This video shows it all really.. Augmented reality allows the drones HUD on your iPad/iPhone to include weapons, and even highlight your enemy when your enemy is using the specially coloured reflective tags. This is a great deal of fun, and again, as the SDK has been opened, I’m expecting even more complicated and fun games to come out of the development community very soon. Capture the flag?
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Get your AR Parrot drone here
flying the AR Parrot drone on your iPad gives you a larger screen a more control as the control surface is larger. Highly recommended for tight obstacle courses.
Get your iPad here
Get your AR Parrot drone here
Perhaps the most exciting gadget from 2010/2011 – The AR Parrot Drone. I own two.
The AR Drone is a fun and exciting “quadracopter” (four rotor helicopter??). Parrot historically have stuck of WIFI gear, but seem to be moving into consumer electronics of late – and by the huge amounts of this drone sold – it seems we’ve welcomed them into the consumer electronics market.
The AR Drone is affordable (around $350 delivered) although I highly recommend purchasing an additional battery or three as there is nothing worse then driving all the way to the park for only 15 minutes of fun. This is an issue we’ve gotten around with an inverter and some higher runtime batteries.
The drone comes with both an indoor and outdoor shroud, so you can fly this inside (and I recommend you do, until you get the hang of it) and the foam shroud protects the rotors from any furniture/walls/people it might encounter. The indoor shroud slows it down but also helps the maneuverability while inside.
Outside they are fast. very fast. but special care should be put into avoiding obstacles until you become a little more sure of their seemingly endless capabilities.
Now.. why do I have two? well, if you damage a motor, it costs around $50 to get another. A drone has 4. (thats $200 so far). the indoor hull is $40, the props are $12 and the crossbar $35. thats $287, and you get another battery and charger (worth $102). thats $387 value for around $350. not to mention spare nav board, cameras, mainboard and a bunch of extra tags. Absolutely worth it. My friends have a drone as well, so we’ll harvest the spare for parts until we run out and get another.
I can’t recommend this product enough. its fast, fun and really draws a crowd. at $350, it’s cheap for what it is.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the drone is that Parrot have opened the SDK up to the development community, which means anyone who has a drone can write software for it .