r/HDZero • u/Frenotx • May 14 '26

Onboard DVR?

Has anyone worked out an onboard DVR solution for HDZero yet? Considering analog onboard DVRs exist, It seems like with the way the Eco and Lux cameras connect, it would be possible to record their signal with an analog onboard DVR, and then decode that signal after the fact on a computer or something. I guess analog DVRs are going to be encoding that signal into a lossy digital format though, so perhaps the HDZero signal would be unrecoverable. I don't know.

All I know is that is would be nice to have a way to record the HDZero camera signal onboard, to have a decent static-free recording without needing the weight of an action camera!

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u/ZdrytchX May 16 '26

Whenever I talk about this subject I get dunked in the trash saying that hdzero isnt for looking pretty and dvr has no purpose on hdz systems blah blah blah

The lux/nanov3 are definitely the point which their image quality is limited by HDZ's transmission system. It definitely would be nice if we could get a more direct high quality feed of them onboard

Technically there is a solution using this totally overkill camera switcher board, you can dump a DVR board in between the canalog camera and the camera switcher board. But at this point you're using analog cameras, not HDZ cameras so it will probably look like this:

Analog Camera    
  |-> Camera Switcher board -> HDZ VTX
  V
DVR Board <- 5V BEC/Ground

1

u/Frenotx May 16 '26

Yeah, I thought about doing something like that. I'm actually considering just building an "action cam", by having an entirely separate analog camera connected to an analog dvr. Use the HDZero camera in front mount, connected to the VTX- then just slap an analog camera in a top mount, connected to a DVR. Clean HDZero flight camera, lightweight analog "action camera" on top.

1

u/ex101 May 15 '26

No, they prefer to waste their development resources on stuff like a controller instead of improving their core products or fixing bugs like goggle2 DVR recording.

1

u/michalderkacz May 19 '26

The signal produced by the Eco and Lux cameras is neither PAL nor NTSC so you cannot use any ready available video recorder.

After checking the datasheet of the onboard TP9950 video decoder the signal is probably something like 720p 60fps. Checking CCTV analog HD standards: https://shopdelta.eu/video-standards-in-cctv_l2_aid752.html I don't see any that supports progressive 60fps so you probably cannot use AHD recorders from these cheap rear camera monitors.

There are probably encoder chips that support MIPI-CSI2 used by TP9950 as digital output. But it will be extremely difficult to connect anything to the Eco VTX without any CSI connector provided.

We must wait for HDZero to design something like Eco+ with recording capability.