- Channel 4 (5645 Mhz) according to the above diagram - but the above diagram is for the Boscam TS352 transmitter.

Pearl Diversity Monitor: set to Mode: DIV; Band: E; channel: 5

Note in the above diagram that the white represents the setting of the DIP switch.  So I had my transmitter set to Channel 4.  I also saw later that the Boscam 353 transmitter is a Band E transmitter.  I have no idea what that means, other than other transmitters might be Band A and therefore not the same.

Here's what I found about the exact channel frequencies being set:
Boscam - TS353 5.8G 400mW AV Transmitter Transmitter frequency: Amateur
Radio Band, 5865M, 5845M, 5825M, 5805M, 5785M, 5765M, 5745M, 5725M;8CH
Not frequency-compatible with FatShark, ImmersionRC, Airwave based
equipment

Now that I had my FPV gear in place, it was time to take still images.  Not so fast!  Simply setting the GoPro to take images every 0.5 seconds, as I had done in the past, did not work with my FPV setup.  No picture was being transmitted by the GoPro.

Here's what I discovered: If you are using FPV with a GoPro and you want to take still images, then the only way to take stills that are the highest resolution possible (about 3900 pixels on the wide side) is to set the GoPro to take video and stills.  There's a setting in the camera to do this -- it's called the "video plus still" mode.  You can't shoot at 720p, 120 fps (which is my preferred GoPro video setting).  You only have a limited selection of video settings that also allow you to shoot stills.   I settled on 1080p 30fps.  The resulting still images were a bit less than the largest resolution images possible with the GoPro, but they were acceptably large.

Here are the still image resolutions for the GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition:

The Hero 3+ Black Edition also has a maximum still image resolution of 12MP and 30fps burst rate

BLACK Edition
12MP Wide: 4000x3000 pixels
7MP Wide: 3000x2250 pixels
7MP Medium: 3000x2250 pixels
5MP Medium: 2560x1920 pixels

I am getting 3920 x 2160 in the "video plus still" mode.  The largest possible would be 4000x3000 pixels.


I found this on a forum, and this writer posts the issue better than I have: "I had this question, too, until I did some research.  There is no way to remotely control the GoPro from the ground.  What you have to do is enable the GoPro to take photos and video SIMULTANEOUSLY.  When you do that, you can set the GoPro to take a picture at a regular interval while it is also taking video.  I always set it for every 5 seconds.  The only thing to remember is that doing this will limit your possible resolution settings for the video. "

After much trial and error, I found that the only way to get decent still images from the GoPro is to use it at the following settings.  These settings ensure the highest quality stills but only take one still image every five seconds.  The video is not interrupted when the GoPro shoots still images, but you can't use the highest quality video settings in this mode.

Set the GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition camera as follows:
My settings were as follows: set video to 1080p 30fps.  Set the camera to shoot video and take a still images every 5 seconds ("video plus still" mode).  Turn off ProTune mode.