Parrot AR.Drone iPad Controlled Remote Control Aircraft Test Flight Demo Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,245 words · ~11 min read
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so I've actually done a few flights with the AR drone but uh this is the first
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one that I'm going to be doing on camera so
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uh just want to show you guys the Drone itself I did an unboxing but I'll just
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give you a general overview so included you've got the uh inside Hull so the
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indoor hul I'm not going to be using that since I am flying outside today so
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I have the orange orang and yellow uh outdoor Hull the outdoor Hull doesn't
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provide protection for the propellers but it does offer slightly better
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performance because it's lighter weight as well as better battery life once
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again because it's lighter weight so the motors don't have to work as hard so
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I've got the included uh 1,000 Mah LiPo
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battery it's fresh off the charger so I should get about 12 minutes of flight
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time out of it depending on uh how hard
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it has to work so just go ahead head and put that in like that now immediately
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plugging in the battery the LED lights turn on I'm just going to put the unit
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over there for a second and I want to show you guys The Binding process so
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what you do is you go and look for the Wi-Fi network that is AR drone whatever
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your AR drone happens to be so once you've connected so the AR drone is its
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own Hots spot so you'll see the Wi-Fi
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will turn on there and then all you do is go into I've got AR free flight and
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then actually have a couple of third party apps drone Ace and drone control
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these are cool um they allow for some additional functionality like uh
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flashing the LEDs different colors uh performing a couple stunts like wiggling
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back and forth spinning in circles that kind of stuff as well as recording um
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video and photos I'm just going to be using the AR drone
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OEM one to start with here actually
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sometimes it takes a minute to uh to connect properly and to boot up
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so uh why don't I finish finish let's
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see oh yeah there we go so connecting checking updating bootloader and
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checking version I did have to update the air drone the first time I used it
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but it was a simple process and it was just a matter of uh doing an overthe a
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upgrade it took about 5 minutes between the iPad and the air drone itself so you
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can see the front mounted camera here I am standing in front of it now those are
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my feet so here this should give you some idea of what the delay is like on
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the camera can you see my foot as well as the
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iPad okay so you guys can see that so it's not instantaneous but it's pretty
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darn good and then there's also the bottom mounted camera so now you can see
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the ground underneath the AR drone so you can switch between those and there's
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also a picture and picture view mode where we can see the bottom camera here
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and the top camera here or the front camera here and the bottom camera here
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okay oh I'll show you the basic controls as well before we get started here so
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you can reposition the joysticks anywhere you want just by pressing down
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so you can see this the GU moving around so pressing down on the iPad here allows
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me to control the air drone front back Side by to side movement just by tilting
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the iPad and then this guy does up down
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and then rotating left and rotating right so like this okay up and down like
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that okay uh there's also an emergency button to cut out and then this is the
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takeoff and land button I'm not going to press that just yet so let's go ahead
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and put the hull on it's just a matter
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of slipping it on the front here all
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right now this drone has actually been through some uh fairly impressive
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crashes so far and I have to say the durability of this thing compared to RC
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uh devices that I've used in the past is outstanding actually here I'll show you
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a couple of the durability related features so number one is the awesome
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foam that they use on the hulls themselves they can take quite a beating
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now I've had pieces of them actually snap but I was able to I can't even find
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the part that was broken on this one anymore I was able to repair them quite
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easily using a little bit of epoxy the propellers are also made of a very
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flexible material so that means that once they hit something they do have
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some give to them so they won't just snap instantly and also they the
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electronics in the AR drone will allow it to actually cut out all four Motors
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as soon as one of them encounters resistance so if you hit a branch for example it'll cut out all the motors the
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AR drone drops down and then what happens is that prevents further damage
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to the more delicate Motors and gear assemblies versus if they did not cut
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out when it hit the ground and bad things happen okay now I did have one
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particularly bad crash I just want to show you guys this can you see that
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that's kind of mangled and can you see that the gear is kind of bent you can
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get replacement parts actually I should mention this for almost every part of the AR drone with the replacement part
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list you could pretty much build an AR Drone from scratch if you wanted to you
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can get replacement housings bases um
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motherboards all that kind of stuff anyway you can get replacement gears I
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don't have any and I do need to use it for this video so what I did was what
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happened was I hit a branch and then it fell down directly onto a curb so the
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odds of this kind of thing happening were pretty much slim to none but it
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happened to me of course it fell from about 8 ft high so that was bad so this
