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Parrot AR.Drone unpacking

Posted by Chris Anderson on January 12, 2010 at 10:30pm

Super excited...the Parrot team sent me two AR.Drones as development kits! (One is for me and the other for a famous game designer friend). They just arrived, and here are some first impressions and closeups. First, I haven't flown it at home yet because you've got to compile the source code with the iPhone SDK and then load it in ad-hoc distribution mode, and I'm not a iPhone developer (yet). But I did get to fly it at CES and it was just as awesome as you've heard. The coolest thing is that when you get in trouble you just take your finger off the iPhone screen and it snaps into hover mode exactly where it is and just stays there, totally locked. Amazing... Here are some photos from the unboxing (these photos are all on Flickr, where you can mouse over them for notes. Just click on the photo and you'll be taken there): IMG_4658 This is the main board, with the Arm9 core in custom Parrot DSP silicon, the downward-facing camera for optical flow, the ultrasonic sensor and the WiFi radio. IMG_4657 This is a closeup of one of the brushless motors and ESC (the quad comes in either brushed or brushless models). This ESC runs at 200Hz. IMG_4660 It comes with a 1000mAh LiPo and charger. IMG_4661 You can see the carbon fiber rods through the battery compartment IMG_4659 Green LEDs in the front; red LEDs in the back IMG_4662 A USB-to-serial cable for hardware interfacing
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Comments

  • TopperS January 13, 2010 at 9:43am
    Wow, way to go Chris snagging one of those...and thank you for sharing :D
  • Chris Whiteford January 13, 2010 at 7:00am
    Chris, hit me up if you want. I can build the App for you and get you a bundle you can just install through iTunes.

    I snagged the code from Parrot yesterday and have been messing with it (mostly to see if I can adapt for the AeroQuad project).

    chris.
  • Giles Barton-Owen January 13, 2010 at 4:40am
    This looks so good. Clean and cheap (?) package with everything intergrated and housed. I think parrot will go a long way...
  • Michael Zaffuto January 13, 2010 at 4:01am
    Just to the left of the camera in the center is a 64-pin ATMEL IC ....
    Even an ARM9 needs a little help every now and then! lol
  • Dale Harris January 13, 2010 at 2:47am
    I want one of these badly :-) I wonder if they would give me one if I promised to fly it (and film it) off the top of Burj Dubai when I go there next month.
  • Developer
    Ryan Beall January 12, 2010 at 11:04pm
    That is insane....board design is sick
This reply was deleted.