How to measure FPV camera tilt accurately

I have been trying to think of an accurate, consistent and foolproof way of measuring / adjusting the angle of my camera tilt for a while now. It turns out that all I needed was a mirror - and not even a real one!

You can watch the how-to video here:

I believe that adjusting the angle of your camera tilt consistently across all of your builds is very important.
The camera tilt directly affects the way you fly and the way you "mix" your right and left hand movements while flying. Your race quads, your freestyle quads and your whoops will probably need different camera tilt but all of your racers should have the same - all of your freestyle quads also - so do the tiny whoops.
Eye-balling the camera angle to match it between your builds results in approximately the same angle. Using a protractor may be more accurate but still, it is approximate and difficult to do on some frames.

Just calibrate your Flight Controller on a flat surface, connect the F/C to your PC, place the mirror vertically on that surface and match the center of the image of your FPV video feed to the reflection of the camera lens on the mirror. The readings you see as "pitch" from the F/C is you camera angle. So simple!

Some FPV cameras may have a crosshair / center dot in their OSD settings, so you can use that instead of the Betaflight OSD crosshair.
If your quad does not support OSD and you choose to adjust your camera with the transparent sheet over your monitor, make sure that the image displayed on your monitor is correct and not cropped, for example due to NTSC/PAL settings.

What you need:

Acrylic mirror:
Same as the one I used: https://goo.gl/XqhtAs (Banggood)
Another option that can be assembled as a rectangle: https://goo.gl/c44da3 (Banggood)
Triangle shaped: https://goo.gl/nauDoX (Gearbest)
Hexagon shaped: https://goo.gl/qrQCqy (Ebay)
Square shaped: https://goo.gl/SKfceF (Ebay)

For the mirror "holder", anything with a flat surface, that will stand upright, vertically, on the surface you place it, will do. I used a carton L-shape protector from some packaging I came across and confirmed that it can stand vertically at 90 degrees with a ruler.
The acrylic mirror came with adhesive pads but I wanted to prevent any distortions on the mirror, so I used double sided tape for uniformity.

One last thought:
What if FPV cameras had a built-in 1-axis gyro? We could then go into the menu and check the angle of the camera tilt from there..
What do you think?


Enjoy!
;)