QGroundControl with AR Drone 2.0 (w/Flight Recorder)? Does anyone here successfully use QGroundControl for autonomous flights with an AR Drone? Is there a site with better info than the QGroundControl site? I have an AR Drone 2.0, Flight Recorder, etc., and I'm trying to run the QGroundControl software.  The first snag I found is that, you have to power the drone and let it initialize, THEN plug in the Flight Recorder and let it settle, and connect via WiFi, before running QGroundControl!  This should have been obvious, since you have to plug in a thumbdrive after initialization too, but it took a while for me to ignore the instructions and do what works. Then, in QGroundControl, there are all sorts of ambiguous issues.  When you set "home", they ask for altitude, but is that in meters, or feet? And if the GPS is drifting, is it better to enter a lower or higher altitude as "home"? The flight data screen shows the GPS readout in meters, so I wondered why it doesn't just enter that as a default.

I've read that only some of the QGroundControl operands are recognized by the Flight Recorder, but no hint of which ones -- no list. When I set waypoints, I am prompted to enter the altitude as either absolute, or relative.  If I haven't set the absolute altitude of home, does relative work better, worse or not at all? Basically, I've tried a simple test:ar drone 2 link di controllo non disponibile -Rise to 3 meters and loiter for 45 secondsparrot ar drone venezuela -Descend to 1 meter waypoint and loiter for 45 seconds (I thought, to defeat letting go of a GPS lock and drifting, as happened to Kyle Tarpley in a video)parrot ar drone 2 quadricopter 720p

It is very difficult to drop multiple waypoints at the exact same coordinates.  I've had to edit the lat lon entries to make them all the same, after dragging distant waypoints back to origin. The problem I've run into is that the quad will take off and ascend, but then stay there until the battery dies (drifting quite a bit, despite a good GPS lock).  And while I use the right-arrow "play" button to engage autonomous flight and start the "program", it never advances to the next waypoint, and the "stop" button does nothing -- the thing will not land until it runs out of power. x rebirth cargo lift dronesIn fact, there is no way to stop it short of pulling it out of the air by hand and unplugging the battery WHILE THE PROPS SPIN!parrot ar drone 2 unboxing I'm sure I just didn't emerge from the womb with the knowledge of how to steer QGroundControl!  ar drone 2 charger flashing red

The documentation is roughly as sparse as most we've all seen.  There is some setting that makes the difference between success and failure, and I just don't know what it is.  I've found no YouTube video that goes into detail on it either. 0 members like this If they put GPS inside the BeBop by default, they should just integrate the guts from the Flight Recorder, then future firmware should apply to both internal and USB-external GPS units. My comments were specific to QGroundControl, which isn't a Parrot product, but an open source effort.  I consider the software from Parrot to be next to useless as it will not fly the drone beyond WiFi range. which is around 50 meters. (I'm routinely getting less than 30 meters) People are having successful flights with QGroundControl, but there is no step-by-step guide that documents how that software works.  There are all sorts of questions -- what is "guided mode" vs. auto-guided mode?  How do you setup "home" and base altitude? 

How do you get it to actually RUN the flight... I now have three other quads besides the Parrot, so I'm not buying another Parrot product (most likely ever).  The 2.0 will do whatever it's capable of, and I'll leave it at that. I just want to achieve the same success others have with the 2.0, Flight Recorder and QGroundControl.  I think the GPS in the Flight Recorder is probably adequate, and most problems people have had come from a poor GPS fix, or obstructed sky view.  After using an actual radio to fly something, I would rather not use a phone or tablet again in my life.  So it's autonomous success or a suicide mission for this 2.0! Given that Parrot is charging $150 for its GPS "Flight Recorder," I would expect Parrot to provide better firmware and software support for this unit, at some point. After all, it is a common industry practice to ship hardware with no software, or, crappy software, with the goal providing updated and upgraded software, after the hardware is in the market: much the same way NASA launches a satellite first, and then develops and uploads the software to the satellite, while the satellite is en route to its destination.

Parrot seems to be unaware of this practice.If cars were sold like technology, they'd limp off the lot and you'd be mailed parts for years. There are enough pre-Bebop Parrots out there and Flight Recorders, that I think some clever geeks will try to implement firmware improvements at some point. I hope you are right. I would like to eventually be able to get some proper use out of my $150 Parrot Flight Recorder and GPS waypoint guidance system. I have found that using a WIFI range extender (EDIMAX EW-7416AP) on a 30 foot tower makes a huge difference in range so I would highly recommend that. The GPS guidance provided by FreeFlight works within the 3 meter error of the GPS to a tee. Note: 3 meter radius of course. I agree the GPS fight recorder  is expensive and absolutely should be built in which all in all should reduce the price. But back to the subject of this thread. Hugh did you ever get answers to you questions?Chris Griffith tests the Parrot AR Drone 2 new flight recorder, which lets you set the drone's destination by touching it on a map.

