Welcome to Ruby

Ruby is a complete platform (hardware and software) designed for controlling and managing UAVs, drones, planes, cars and other remote vehicles and offers robust end to end digital radio links between multiple points.

The system is built using hardware components available on the market. It supports a variety of hardware boards:



There are systems ready to use, from different manufacturers, and also systems that you can build yourself. All you need is the software from the downloads section and the hardware components listed in the hardware section.
Here you will find all the detailed information about what Ruby is, how it works, descriptions and step by step guides on how create your Ruby system to be used for remote controlling vehicles (planes, drones, cars, UAVs), for sending/receiving data, telemetry and for live HD video.

If you just want to start right away and build a fully working Ruby system, head directly to Complete Setup Guide which will guide you step by step from start to finish to create and setup your system.

If you want to just buy ready to use Ruby systems, see our Store for links from where to Ruby systems from manufactured by different vendors.

Features highlights:

• Mutiple, rendundant radio links on 433/868/915 Mhz and 2.4/5.8 Ghz bands:
  Multiple redundant radio links in different bands (433Mhz, 868/915Mhz, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5 and 5.8Ghz) can be used simultaneously between vehicles, ground control stations and relays for better resilience, link quality and range;
  
  
• Adaptive video, adaptive radio links, retransmissions:
  Ruby automatically adjusts the video bitrate, the video encoding quality, the radio datarates and radio modulation schemes to preserve a robust video feed when radio conditions deteriorate. Also, retransmissions and error correction is done automatically by Ruby when the radio conditions deteriorate excesivelly.
  
  
• Relaying:
  Mobile (vehicles) and/or fixed relay nodes can be inserted in the system for longer range and penetration beyond line of sight;
  Read more about how relaying works in Ruby and how to configure it: Relay Radio Links: How they work, how to configure relay links
  
  
• Encryption:
  The radio links can be encrypted end to end so that only authorized components can decode the radio data;
  
  
• Live video, telemetry, remote control, auxiliary & custom data streams:
  By default Ruby supports all the required data capabilities for UAVs (realtime video streaming, up to 4k video resolution, telemetry, control and user defined data streams).
  
  
• Rich user interface/control interface:
  You have a multitude of OSD screens to configure and switch between, instrumets, widgets and 3rd party developed UI plugins;
  
  
• SDKs for third party development of new features:
  There are public SDKs available so that 3rd parties can add custom functionalities and capabilities to Ruby system.

Being a digital link, end to end, gives you advantages over regular analog RF links, like: noise free video feed, ability to send data too (like telemetry and other custom data), error correction, data reliability, have more configurable parameters as it relates to the end to end video link, not just frequency and band; but also parameters like resolution, framerate, resilience and so on; and also enables some exotic scenarios like 3D video, camera switching and so on pretty much out of the box.

Ruby also has these other capabilities right out of the box:

• Bidirectional radio link for better video streaming quality; Video quality is adjusted based on radio conditions;
• Video Recording;
• Long range radio link: the range of the radio link is (based on setup) between 2 km to 40km (maximum tested so far);
• Low end to end latency of the video feed (as low as 40 ms on current hardware). Latency of telemetry and remote control is even lower, less than 10ms
• Bind multiple models (just like a regular remote control) and switch between them, live;
• Real time control of the vehicle and telemetry data;
• Spectator mode: allows others to be just spectators, watching the live video feed.
• Software update of the vehicles over the radio link;
• Multiple OSD layouts;
• Detailed info on link quality and video decoding stats;
• Multiple camera profiles, live switching between them for different flight conditions;
• Bidirectional telemetry and custom data feeds. For telemetry, MAVLink and LTM are supported, other protocols are still in progress;
• A comprehensive list of settings and parameters, all can be changed on the fly using the OSD and menu;

Here is how the user interface and video display looks like on the controller:

What video range to expect:

• On 2.4Ghz, using 200mW of power: about 2-3 km range (solid full HD video); Range is shorter if you are in a city area with a lot of WiFi traffic;
• On 5.8Ghz, using 400mw of power: about 3.5-4 km range (solid full HD video); People regularly fly to 7-8 Km out on omnidirectional antennas only with solid link (see resources section for examples);
  People have done tens of kilometers distance flights using Ruby, maximum reported range so far is 40 km;

* This is on 720p, using circular polarised antennas, 2-3db of gain; with high gain directional antennas range can be increased by an order of magnitude;
* The telemetry/data/remote controll range is usually greater than the video range. Video streams are the ones that need the highest data throughput hence the lower limit of video range.