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broke off and you can you see the bend there okay so what I did was I glued it
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to tack it in place and then I melted the plastic back together and it
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actually see the gears still work so it actually flies Okay which is kind of
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remarkable so I'm just going to show you guys a quick flight here around my backyard and I apologize for that
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segment of the garden we haven't done anything with that yet that's more like
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what we're aiming for here but it's sort of one year at a time here so here we go
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take off time so the AR drone automatically takes
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off and hovers a couple feet above the ground so here let's show you guys the
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uh the basic controls so here's your
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up as soon as you let go of the controls the AR drone will actually hover itself
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which is remarkable compared to most other RC devices out there it actually
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uses the bottom mounted camera to keep itself from drifting around which is
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very cool so here you go I can control the yaw don't worry I'm not going to
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point it at you okay so I'm going to rotate it until I can see myself
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here hold on a little bit more a little bit more let's go nice and
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gently gently okay I'll just move there you go
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so now you guys can see you don't have to keep moving I'm moving myself so you
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can see me in the iPad right there you
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go you can also see the AR drone holding itself still in the air over
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there so let's go ahead and uh let's move it around a little bit so as I
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mentioned before as soon as you put your thumb here you can start to control the
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AR drone by tilting it back and
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forth so that's your general movement control now it can move quite fast so
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let's go ahead we'll just go forward and we'll just kind of do a little circuit
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here now I would definitely recommend for your first few flights that you do
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them indoors because it's a little bit
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tricky to get the hang of especially when the orientation of the Drone is uh
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changing around in the air in front of you so sometimes it's kind of hard to
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tell which way to tilt it to turn the way you want to turn okay okay so like I
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said no matter what you're doing let's say you're going uh here let's bring it
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this way so let's say you're moving forward let go of the controls boom AR
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drone will hover just like that very cool right okay so now there's a lot of
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debate on the interwebs about whether the AR drone can actually be piloted
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when you don't have a line of sight to it I would say yes but slowly so here
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I'm going to take you guys around the other side of my house you're probably
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going to want to be looking at the iPad here because uh the AR drone won't be
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visible very soon so here we go hold on like I said
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when you let go of it it will immediately stop so here I don't want to
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get too close to those branches so I'm just going to uh check around make sure
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we're not too close to anything here that's good that's good so I think we're
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we're high low low enough that we won't touch on those so here we go we can stop
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at any time we can look around there's my
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ladder there's my gas meter there's my
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barbecue and there is uh
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here I'll show you guys where I am hello
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I'm over here can you see me yes or no
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yeah you can see me okay so that's what the responsiveness is like when you're
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flying the AR
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drone in a uh a no line of sight type
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scenario okay let's bring it back around to the
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front and take it back over there and
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now you can see I have brought the Drone back from where it was now there's a
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couple things to bear in mind when you're flying the Drone one is the
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amount of advanced electronics that's in there like couple cool things so the
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camera keeps it from drifting it also has an ultrasound transmitter and
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receiver on the bottom of it that's how it knows what height to stay at so if I
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go and I put it at this
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height up to I believe it is 3 m the AR
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drone can control its height within a very accurate range check this out so
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you can see it hardly drifts at all now what
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that means though is that if I were to take the AR drone and I were to put it
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up at a height of about 5 m and fly over those Hedges on the left as soon as it
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is above the hedges it would take off 5 m above that so be careful with your
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drone if you go and you try and fly over a shed or over your house you're going
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to fly it up 20 ft it's going to jump up another 20 ft get caught in a cross
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Breeze and get blown away and then you're going to be buying some
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replacement parts so yeah I think that's pretty much all
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there is to say about it right now there's a great modding Community around
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for this thing already which is uh which is just a standing because there's mods
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to uh to control it with a standard RC
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controller there's mods to do all kinds of neat stuff with it and it is a very
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very cool device there's also extended batteries out there so you can fly for
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about 20 minutes at a time and uh I think that's pretty much
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it so why don't we bring it in for a landing
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here just press the landing button and
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down it goes thanks for checking out my demo video the parrot AR drone just so
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you guys know the way that I'm flying it now I've only flown it about uh 10 to 12
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times so that should give you some idea what the learning curves like this thing
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is outstanding compared to other RC aircraft that I have used in the
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past