AR.Drone

[Noel]

This looks like fun to have.



More info: http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/en/

[Rene]

It will be available in an armed and an unarmed edition;-)

[drmacchi]

Any News about price and availability?

[drmacchi]

299 euro on September 2010 (Italy)
Someone is trying to make it UAV , good to autonomous patrol of ours porperties.

software
https://projects.ardrone.org/projects/show/ardrone-api
project
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/tur ... ot-ardrone

[MindBender]

They are 'available' in Germany and France since August 18, but they're incredibly hard to obtain. I ordered and paid for one that was supposed to be on stock last week, but delivery is now at two weeks. Expansys is keeping my money hostage because there's no way to cancel the order and neither Expansys nor Parrot responds to email inquiries.

The order process of this toy - which should make me happy - turned out to be very frustrating, in fact making me angry. I'm filing a PayPal claim today because I'm beyond wanting one. I'll just stick with my two MikroKopters (http://www.mikrokopter.de).

[drmacchi]

I'll buy live on december when it''s on shelf ! (it's my wife's Christmas gift )

[drmacchi]

I did not want to wait On next monday i'll get it. Problem is that i don't have an iphone or ipod touch to command it , waiting for ipod 4 generation. I found a pc- simulator of iphone to test web application , will it work?

[MindBender]

I found a pc- simulator of iphone to test web application , will it work?

No, it won't. But you can use the Linux test program from the SDK to control it from you PC using a Logitech joystick. I didn't try it though; I got myself an iPad instead.

[drmacchi]

Yeah i did read everything in Drone-WIKI, but linux is too too too much for me , and ipad is not cheap. now i'm looking for ipod touch in some webshops. have you already your drone ? modding ? else?

[MindBender]

Yeah i did read everything in Drone-WIKI, but linux is too too too much for me , and ipad is not cheap. now i'm looking for ipod touch in some webshops. have you already your drone ? modding ? else?

Yes, I've got mine for over a month now: I decided to pre-order it and pick it up at Saturn Düsseldorf. I liked the iPad, but I didn't have any real application for it. But the controls on the iPod 3G are a bit insensitive so I decided to give the iPad a go. And now I have it, I use it for a lot of things. I'm even considering to get HomeSeer for it

There's not much to mod: I'm using 3rd party batteries, but I really don't recommend that to anybody not experienced with LiPo batteries. These things can be very dangerous. The AR.Drone does what it's designed for and it does it well, but it won't do anything more. I get around 10 minutes of flight time from a 1200mAh (in reality 1100mAh) battery pack. This is a bit short in my opinion. But installing a heavier battery makes the motors run hot, so there's not much overhead there.

The on-board video with live downlink is fun, but not good enough for first-person-view flying. The video lags behind almost half a second and I never get more than 5 frames per second.

With current firmware, the device is very open: It creates it's own WiFi ad-hoc network. And if you connect to this network with a PC, you can open a telnet connection to the drone where you will find a BusyBox Linux shell with root privileges. On two other ports you can open UDP connections to send flying commands and to watch the video stream.

We have looked around in the file system and modified several configuration files, but we couldn't change the WiFi into infrastructure mode, to allow connecting to the video stream with a PC to record movies. We're still looking into that, but we're a bit low on time.

[drmacchi]

I have bought it to :
- border patrolling (10 min. are enough)
- live view (on ipod screen) , better is PC view and here come you words : " On two other ports you can open UDP connections to send flying commands and to watch the video stream"

Please ! how do you open UDP send flight commands and watch video ? (which SW, windows family i hope...). Recording will be the future, but what you can do is almost the top for me !

[drmacchi]

I got that !

https://projects.ardrone.org/boards/1/topics/show/852

java sw for windows! can not test until monday

[Noel]

Yes, I've got mine for over a month now: I decided to pre-order it and pick it up at Saturn Düsseldorf.

Where did you order it (link please)

Thank you

[MindBender]

Where did you order it (link please)

I got it at Saturn in Düsseldorf Germany. That's a real shop, one with a telephone line and a front door. The first I used to preorder, the latter to pick it up

Still I think this toy is not a solution to your problem: It's a toy. A really fun toy, but nothing more.

The alternative applications for a flying camera are numerous, obvious and can be thought of by most of us. But there's a lot of knowledge, skill, experience and perseverance involved to develop such an application successfully. Just buying a toy and perhaps write a visual basic program for it doesn't cut it.

As I said earlier, this toy is rather limited. It doesn't have a GPS receiver on board and it can barely carry it's extra weight. It may in the future, on a professional version, but it that case I'd go for the MikroKopter. Further, the AR.Drone motion sensors are very inaccurate. Height is a real problem because the sonar gets confused when flying over objects. But it is a real fun toy: I'm having lots of fun with it.

We all dream about a flying camera we can fly around while we're sitting behind our computer, but I haven't found one yet. And I have a MikroKopter, an OktoCopter and an AR.Drone...

[drmacchi]

My friends AR DRONE is at home ! i drive it with my ipod touch retina display and it's great !!!! I will post some movies in next days
the best is that i have a running software for WINDOWS ! i didn't create it , i'm not a developer but i was able to compile a .java file taken here :
https://projects.ardrone.org/attachment ... Drone.java

i created this short manual , just to remember because if i should do it again on tomorrow i would not be able again , sorry for italian but it's a simple short text for google's translator
++++++++++++
Come controllare AR-DRONE da tastiera con JAVA in ambiente windows
Info comandi java su
http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutor ... win32.html
• Usare il file ARDrone.java, il file va copiato in c:\java
• Installare in c:\java il pacchetto JDK 6.0
• Andare nella sub directory jdk1.6.0_21\bin troviamo il compilatore javac.exe
• Lanciare da tale sub directory il comando javac c:\java\ARDrone.java (notare le prime 3 lettere maiuscole-> case sensitive!)
• La compilazione crea un file .class chiamato ARDrone.class
• Ora si può eseguire l’applicazione java con un comando dentro la cartella c:\java \ java ARDrone
• Si apre un piccolo box bianco in windows ed appaiono i comandi di volo nella command line