Thursday, April 5, 2012

AR.Drone 2.0

I received my AR.Drone 2.0 the other day and had a chance to play around with it a bit.  The biggest problem I see with the device is the horrible battery life and they have not released AR.Free Flight 2.0 for Android devices yet.  AR.Free Flight 1.9 does work fine with the AR.Drone 2.0 but there is no video support and FF 1.9 doesn't support the 2.0 feature of using the "Absolute Control" mode.  If you use the accelerometer with 1.9 you must keep the camera pointing forward to have the drone respond intuitively.  For now I'm just using it in 2 stick mode.  Here are some pictures of the un-boxing.








Here is a video of my second flight with the device.  It isn't very long because I'd already played with it a bit and the battery was nearly dead:


If you have any questions let me know.

Additional close up photos of the battery:










Added another short video of flying the AR.Drone 2.0 with AR. Free Flight 2.0 on a borrowed iPhone.  I used Absolute Control which is awesome.


7 comments:

  1. Hi Mathew

    Great you already got it. I am waiting mine(I preordered last week). Could you please publish more tech specific battery details?. The parrot page said that chargers(ar.drone 1 vs ar.drone 2) are not compatibles and I would like to know why they are not. I am planning to get a replacement battery and an additional charger before I got the ar.drone2. I have seen http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004WPITUC and http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004WPITVQ.

    Thanks,
    Jack

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    1. Jack, according to the documentation the batteries are interchangeable between ar.drone 1 and ar.drone 2 but the chargers are not. So you could buy ar.drone 1 batteries and use them in your new ar.drone 2 and keep your ar.drone 1 charger. I will post some more pictures of the battery and charger close up tonight.

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    2. Added those additional photos that show the battery and charger specs.

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  2. It was so helpful because I was curious if the new charger use more than 1A. I was thinking that the new battery would support more than 1A as other LiPo batteries. But it said "Charge at 1A max"(picture you uploaded), so the new charge2.0 seems technically equal to charge1.0. So the difference seems more about charge form. Thank you so much.

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    1. Yep, it looks like its only able to be charged via the contacts and not the cable maybe? I assume you are on ardrone-flyers.com? If not this is the thread we've been posting on about the new 2.0: http://www.ardrone-flyers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2719&p=19936#p19936

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    2. Yes, battery 2.0 only have one cable(discharge connector) and so the charger works with a slot based on direct contacts. I guess the point is that if one buys typical replacement batteries one can not use the factory charge(at least without modification or without an adapter). The sellers of replacement batteries need to add a note like the next: http://www.amazon.com/product/dp/B004WPITUC "Remember you can charge this battery with the stock AR.Drone 1.0 charger". Notice the "1.0". BTW I think the next is a good choice and I already ordered one: http://www.hyperion-world.com/products/product/HP-LG325-1300-3S (http://www.amazon.com/product/dp/B003YI5BHM). Thanks for the tip about ardrone-flyers. There I found the link to your page. I guess I am going to sign in when I begin to be an Ar.Drone pilot :)

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