Parrot Bebop Drone - Too Much Fun?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,689 words · ~8 min read
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so the first time i saw the parrot bebop in person was at ces this year and man
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did they have a cool demo running they had quadcopters flipping and spinning
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and dancing and at one point we even saw a pretty spectacular crash although we
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didn't get it on camera unfortunately and while i actually haven't really
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gotten into a lot of the more advanced quads that have come out over the last
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year or so with the most sophisticated flyer in my fleet being an aerodrome 2.0
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the bebop piqued my interest and i asked parrot to send over a sample so i could
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put it through the paces for you and for those of you asking because i'm sure
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it's all over the place yes scrapyard wars 1c is going to contain the epic
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so i got the sky controller package and this is a must in my opinion since it
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dramatically increases the range and
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ease of control of the bebop compared to using the wi-fi antenna and on-screen
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controls on your tablet or smartphone and the out-of-the-box experience was
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actually really really good mostly the included documentation is abominable but
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everything was nicely packaged in an environmentally and cat stomach friendly
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paper material and unlike many hobbyist grade products it really comes with
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everything you need to get started the bebop drone the sky controller three
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1200 milliamp hour lipo batteries two for the drone and one for the sky
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controller a charger for the batteries a full set of replacement propellers with
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a tool to do it a hull to protect the props from damage when flying indoors or
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near obstructions a micro usb cable and neck strap and an awesome and essential
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when you want to use first person view on a bright day foldable sun shade with
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an ipad mini adapter so you can use it with a full size tablet or a smaller one
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so let's start with a closer look at the bebop itself the four motors have been
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upgraded to brushless compared to the ar drone 2.0 parrot has added eight gigs of
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on-board storage about enough for three flights worth of video and some photos
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from the 14 megapixel camera speaking of which the camera now features a 180
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degree fisheye lens full hd 1080p recording and an unbelievable
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virtual gimbal stabilization setup that makes first person piloting a bit more
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challenging more on that later but allows the bebop to deliver some
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astounding aerial footage on the back is the power button and a
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micro usb connector for offloading footage to a computer although this can
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be done over Wi-Fi and then on the underside is an ultrasonic sensor for
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low altitude height detection and a smaller camera to control drift and
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measure speed along with a couple of landing gear mounted antennas rubber
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isolators that will provide some impact absorption in crashes and will keep the
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motor vibration away from the rest of the internals because as interesting as
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what i've said so far may actually be that is where the bebop got most of its
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upgrades it now features a dual core cortex a9 CPU a quad-core GPU whatever
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that means ac wireless a 3-axis magnetometer a 3-axis gyroscope a 3-axis
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accelerometer and a pressure sensor lets
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it know how high it is once the ultrasonic sensor gets out of range of
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the ground gps is now built in out of the box so you can see a little map of
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where you went if you sign up for a parrot account and it can return home
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with a dedicated button oh yeah and the bebop runs a Linux operating system with
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an open source sdk in the works wow and
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the sky controller is actually much more than a couple of joysticks with an
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adjustable tablet or phone mount too i mean it has that you know the right
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stick does forward backward and side to side movement while the left one
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controls altitude and rotation or yaw but there's other stuff too it's got its
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own Android equipped computer inside with gps HDMI out for head mounted
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displays a usb port for optional accessories down the line and even head
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tracking for your hmd a micro usb port for applying updates a serious business
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wi-fi antenna that increases the range from pretty fun to holy crap this thing
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goes really far away like 150 meters up
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in the air with a live video feed that's actually working not half bad it's got
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battery and wi-fi strength indicators record and still image capture buttons
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and a joystick for panning around the recorded camera view too but enough of
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that what is it like to fly the answer is
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really really fun i've always kind of liked rc stuff i've got a dx7 radio an
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su-26 ready to fly and a blade msr that i can sort of fly but helies are hard
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and i kind of suck at it and compared to those the bebop is really stable and
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really easy to handle almost to the point where it's kind of boring wait
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Linus boring you just said it was fun yes i'm getting to that flying around
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staring at the drone is okay but about
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as exciting as flying a kite for 10 minutes if you're not a die hard rc
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aircraft person because there's really not much challenge in it the bebop with
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some exceptions that i'll get into a bit more later pretty much just
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goes where you put it and then stays there but even though i just spent the
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last minute griping about what i'd like to be better your focus shouldn't be on
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the complaints but rather on what kinds of complaints they are none of these are
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show stoppers that'll land the bee bot permanently in my closet collecting dust
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there are usability tweaks that i really want to see addressed because this thing
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is so much fun and i want my experience using it all the time to be as smooth as
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possible and i have a lot of hope for it rift dk2 doesn't support first person vr
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so i couldn't try it but the consumer one which i am getting will and i am
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stoked to play with that and parrot opening things up to the open source
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community has already resulted in some cool mods like this users on the parrot
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forum who figured out how to turn the gimbal off for more true to what the
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bebop is seeing first person view and this other one with leds added for
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better visibility of the drone's orientation in the sky so
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is the bebop the best drone for the price at 900 with the sky controller i
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don't know this is my first kick at the can for anything better than toy grade
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is it a really really cool gizmo that's going to provide hours of fun for me and
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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
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to our forum where you can discuss this video rather than doing it in the
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youtube comments it's better and where you can buy a cool t-shirt
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like this one give us a monthly contribution or change your amazon bookmarked one with our affiliate code
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so we get a small kickback well if you buy a bebop with it it'll be a
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pretty large kickback so thank you very much for using our affiliate code for
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stuff like that i think that pretty much wraps us up like the video if you liked
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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
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see it because we're going to be making a point of monitoring comments a little more over there and a little less under
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youtube videos moving forward although don't worry i'm not planning to turn
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them off either thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to
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you