Saturday, September 08, 2012

Proving I'm Single

I got the Parrot AR Drone 2. It's three hundred bucks but you need to get at least one extra battery (about $50) and you need an iPad, iPod, or some sort of Android device to control it.
The quadracopter comes with two cameras: a front-facing HD camera, and a downward-facing SD camera. They both shoot onto very compressy codecs. There's also the option to have the camera record directly to a USB stick. I haven't gotten that to work yet because the stick needs to be FAT32 and my main sticks are all ExFAT (because that's how I roll.)
Drew Bellware, drone pilot. Note the dead shark eyes of the stone-cold killer.
The images have very little color. And they're very compressy.
Here's another thing -- the 'copter hates the dark. It uses the bottom-facing camera for stability (I believe it uses some sort of sonar for calculating altitude.)
Do you like to watch someone incompetent bang his new helicopter against the walls? I honestly wish I had a Parrot Drone simulator.

You know, for a three-hundred-dollar thing, the drone is extraordinarily stable. But I do not feel confident enough to take it outside yet. I need a lot more flying time on it. The camera is borderline usable for us. It's not actually usable, just borderline. But people manage to get a GoPro on the 'copter so we'll be trying that. In the meantime I'm going to learn how to not over-control and to deal with "reversing" the controls when the drone is coming at me.

1 comment:

Laura, Queen of Mars said...

And we're hovering...and we're hovering...oh look a brick wall!