What is the best FPV Video Transmitter (VTX) on the market that competes with major name brand names? The AKK Race VTX is a compact economically priced video transmitter that has the same dimensions of many similar name brand products. Do not let the price fool you, AKK has been producing private label (rebranding) FPV products for Eachine and other popular FPV shops world wide.
The AKK Race VTX could be the lowest cost 200mW Video Transmitter we have seen and it just $10! Add the Diatone Ripple Board for a clean stackable mounting board and could be the best choice for those on a very tight budget! What makes the AKK Race VTX our favorite choice?
- Price for just $10 you cant beat it –
- Form Factor (size and shape). This AKK Race VTX is the exact same size as other popular video transmitters.
- Documentation – This FPV hobby is already difficult enough, especially without clear manuals and other documentation, this AKK race comes complete with the proper paper manual for you to reference. Grayson Hobby is the expert to FPV Drones.
GraysonHobby samples and reviews 100s of drones and components a year, most of which do make it to our awesome FPV store, so if we give it a thumbs up, we fully support the product.
Quick Example the TS5823L – it is the exact same product as the Eachine version, without the Eachine label for less costs.
Click here for the TS5823L
Where to Purchase the AKK Race VTX
GraysonHobby
220 Old Loganville Road
Loganville, Georgia 30052 – USA
Tel 678 – 682 – 9123
graysonhobby.com/AKK-RACE-VTX
00:00 Basil: Hey guys, Basil and Will from Grayson Hobby. And today, we’re gonna do a product highlight of a product.
00:06 Will: Of a product. So I have something here in my hand that I want to share with you guys. It’s actually a pretty cool little product on the market. Bang for the buck, it’s pretty awesome. It’s come up a lot in questions that I get locals coming around and online about a part they want but they don’t want to spend a ton of money on it.
00:22 Basil: The part will go in this 5″ FPV Drone all the way down to a 2″ inch micro FPV Drone.
00:31 Basil: If you’re new to the channel, Grayson Hobby is a shop located outside of Atlanta, Georgia where we sell and ship out quads and airplanes and drone parts and everything of sorts and everything you see on our website is located here in our good old USA warehouse right outside of Atlanta. GraysonHobby.com
00:49 Will: Guys, so if you’re new to this channel, please subscribe below, throw some likes down on the video and support us here ’cause this is… That’s what keeps us going. So if you want us to keep doing it, then subscribe below. Alright guys, so what we have here today is the AKK Race VTX. This is something I want to go over ’cause the question that always comes up… People come in the store, they want a VTX, they don’t want to spend a ton of money, they’re not not looking to spend $40 on a Unify. They just want something that’s gonna be small, low-profile but not exactly the little five volt mini VTXs you get on… For the back of cameras like the nano series. AKK kinda came through with this AKK Race FPV VTX and the price is unbelievable, this is a $10 VTX.
01:30 Basil: That is unbelievable.
01:32 Will: And I mean, it’s nice. [laughter] And it actually is very nice. We have, just a little cable here. A lot of places charge like $2, $2.50 just for this little… Something like that. So you’re getting, not only are you getting a cable, you’re getting a freakin’ VTX no with PVC wire but silicone wire. So this is a nice little AKK Race VTX and it actually has a user manual. Not just a little nothing, like the Eachine it all used to come with. This is a great little VTX for the money. It has smart audio capability, it’s five volt in, it does have a five volt out for a camera if you need it. 25mw or 200 milliwatts selectable output power. It does have a microphone so you can actually pick up audio with the transmit audio for the guys that want that. It only weighs 3.5 grams so lightweight and it’s just a good little setup for the money. You can see, I put this on one of my Diatone, original Rabbit, five inch and what I’ve done here is I’ve actually put it on the Diatone board. This came about because I had a Unify that I… I didn’t have a Unify for a warranty repair so I replaced it and then I didn’t have a VTX on mine so I was like “What am I gonna do?” And well these came in and I figured, “It’s a good platform to try it,” and it’s been great. So what I’ve been using is these guys right here, some double-sided tape and the VTX.
02:47 Basil: Alright, explain to me what that is.
02:50 Will: These are the low-ripple boards from Diatone. These are $4 and $5. I think these are $3.99 and these are $4.99, something like that.
