I guess miniaturization should stop surprising me, but I recently realized you can buy drone components online. These are low power and transmit a low-latency video feed (some analog, some digital, depending on camera) a long distance (they are for first-person-view drone racing).

https://betafpv.com/collections/cameras

The price is what really surprised me. The most expensive thing there is $14. There are many similar options floating around. I assume that these are priced at a premium because they are for applications where people care about shaving 0.1g.

The cheap cameras you are seeing produce an NTSC signal that _barely_ usable. I will frequently hit 'invisible' twigs because they are below the resolving power of the camera->transmission->receiving pipeline. Most FPV race tracks have high contrast or illuminated gates to combat this.

(Also, you should buy a tinywhoop, most fun you can have sitting down)

The cheap ones use very simply analog transmission techniques to send a video image. The quality is just enough to see where you’re flying the drone, but it’s much less than you would expect from a security camera.

There are digital options available but once you price the digital transmitter and receiver it’s going to be in the hundreds of dollars, not low tens. Amazing that it’s as cheap as it is, but there’s still a price.

The parts you linked are just cameras, not analog transmitters. It’s a cheap camera sensor with just enough circuitry to get a low res analog signal out.