US-made FPV Drone Components

American-Made FPV Drones

First Person View (FPV) drones give the pilot a low-latency, long-range video feed — a remote view of the world around the aircraft. ModalAI's American-made FPV components reduce operator training by adding autonomous flight, and carry digital, encrypted, low-latency video that has been tested over 11 km.

Stinger Vision FPV is our ready-to-fly aircraft built from these parts: on the Blue UAS Cleared List, NDAA compliant, and designed for a low training burden so government operators and developers can fly it without months of stick time.

Everything below is sold separately if you would rather build your own airframe. The same components, the same VOXL SDK and the same documented interfaces.

Flight Controllers

A flight controller processes flight data to hold a stable attitude and execute the pilot's commands. Paired with a companion computer it can fly the aircraft autonomously, with no pilot at all. ModalAI puts both on one board.

• VOXL 2 — 16 g, Qualcomm QRB5165, 15 TOPS of onboard AI, PX4 or ArduPilot on the sensors DSP
• VOXL 2 Mini — the same stack at 11 g and 42 mm square, for the smallest FPV airframes

Both are NDAA '20 Section 848 compliant, built in the USA, and on the Blue UAS Framework list.

ESCs

Electronic Speed Controllers gauge and adjust motor speed from the flight controller's commands — the link between an autonomy decision and the propellers actually changing thrust.

• VOXL ESC FPV — 4-in-1 brushless, 100 A burst per motor, built-in power module, for 5, 7 and 10-inch airframes
• VOXL ESC Mini — 5.87 g 4-in-1 brushless for aircraft under 750 g

All designed, built and tested in the USA. View all ESCs.

Image Sensors

Image sensors give a drone context about its surroundings, and which you fit depends on the job: tracking sensors for VIO, stereo pairs for depth perception, and time-of-flight sensors for depth and measurement.

• IMX664 low-light FPV sensor — 2704x1540 at 120 fps
• IMX412 4K high-resolution sensor
• AR0144 global-shutter tracking sensor — for VIO and GPS-denied navigation

All three are built in the USA. View all image sensors, and the 26-pin micro-coax cable that lets a sensor sit anywhere on the airframe.

Video Transmission (VTX)

The VTX sends the first-person video feed from the aircraft to the pilot's receiver, usually as HD RGB or thermal imagery compressed with H.264 or H.265. The two numbers that matter are latency and range. VOXL 2 processes, compresses and transmits 720p FPV in under 15 ms, and paired with the MVX VRX the system supports under 35 ms glass-to-glass latency on low-latency settings — camera to screen, end to end — with 45 ms typical. The VOXL SDK supports integration with Microhard and Doodle Labs long-range radios.

Video Receiver (VRX)

A video receiver is the screen side of that link — goggles for an FPV pilot, or a laptop or phone for everything else. It has to sit on the same datalink as the VTX. The MVX FPV Video Receiver is digital and encrypted, outputs over DisplayPort-USB-C, and switches live between EO and IR streams from the aircraft.

R/C Receiver and Transmitter

The receiver lives on the aircraft and takes navigation commands from the transmitter in the pilot's hands. Both must be on the same network to talk.

• ELRS 915MHz Gemini Receiver — 50 mW, dual 868/915 MHz diversity, Blue UAS Framework, assembled in the USA
• Starling Controller — pre-programmed with ExpressLRS 3.x

All FPV Components

Browse every FPV component ModalAI builds, or start from the Stinger Vision FPV if you would rather fly on day one than integrate.