Parrot AR.Drone Range Test in the NCIX Parking Lot Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,141 words · ~5 min read
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so we're here in the NC parking lot doing a bit of a range test on the
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parrot AR drone so I got my iPad here you can see the front mounted camera
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view and actually that is oh well why don't to show you guys the settings in
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here as well can you see that at all no how about if I go up this way can you
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see it now okay cool okay so I'm just going to turn on uh outdoor Hull and
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outdoor flight are both on okay so it looks like we're ready to go already so
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I'm also going to switch on my alternate camera which is right here okay so
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that's my downward facing camera and I just want to show you guys for the for
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the sake of interest that it's a little bit windy out here today so you can see
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that drifting I'm going to go ahead I'm going to take off with the AR drone and
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I want to show you guys how little it
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actually drifts even in the wind check
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that out so it actually controls itself
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using the bottom mounted camera to keep itself from drifting away see it got
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blown away a little bit and then corrected itself and brought itself back
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pretty cool eh so we're going to do a bit of a range test here I'm going to go
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ahead and uh fly it down the parking lot
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keeping it nice and low no need to put it up high especially on a windy day
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like
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today so remember this is Wi-Fi controlled so
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here I'm going to go ahead and stop for a second here there we go so just for scale guys
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so the Drone is about it's got to be at least about 50 60 M away at this point
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and I still do have my video feed and I still do have control of the Drone so
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here I'm going to turn it around and point it at us let's see if we can see
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ourselves here o it's getting uh oh it's pretty Gusty right now so you can see
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the Drone struggling a little bit but it is managing to uh hold itself in place
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so I'm just going to bring it back tilt it this way tilt her that way oh here we
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go okay there we
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go oh okay I couldn't figure out if it was coming back or not cuz it's going
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kind of slow cuz it's uh in the breeze
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here there we go come on Mr
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drone so there you go we can comfortably go about 50 to 60 M away without any
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difficulties so I brought it back now let's wait for this car to move along
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and then we'll we'll pick this up again in a
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sec so we're back we're going to take the Drone all the way down to the end of
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the parking lot but first let's go harass our uh our HR manager over
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there he's all like WTF and I'm all like
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hello
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and I can't see it behind that tree right now but I'm just going to go ahead and uh bring it back over here I
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think okay let's just bring it between these
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trees turn it
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around oh I lost my orientation oh I hit
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the tree oh here well I'll show you guys what happens so this is a cutout
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emergency so what happens is uh what the
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blade here come come check this out because this is a great demo of how
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durable the AR drone actually is a cutout emergency occurs when one of the
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propellers strikes an immovable object and what the AR drone does is it
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actually turns off all four Motors before immediately before the AR drone
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even hits the ground in order to minimize the amount of damage that can
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be done to it now the propellers are made out of a very flexible material
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they're very difficult to break I've crashed it like this a couple dozen times at this point but what you can see
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here is that so yeah they've got that Flex to them and if they all turn off
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when one of them encounters an obstacle then you dramatically reduce the risk of
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serious damage to the Drone so in this case we hit a tree and that was bad but
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uh let's go ahead and uh take off again here and see if we can do another little
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range test here we go make sure all systems are
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functional there we are and let's go ahead and wow it's getting pretty windy
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though I got to say this is definitely not the optimal conditions for uh for
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flying a small RC aircraft like this so
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let's go ahead and take it down to the other end of the parking lot and uh see
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how far we can go I'm flying into the wind right now so this represents pretty
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much my top speed into a strong
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headwind really you're realistically
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you're going to lose control of the AR drone in terms of your visual ability to
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determine what's forward and what's backwards before before you're going to
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lose control of the AR drone from the iPad so you can see it's getting blown
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around quite a bit over there but I guess that pretty much wraps us up there's my range test on the AR drone
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thank you for checking it out don't forget to subscribe to line us techit for unboxings reviews and other computer
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videos so here's cameraman trying to fly the AR
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drone he approves of this product because uh he's using the iPad to
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control it I'll just zoom in on his uh his drone
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flate here
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please don't hit the car cameraman so we're quite far away at
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this point I'm going to max out the zoom of my camera
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here wow I think I can actually see it better through the zoom than I can
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uh with my
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eyes oh please don't hit that
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car so yeah this cameraman flying the
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Drone something's cool is that is that if you actually do manage to go outside
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of the maximum range of the Drone what it does is it just switches off and goes
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into hover mode so there's no risk of uh
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it damaging Itself by like flying away or anything like
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that so yeah