so the first time i saw the parrot bebop in person was at ces this year and man
did they have a cool demo running they had quadcopters flipping and spinning
and dancing and at one point we even saw a pretty spectacular crash although we
didn't get it on camera unfortunately and while i actually haven't really
gotten into a lot of the more advanced quads that have come out over the last
year or so with the most sophisticated flyer in my fleet being an aerodrome 2.0
the bebop piqued my interest and i asked parrot to send over a sample so i could
put it through the paces for you and for those of you asking because i'm sure
it's all over the place yes scrapyard wars 1c is going to contain the epic
conclusion and it's coming out next saturday night but first
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so i got the sky controller package and this is a must in my opinion since it
dramatically increases the range and
ease of control of the bebop compared to using the wi-fi antenna and on-screen
controls on your tablet or smartphone and the out-of-the-box experience was
actually really really good mostly the included documentation is abominable but
everything was nicely packaged in an environmentally and cat stomach friendly
paper material and unlike many hobbyist grade products it really comes with
everything you need to get started the bebop drone the sky controller three
1200 milliamp hour lipo batteries two for the drone and one for the sky
controller a charger for the batteries a full set of replacement propellers with
a tool to do it a hull to protect the props from damage when flying indoors or
near obstructions a micro usb cable and neck strap and an awesome and essential
when you want to use first person view on a bright day foldable sun shade with
an ipad mini adapter so you can use it with a full size tablet or a smaller one
so let's start with a closer look at the bebop itself the four motors have been
upgraded to brushless compared to the ar drone 2.0 parrot has added eight gigs of
on-board storage about enough for three flights worth of video and some photos
from the 14 megapixel camera speaking of which the camera now features a 180
degree fisheye lens full hd 1080p recording and an unbelievable
virtual gimbal stabilization setup that makes first person piloting a bit more
challenging more on that later but allows the bebop to deliver some
astounding aerial footage on the back is the power button and a
micro usb connector for offloading footage to a computer although this can
be done over Wi-Fi and then on the underside is an ultrasonic sensor for
low altitude height detection and a smaller camera to control drift and
measure speed along with a couple of landing gear mounted antennas rubber
isolators that will provide some impact absorption in crashes and will keep the
motor vibration away from the rest of the internals because as interesting as
what i've said so far may actually be that is where the bebop got most of its
upgrades it now features a dual core cortex a9 CPU a quad-core GPU whatever
that means ac wireless a 3-axis magnetometer a 3-axis gyroscope a 3-axis
accelerometer and a pressure sensor lets
it know how high it is once the ultrasonic sensor gets out of range of
the ground gps is now built in out of the box so you can see a little map of
where you went if you sign up for a parrot account and it can return home
with a dedicated button oh yeah and the bebop runs a Linux operating system with
an open source sdk in the works wow and
the sky controller is actually much more than a couple of joysticks with an
adjustable tablet or phone mount too i mean it has that you know the right
stick does forward backward and side to side movement while the left one
controls altitude and rotation or yaw but there's other stuff too it's got its
own Android equipped computer inside with gps HDMI out for head mounted
displays a usb port for optional accessories down the line and even head
tracking for your hmd a micro usb port for applying updates a serious business
wi-fi antenna that increases the range from pretty fun to holy crap this thing
goes really far away like 150 meters up
in the air with a live video feed that's actually working not half bad it's got
battery and wi-fi strength indicators record and still image capture buttons
and a joystick for panning around the recorded camera view too but enough of
that what is it like to fly the answer is
really really fun i've always kind of liked rc stuff i've got a dx7 radio an
su-26 ready to fly and a blade msr that i can sort of fly but helies are hard
and i kind of suck at it and compared to those the bebop is really stable and
really easy to handle almost to the point where it's kind of boring wait
Linus boring you just said it was fun yes i'm getting to that flying around
staring at the drone is okay but about
as exciting as flying a kite for 10 minutes if you're not a die hard rc
aircraft person because there's really not much challenge in it the bebop with
some exceptions that i'll get into a bit more later pretty much just
goes where you put it and then stays there but even though i just spent the
last minute griping about what i'd like to be better your focus shouldn't be on
the complaints but rather on what kinds of complaints they are none of these are
show stoppers that'll land the bee bot permanently in my closet collecting dust
there are usability tweaks that i really want to see addressed because this thing
is so much fun and i want my experience using it all the time to be as smooth as
possible and i have a lot of hope for it rift dk2 doesn't support first person vr
so i couldn't try it but the consumer one which i am getting will and i am
stoked to play with that and parrot opening things up to the open source
community has already resulted in some cool mods like this users on the parrot
forum who figured out how to turn the gimbal off for more true to what the
bebop is seeing first person view and this other one with leds added for
better visibility of the drone's orientation in the sky so
is the bebop the best drone for the price at 900 with the sky controller i
don't know this is my first kick at the can for anything better than toy grade
is it a really really cool gizmo that's going to provide hours of fun for me and
my son when we want to go out and do something on the weekend yeah it is
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so guys also in the video description we have a support us link which is a link
to our forum where you can discuss this video rather than doing it in the
youtube comments it's better and where you can buy a cool t-shirt
like this one give us a monthly contribution or change your amazon bookmarked one with our affiliate code
so we get a small kickback well if you buy a bebop with it it'll be a
pretty large kickback so thank you very much for using our affiliate code for
stuff like that i think that pretty much wraps us up like the video if you liked
it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment on the Linus tech tips forum if you'd like for me or luke to actually
see it because we're going to be making a point of monitoring comments a little more over there and a little less under
youtube videos moving forward although don't worry i'm not planning to turn
them off either thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to
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