03:00 Basil: So I’ll receive… So it’s the… On the 30 x 30 and…
03:01 Will: 30 x 30 and 20 x 20. Nice thing about these, they have the capacitor and the inductor on it to cancel out some of the video noise, so any ripples. The 30 x 30 also has a buzzer. That’s really actually why I use it because it already had the buzzer on it.
03:14 Basil: Nice.
03:14 Will: So it makes it a nice clean stackable plate because right now this is a flat-bottom, there’s nothing on the back of it, there’s no mounting holes, no nothing so it just be wherever. And I didn’t want this floating around inside my quad and I wanted to mount it somewhere nice to keep it clean. Kinda OCD with my builds. So now these are designed for the Unify Pro five volt VTXs, which guess what? This is the same size. It’s literally…
03:38 Basil: Yeah, look at that.
03:39 Will: The same footprint. So I kinda think that’s where they were going with this footprint. You will not be able to use this little heat sink with it because it’s just a little too big. Just a little shields to keep debris on, stuff like that, you don’t really need it. So just get rid of that. This is a plug connection, it does have solder pads here and it has solder pads here. So what I did is I took some double-sided tape, mounted it there, mounted it down here and then I ran the wires to the adjacent pads and I used this plug here. Now depending on what you’re doing flight controller-wise, you could directly solder this to it and you don’t need this board altogether.
04:10 Basil: This gives you the clean look and…
04:11 Will: Yeah, it just makes it a nice clean look. So it offered a nice, clean setup. And you can see in this build here that I took… Because this is a five volt flight-controller, the five volt for the VTX, I wired the power going from the five volt and ground pad over to here. I actually de-soldered these two wires here, which is the camera pads, this would be the camera five volt out and ground. I didn’t need those so I just did away with them.
04:36 Basil: Which ones did you do away with?
04:37 Will: I did away with the five volt power to the camera and the ground to the camera ’cause it’s a common ground here. Video in and smart audio is the green. So what I did is I ran the wires here and then I soldered them up on this board, which would be right here. And they’re actually labeled which is nice so it makes it kinda hard to screw that up. So they’re labeled there and it just made a really nice, clean setup. And I, in this case, I did actually, on this build, I did get an aftermarket MMCX cable. So there is another $2.50 purchase right there, but I did run that at a 90-degree to run it on this particular setup. You probably wouldn’t have to do that, you could flip this board around in different orientations and run it out of the back if you wanted to. It’s personal preference on your build but I just wanna, I gotta highlight this because it’s a great little VTX, it’s dirt cheap, it works. And if…
05:28 Will: There’s a lot of budget fpv drone builds out there, a lot of companies or a lot of YouTube channels are doing budget builds. Something that always come up, they’re always getting this little VTX that’s just crap and it’s just floating around in there and it doesn’t look like a clean build. So this is a nice little option that for, literally that’s $15 right there, gives you a nice stackable design that’s gonna be a 200 milliwatt compatible Race VTX. So you have 25mw and 200mw selectable. I think guys would really like and I don’t think a lot of people know about that AKK Race VTX is why I wanna share that today.
05:56 Basil: So here, we have the new build that you’re doing, right? The new Diatone, seventh anniversary frame?
06:00 Will: Yes.
06:00 Basil: With a Grayson…
06:03 Will: Yeah, so this is a build I’m gonna be working on shortly. And basically on this one, if… This has a nine volt and a five volt selection so when you’re wiring this up, you’d actually do the video and smart audio in here. And then you had the ground and five volt on these inner-pads here, so this VTX will work for it as well. Yeah, this whole thing would stack.
06:22 Basil: Would stack right here.
06:24 Will: Just stack.
06:25 Basil: Nice.
06:26 Will: Of course, you’d use different stand-ups and all that but you can make it a nice clean build.
06:29 Basil: Only for Diatones or…
06:31 Will: No, no, no, no, this is by far, not only for Diatones. You can use this Race VTX in the ET Max or the ET 115, 125 because they have a 5volt system. Their VTX five volt, you could actually modify it to fit these.
06:46 Basil: I have a brand ABC quad, what do I need to look for to see if that works?
