![]() Quadrotors, you say. I cringe. I fly a Trex 450 Pro (but am lightyears behind Alan Szabo Jr.). For better or worse I have actually designed and machined my own heli designs and blades. Thats already a fulltime hobby. I didnt think I had the time to tune, tweak, code, research + or x configurations, etc. for a quadrotor. <p >AR DRONE SETUPSTEP ONE: Opened the box. It came already assembled. True RTF. Put your CA glue away. STEP TWO: Charged the battery. I plugged in the international-friendly plug of the self balancing charger right into my 120VAC wall outlet. For my helis I have a dedicated 12VDC power source, a Triton charger, and a Team Losi balancer. OK, this was already too easy…. |
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STEP THREE: Looked at the instruction booklet in the box. Did not read it. I wanted to see if this was truly as easy to fly as in their demo video.STEP FOUR: Put the battery in. No Deans connectors but a very solid Molex-type connector (snap-lock).
STEP FIVE: Connected my iPhone to its WiFi signal and prepared to either fail miserably or enjoy great success… The official free software I downloaded from the Apple App Store from Parrot had a button to take off, so I hit it. Wham! Into the air it went 1 meter high and awaited my command. Nice, stable, autonomous hover. In my crowded living room no less. I didnt read a thing, didnt configure anything, just went for it. And it worked exactly as advertised. No derisive laughing here, just amazement. In fact, I was so amazed I quickly pushed the EPP hull with a force enough to push a book off a shelf. It slid (still at a 1 meter hover) away and almost immediately corrected itself with a very steep bank in the opposite direction. It shifted about 1 foot. And then stayed there. No input from this Bozo and his iPhone. I tried to break it, but its too smart. A combination of its vertical camera input plus 3-axis accelerometer and 2-axis gyrometer and perhaps its single axis precision gyrometer sensed this disturbance within microseconds and fixed it per the as asshipped Linux-based code. I literally have answered phone calls on my iPhone while it is controlling the Ar drone. No kidding. Now you have a controller that is also your phone and web browser and more. And while doing all that other stuff, your AR Drone just waits patiently in the air where you put it. I hung up and continued to try to break my new Ar drone. Alright, onto the next phase of testing… If you visit the Ar drone site you will find all sorts of videos that will show you tests and tortures Parrot themselves put the quadrotor through. Even a nice hard landing in a pond. Even if you do the absolute worst thing to this quadrotor there are cheap replacement parts on their site and quick videos on how to fix it. You dont even have to read instructions. So far I have not found a way to destroy it. They even have 3M EPP tape (soft Expanded PolyPropelene, not hard EPS). Its not an easy thing to find something that sticks EPP to EPP. But they have it ready for you to repair your hull if necessary. |
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<p >SPECSHELICOPTER: AR Drone Parrot MANUFACTURER: Parrot SA DISTRIBUTOR: ARdrone.parrotshopping.com , Amazon, Brookstone TYPE: Quad FLYING WEIGHT: 420 grams with indoor hull, 380 grams with outdoor hull, 270 grams with no hull and no battery DIMENSIONS: 14 1/8-inch (359 mm) shaft to shaft BLADES: 4 fixed pitch propellers, custom designed for AR Drone CONTROLLER: iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad (more platforms coming soon) POWER SYSTEM (out-of-box): 4 brushless motors, (3,500 rpm, power: 15W) Lithium polymer battery (3 cells, 11.1V, 1000mAh) Discharge capacity: 10C BATTERY CHARGING TIME: 90 minutes with included self-balancing charger DURATION: 12 minutes using supplied battery (can provide more than 40 minutes fly time using higher capacity batteries) |
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<p >INCLUDED AND ALREADY TUNED TO ITS CONTROL SYSTEM:1- Ultrasound altimeter good up to 20 ft. 2- Front Camera that streams live on your controller and at a 640 x 480 VGA resolution will also give a virtual heads-up display on your controller in Ace mode to have real dog fights with 2 Drones. Detection is good from 1 ft to 16 ft of other Drones or 3D tags. 3- Vertical Camera. This is primarily for stabilization of the quadrotor but can also be toggled in the controller display as you are flying / recording video.3- 3 axis accelerometer 4- 2 axis gyro 5- 1 axis yaw precision gyro 6- ARM9 468 MHz 7- DDR 128 Mbyte at 200MHz 8- Wifi b/g 9- USB high speed 10- Linux OS MINIMAL FLYING AREA: Very small room PRICE: $299.99 COMPONENTS NEEDED TO COMPLETE: Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch |
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<p >DRONE CONTROLSThe absolute best thing about the AR Drone is that you can do almost anything to its software you want. It is open source. In fact, on the AR Drone site one of the major links is to the open source software. Dronehacks.com is a great blog and source for tips on new mods and code to upload into your AR Drone. Because of this open source platform, I have already downloaded 2 applications that while not supported by Parrot do extend this quadrotors functionality substan substantially. It seems more apps for this quadrotor are showing up in the App store every week.
As shipped, the AR Drone AR FreeFlight software will not allow you to record anything during flight. But it has two cameras and a bunch of data coursing through her digital veins. So thats why I fly it with two new applications, DroneControl and FlightRecord. Both present the user with essentially the same GUI but have a few more buttons to play with: |
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<p >TIPS FOR SUCCESS![]() |
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<p >CONCLUSIONI love it. For this price what you get is truly amazing. One sidenote: I have not even mentioned this quadrotors ability to dog fight with another AR Drone. Its amazing, see the videos on their site. Unfortunately, my buddies are taking their sweet time to convince themselves / loved ones that they need this quadrotor. So, nobody to play with. That said, Im having a blast just flying it solo. Josh Gray is the president of Custom Entertainment Solutions, Inc. (www.customentsolutions.com ). This company supplies unique animatronics and robotics solutions, robotics to entertainment, commercial, and defense industries.”the editorsLinks
Parrot SA, www.ardrone.parrot.com, 1-877-9PARROT (1-877-972-7768) Dronehacks, www.dronehacks.com |
Words by Josh Gray