Yesterday, I decided to buy myself one of those new quadricopters. I’ve seen several different kinds on the internet. But, my local mall has a Brookstone store and they had the ARDrone Parrot model in-stock. So, at a price of $299.00, I decided to pick one up and give it a go. And, let’s just say that I feel like a kid all over again! This thing is friggin awesome! After taxes and an added mechanical warranty, the end price came out to $371.43. It was worth every penny!
The ARDrone Parrot has 2 onboard cameras. Yep. You read that right. There are 2 cameras. The first camera is mounted in the nose of the quadricopter facing forward and the second camera is located directly below the quadricopter facing straight down. Although the quadricopter isn’t capable of reaching very high altitudes, around 10 – 15 ft in my experience, I can still think of a few places where the downward facing camera could be used.
(Update: One of our readers has already written in to inform me that there is a setting on the ARDrone that limits the altitude. Apparently, I can disable this and fly it a lot higher than 10 – 15 ft. I have just disabled it and am waiting for the battery to recharge. Once I have a full battery, I will see just how high this thing can go. Also, in the settings on the iPad, you can enable / disable outdoor use. By turning on outdoor use, the drone flies several times faster than it does indoors.)
The ARDrone Parrot does not come with any kind of remote control device. Instead, you can download the ARFree Flight app from the iTunes store for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. I’m not a big fan of Apple. So, I don’t personally own any Apple products. However, last year, I did buy my fiancee an iPad. So, luckily, I had something to test my drone with. I’ve read several articles online about the app being ported to Android. But, I haven’t tried any of those yet. Plus, that’s a good thing about being a software developer. If there’s not an app out there that fits my needs or lives up to what I want in an app, I can easily write my own.
For now, I’ve been playing with the drone using the iPad. The iPad connects to the drone via a standard WiFi connection. So, that means that while you’re using the drone, you cannot be connected to the internet. However, one of the things I would like to achieve with the drone is the ability to control it over the web. To do that, I have an extra USB WiFi adapter that I can plug into my laptop which already has built-in wireless. With a little bit of ingenuity, I’ll use the built-in wireless card to connect to the internet and the other to connect to the drone. I’ll also write a small program that will read commands from the built-in card and pass those commands to the USB WiFi adapter which will allow me to control the drone from anywhere I want. With a little bit more work, I could easily create some sort of home security monitoring system that I can control from anywhere I have an internet connection back to my house.
Another cool thing to do would be to use OpenCV for tracking using the cameras on the drone for input. Since the drone’s software is already available for the iPhone and because OpenCV can be ran on the iPhone, I think these 2 are a match waiting to happen. If I wasn’t so busy with all that I have going on currently, I would look into mating these 2 myself if it hasn’t been done already. Plus, I can think of several other applications that would be cool to use this thing with.
Anyways, to use the drone using the iPad, there is a button at the bottom that will auto-land and auto-takeoff for you. If you’ve ever flown any kind of RC helicopter, you would know that a feature like this is extremely important. Once your drone is in flight, you can take your hands off of the controls at any time and the quadricopter will auto-correct itself and will hover right where it is. To move the drone, you can press on one side of your screen and tilt the iPad forward or back and the drone will do as commanded. On the other side of the screen, you have a directional pad that gives you the control to go up or go down as well as turn left or right. There’s also a button that allows you to switch between the 2 different camera views. You can even do PIP (picture-in-picture) so that you can see both cameras at the same time if you want.
Later today, I’m going to checkout some of the other apps that are available for the ARDrone Parrot. One of the apps I want to checkout turns your drone into an augmented reality fighter pilot game. With something like that, your real-world drone will become a real-world video game.
If you’re interested in picking up your own ARDrone Parrot, and I would highly recommend that you do, you can get one from Amazon for $299.95 and even as low as $245.00 thru the link below. These things will make any kid (or adult in my case) extremely happy if they were to receive one for a birthday gift or Christmas present. So, click on the link below to head over to Amazon and checkout the reviews from other ARDrone Parrot owners.
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[...] I purchased myself an AR.Drone from Parrot. And, as I mentioned in this article, the new quadricopter is AWESOME! If you haven’t picked one up yet, you need to! (Amazon [...]