06:49 Will: Well, the biggest thing is this only takes five volt input. So you have to have some sort of five volt source, whether it’s a power distribution board for power or the flight controller itself. You can’t run…
07:03 Basil: V-bat. [chuckle]
07:04 Will: The battery. Yeah, you can’t run battery voltage so you will smoke it. It’s maximum five volt and it’s labeled right on the back. It’s smart port, voltage in ground, five volt out ground… I’m sorry, video in. And then five volt in right there. You guys have to make sure you run five volts into it but other than that, it’s been good. The only thing I could really honestly gripe about, the MMCX connector, when I was early mounting it, I actually did manage to knock off one of the solder pads on this one. Or not this one, but the one I mounted. Mainly ’cause I used some really good 3M Extreme tape and it mount it very tight and I wanted to move it around ’cause I mounted the way I didn’t like it. And when I went to pull it off, I actually noticed I was starting to pull the MMCX connector all loose. So you gotta remember it is only soldered there so if you do mount it, make sure you do that. You may wanna take a little epoxy or something like that, possibly and reinforce it.
07:54 Basil: Gotcha. You wouldn’t shrink wrap that or anything, right? Would you?
07:58 Will: On this particular one? No, because the way I mounted it, I just double-sided tapes. Basically, all you need to do, look here. So that would be one there and then I wanna cut another, a second layer out but I’m also gonna cut out around here so I got room for the solder pads. So you put one layer there and then solder the wires, put the second stack.
08:24 Basil: Oh, like a sandwich?
08:25 Will: Yeah, and then you can raise it…
08:26 Basil: Like a solder sandwich.
08:27 Will: Yeah, and you can raise it up, but that way your wires are completely closed. If you’re really good at soldering, you can do really clean solders, you probably could get away with just doing the one.
08:34 Basil: What if I’m not good at soldering?
08:35 Will: If you’re not good at it, double it up. You just don’t want it grounding to the board anywhere possibly but you could literally do that.
08:41 Basil: Okay. So make a solder sandwich and you’re good.
08:42 Will: Yeah. So you could just do it two stacks and you can cut them both out like that, if you want to. But it’s on you.
08:48 Basil: Now, that’s for the 20 x 20, right?
08:49 Will: Yeah. This is for the 20 x 20. The 30 x 30, you can literally just, the square.
08:54 Basil: And you’re good?
08:56 Will: And those like…
08:57 Basil: Now, if I’m bad at soldering and I use a 30 x 30?
09:00 Will: Well, this one, the wires are right there, so it’s not hard. So this VTX and a build we’re gonna be trying to do later on that we’ve been talking about, this is probably the VTX I’m gonna use for that build just because of the price point and it gets the job done. At the end of the day, money doesn’t grow on trees.
09:13 Basil: Alright, so people are already skeptical, it’s $10 VTX compared to a $50 VTX. My range must be limited to one-tenth or one-tenth, one-fifth the range.
09:23 Will: Well, here’s the thing guys, if you guys have seen reviews on the TX03 from Eachine, TX02, the ones that are 200 milliwatt capable, the AKK makes the nano 1, 2, 3, etcetera, that have the ability of 200 milliwatt.
09:36 Basil: And they look awfully…
09:37 Will: This is the same electronics…
09:37 Basil: Those two look awfully the same.
09:39 Will: Yeah, they’re pretty much… Well, yeah, ’cause they were… Okay, we won’t get… Guys, this is the same electronics on a different form factor. AKK has definitely listened to a couple of different major names out there that want stuff in the review world, and they’ve actually gone through and made that footprint. They’ve changed their electronics to a different shape to cater to the needs of the FPV community so that’s really cool. This one happens to be the footprint of more like the Unify style.
10:07 Basil: But you didn’t answer the question. How far can it go?
10:10 Will: That is completely dependent on your receiver, your antennas and where you’re flying.
10:15 Basil: Your environment, where you’re flying.
10:16 Will: The right channel. How much noise in that channel in the areas is, there’s so many variables. What I’ve used compared to the 200mw on my TBS Unify that I had on that quad, in the same area, I’m going around the same buildings, I’m getting the same break up in the same areas. So it’s not like, “Oh no, because it’s $10, it doesn’t work at all. Does Unify work better?” It might be tighter on the bands from channel to channel, you might be able to fly more people, kind of thing, ’cause it’s less noise bleeding to other channels. A visual guy that’s flying in the park on a Sunday afternoon…
10:46 Basil: Flying by yourself. So I joke about the range, we literally get that on every video we do. “How far can it fly?” And as everybody knows who’s anything on FPV, it varies so that’s… Anything else?
10:55 Will: No, that’s pretty much all I wanted to cover on that today.