5.8GHz FPV monitor
This is a short tutorial on how to put together your own monitor with a built in 5.8GHz video receiver. The monitor I am using here is a Haier HLT71 and you can generally find it for around $50 - $60. The receiver I am using is the generic RC305 Receiver and it can be found online at many different websites. The HLT71 has been used for FPV by many people, mainly because it has some benefits over the less expensive 7" monitors out on the market. For starters, it has a built-in battery which can power the screen for approximately 2 hours before it needs to be recharged and it also has a built-in TV tuner which can be removed and replaced with a 5.8GHz video receiver. Once the receiver is integrated into the monitor, the end result is an extremely compact and unbelievable portable ground station. Below are the pictures I took to document the steps of disassembling the screen and inserting the receiver. At the bottom of the page is a video overview of the monitor. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or contact me via the contact page.
This is what the monitor looked like when I received it. It had a matte rubberized finished to it and it felt very high quality.
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On the backside, you can see there is a kickstand in the middle and the battery door is just to the right of the kickstand.
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On the left side of the monitor, there is an on/off switch next to an input for a 9-12V power source. The monitor will use the external power source to charge the battery or, if there is no battery installed, it will power the monitor directly from the external source. On the right side of the monitor there are AV input jacks (which we will be using for the receiver), a coaxial output from the TV tuner and an output for headphones.
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To begin disassembling the monitor, I flipped it over on it's back side and started removing the screws holding the case together. You can see which screws I removed in the pictures below. Some screws were hidden behind the battery door and the kickstand.
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After removing the screws, the back case simply comes apart from the front case. On the bottom of the back case, you can see the threaded slot of a 1/4 bolt.
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Once the case was apart, I began removing the screws holding down the PCB to the front case. I also unplugged the cable in the bottom corner that connects the speakers to the PCB.
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Next, I disconnected the ribbon cable between the LCD screen and the PCB. To do this, I simply has to push the black bar on the latch towards the bottom of the screen and then carefully slide the ribbon out.
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After all the screws are removed and all the cables are unplugged, I carefully tilted the screen. When the screen was lifted up, I was able to see one more cable on the underside of the PCB that was still plugged in. I carefully removed this last cable and then separated the PCB from the rest of the case.
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Moving on to the TV Tuner, I used some wire cutters to snip through all of the pins holding the TV tuner to the PCB. Once they were cut, I used a soldering iron to remove all of the remaining pins from the PCB. You can see a before/after of what this looks like, below.
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After that was complete, I had to flip the PCB on to it's back side and remove the solder joints securing it to the TV tuner. There are a few of these joints going around the perimeter of the TV tuner and it took me a bit of time to completely remove all of them.
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Once those joints were removed, I placed the RC305 receiver on top of the empty socket in order to get an idea of how it would fit.
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With the RC305 roughly in place, I began connecting the cables between the PCB and the receiver. The first cable I soldered was the ground cable for the receiver. I soldered it to the receiver's ground connection and then routed it to the front side of the PCB.
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I then took that cable and soldered the other end to a ground contact point on the PCB that was being supplied a steady 7.4 volts. This is just the right amount of voltage needed to power the receiver.
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Next, I did the same thing for the positive contact point on the receiver. I didn't have any different color cables so I had to use red for both the ground and power connections.
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The next thing I did was make a connection between the AV out of the receiver and the AV in of the monitor. I used regular servo wire to make the connection. In the photos, white is for video and red is for audio.
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After all the connections were soldered into place, I used several strips of double-sided foam tape to secure the receiver to the PCB of the monitor. I made sure to make about 4 points of contact so that there was no chance of the receiver falling out of place.
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Lastly, after everything was secured in place, I reassembled the monitor following all the steps I mentioned before. The end result, a 5.8GHz FPV monitor ground station that is powered by its own battery and extremely portable.
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