OSD or Not

[Soler]

Well after realising the magic smoke from my last Naze due to a faulty MinimOSD i have ordered a replacement but before I add it I just wanted people opinions where they use an OSD or not?

[bazzerh]

I';ve been hammering the FPV miniquad lark for the last 7 months and i cant honestly say I';ve ever needed an OSD. I';ve flattened a couple of packs out of exuberance but i dont know if an OSD would have saved me from myself really. the only time i';ve thought it would have been nice was at weston park races it was great being able to tune into others video feeds and see their tags displayed. I wasn';t then going to on watch all the displays though, just the flying. It might be good to have a reticule for fast racing/proximity though.......

then again teslaheads minim did spit its dummy and ruin his 250 quad fun for the weekend so maybe they';re just an unnecessary fail point

[DarkButterfly]

I have one on my AP rig and on my long range hex, however I don';t need one on the mini hex just for blasting round a field.

It';s all down to personal preference.

[Soler]

I';m starting to be in agreement with you. I have one on the S900 and with a good gimbal it is not possible to see what attitude the craft is at but with a mini quad and fixed cam I can do with out.

Decision made, I';ll leave it off

[kilby]

After switching to a Taranis I pulled the osd off the 250 and set an alarm on the tx

[teslahed]

then again teslaheads minim did spit its dummy and ruin his 250 quad fun for the weekend so maybe they';re just an unnecessary fail point

It';s a totally valid point that on a minimal racing quad where you are trying to avoid all possible points of failure an OSD may be an unnecessary risk. They certainly aren';t required to fly a miniquad well and you can get most of the same telemetry information back to your taranis instead of across the video feed if you still want to, although that does require messing about with baseflight / cleanflight config settings and your taranis a bit until it all works.

The real reason i have an OSD is that i like it and i enjoy the technical challenge of getting it all working. When it does all work it looks really good and i genuinely find the information useful even if it';s not vital.

For longer range flights RSSI, amps, mah consumed, voltage and more can add a layer of safety as you can sometimes tell that something is wrong before things become serious.

For racing around short courses you just need to make sure you change LiPos every race. You don';t really need an OSD in my experience, even if i do like the artificial horizon.

Don';t be totally surprised if in a years or twos time i end up with a minimal no OSD racing quad though

[dirtyharry]

i';ve started using  my mini quad a bit longer range  (about 2k m ) , and have been caught out with flat batteries. weight is a pain , but when the ****** hits the fan there ace , could just do with a nice light gps , anyone know of one

[kilby]

The minim osd just didn';t quite fit the layout, I did consider the mini version and the osdoge stackable one.

I suspect when the FPV kit gets transferred to the v-tail the osd will return (I';m some manner) as having the battery and rssi info available is nice (plus  a tart)

[Digit]

I have one on both the 450 disco and the QAV 250, as I don';t have a telemetry radio it';s nice to see the voltage at a glance.
In all honesty on the 450 I couldn';t do without it but on the 250 I could