The New UAV Game
With the news of DJI being pushed out of the USA commercial and government sectors, and other countries following suit. This is opening the doors to new suppliers to put their products forward for integration.
The move towards non-china components is one we have seen evolve over the past few years, meaning products can be sold globally without restrictions or concerns.
We (Antrica) have recently launched a range of UAV modules targeted mainly at the NDAA approved UAV drone market called the ANT-1776 (and ANT-1776ZB which is targeted at Sony Zoom Block and LVDS integrations).
These new miniature video encoders are best in class and have been modelled on /based on the extremely successful ANT-1773 the key upgrades include H.265 HEIVC codec, 3 x HDP60 inputs, new IMX8 chipset, USB Input , EMMC on board recording, local HDMI loop out and new hardware to hardware low latency feature.
A key benefit of this new range is the ability to input multiple video sources and it can simultaneously encode them, the ANT-1776 can encode up to 3 x HDP60 inputs at once and you can mix and match the input types also. The main boards are designed to be a modular in design, meaning you can add the input mezzanines you require according to your requirements.
Latency is also a significant factor when working with UAV / drone based applications , our units have a 100ms latency when used with the software decode applications (which is provided with the unit), there is also an android tablet app and full API available.
The new ANT-1776 range also benefits from the addition of a low latency hardware to hardware feature, meaning this unit can also be used as a hardware decoder, as each unit has a local HDMI loop out. This can also be especially useful for a local real time view of what the encoder is outputting.
H.265 is revolutionising the UAV space as by reducing the bit rate you can stream better quality video with a lower bit rate, this is far more economical on networks and especially when using radio or satellite links.
It will be interesting to see how this market grows over the coming years and who the new big hitters will be in the drone / UAV space.
