RubyFPV Android Viewer

Android app that displays the live video feed from a RubyFPV ground station over USB-C tethering.

Plug your phone into the Ruby ground station, enable USB tethering, and see exactly what the pilot sees.

How it works

1. Phone connects to Ruby ground station via USB cable
2. USB tethering is enabled on the phone (creates a network link)
3. Ruby detects the phone and sends raw H.264 video over UDP port 5001
4. The app decodes and displays the video in fullscreen with minimal latency

Features

• Hardware H.264 decoding via Android MediaCodec
• Fullscreen landscape display
• Auto-recovery on stream loss (3-second watchdog)
• Stream stats overlay (tap screen to toggle): bitrate, packet rate, NAL rate
• Minimal latency — designed for FPV use

Requirements

• Android 7.0+ (API 24)
• USB data cable (not charge-only)
• RubyFPV ground station with USB video forwarding enabled

Ruby ground station setup

1. Go to Controller > Video Forward in the Ruby menu
2. Enable Video Forward To USB Device
3. Set type to Raw (H264)
4. Port: 5001 (default)

Install

Download the latest APK from GitHub Actions (build artifacts) or build from source.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/wkumik/RubyFPV-Android-Viewer.git
cd RubyFPV-Android-Viewer
./gradlew assembleDebug

APK will be at app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk

Testing without a ground station

You can test the app using ffmpeg from a PC while the phone is USB-tethered to the PC:

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i testsrc=size=1280x720:rate=30 \
  -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:v libx264 -profile:v baseline \
  -tune zerolatency -g 30 -bsf:v dump_extra \
  -f h264 udp://<phone_ip>:5001?pkt_size=1024

Roadmap

See ROADMAP.md for planned features including:

• Ruby OSD overlay (V2)
• H.265 support (V3)
• Screen recording / DVR (V4)

Credits

• RubyFPV by Petru Soroaga
• Video decoding architecture inspired by OpenIPC Decoder (MIT License)
• NAL parsing based on Consti10/myMediaCodecPlayer-for-FPV

License

MIT — see LICENSE