The AR Drone Mark 2 with GPS.12EXCITED geeks are getting adventurous with their Parrot AR quadcopters. When we last looked at the AR Drone in 2012, the four-rotor hi-tech helicopter Mark 2 had become capable of streaming video to an iPhone in glorious 720p high-definition resolution. It also could perform flips in the sky.Now it’s a new ballgame. The AR Drone has transformed from a quadcopter you control manually from your phone to what is called an “autonomous” drone — one you pre-program with the destination and have it fly there automatically. There’s also a home button that, with one press, will see the drone automatically find its way back to its origin.The consumer drone’s claim to hi-tech fame is its ability to be controlled via standard WiFi using an app from an iPhone, iPad and ­Android device. It also has an impressive array of sensors — a three-axis accelerometer and three-axis gyroscope to aid stability, and two ultrasound altimeter sensors that measure distance to the ground.

The downward-facing camera helps it hover motionless even in light wind conditions.We got to try it out with its new GPS flight recorder last week — the so-called AR Drone 2.0 GPS edition. You attach the red flight recorder dongle directly above the battery and attach the drone’s USB connector. It has to sit on top for the GPS to work. The flight recorder has 4GB of storage for recording flight vision, enough for two hours of vision. But if you need more, you can plug another USB device into the back of it.It’s not the sturdiest set-up I’ve seen. The velcro strap used to ­attach the dongle doesn’t seem that secure, and if you want to reattach the hull, you’ll find the velcro is out of alignment. To get around this, you can operate the drone without its hull. It worked, but there must be a better way.It was then off to Sydney Park, a huge open space — not too far from Mascot airport in Sydney, I should add — to try GPS guided flying out.Overseas users already have achieved remarkable feats with Parrot’s GPS flight recorder.

They include the AR Drone’s first transcontinental flight, across the Bosphorus, a 1km strait in Turkey that links Asia and Europe. On that flight, the drone flew with the help of QgroundControl, download­able open-source software you can use to create an AR Drone flight plan. Parrot says the new flight recorder is compatible with the software. You can even create several legs of the one flight.The disparity is that it’s easy to pick a destination that’s way outside WiFi range, which for me was 40m-50m. When the Parrot detects it’s out of range, it is supposed to hover. On the Bosphorus flight, they cheated by having an operator on a boat beneath the drone to overcome this limitation.Others are using the new flight recorder to set a far more precarious destination, say 1km across a city, flying high over busy highways and residential districts. They’ve followed their Parrot in a car and, where it hovered, re-est­ablished a WiFi connection to send it on its way again. Their adventures are on YouTube.

This presents a nightmare to regulators such as CASA that are having to develop rules for urban drone use.Being at Sydney Park, a stone’s throw from Australia’s gateway airport, near a busy roadway and not far from the residential precincts of Alexandria, St Peters and Newtown, I decided to be conservative in my testing of GPS-oper­ated flying.On the Alan Davidson oval (named after a famous Aussie left-arm fast bowler from yesteryear), I programmed the drone to fly across the oval, over a picket fence, and land about 60m away. I also conducted some flights from the top of a hill at Sydney Park to a bunch of trees more than 100m away. Both were well in sight.I did this using Parrot’s iPhone/iPad app AR FreeFlight 2.4. When pressed, a globe icon at the top right of the display brings up a map: you put your finger on the screen where you want the drone to fly to. (Memo to Parrot: on the iPhone you are forced to zoom down from world view to your current location.)Your destination appears on the map in red.

You can set speed and height in columns down the side. You then press the “take off” button and, once the drone is airborne, the “Go” button. In a few screen jabs, the drone is off to a preprogrammed spot. My drone made it across the oval several times, flying high above the fence but once narrowly missing a light fitting there — the trick is to set the height above all obstacles. On the longer Sydney Park stretch, the drone hovered about halfway — as it should.In both cases, I was outside WiFi range, so I walked towards the drone to reconnect. I found that when using an iPhone 5S as controller, I had to get closer than 20m to effect a reconnection and a couple of times I couldn’t reconnect at all. This took away some lustre.Another new function, “home”, will send your drone back from wherever it is to the flight’s origin. Again, you have to be within WiFi range for this to work.The drone did indeed return, but often a few metres from the take-off spot. Don’t expect pinpoint accuracy.

The big bugbear with the Parrot drone is still battery life. You get just a dozen minutes of flight on one 1000 milliampere hour cell which takes about one hour, 15 minutes to charge. You definitely need to buy a couple of the larger 1500 mAh to get decent flying time. The battery drains even when the Parrot is on the ground but connected. Parrot needs to work on this as priority.In addition to iOS and Android devices, the Drone Mark 2 can be piloted from a Windows 8 PC or tablet, an NVIDIA Shield and soon with gestures using a Myo armband.There is a new Parrot model in the works, the Bebop drone, where the GPS is embedded. It has big 14 megapixel camera that snaps HD images and wide angle 1080p video with digital panning, and 8GB of on-board video storage. Most significantly, it runs with a Skycontroller, a tablet dock that boosts WiFi range to about 2km. That means serious flying. We’ll see it here hopefully in Q4 this year.Sadly, there’s little suggestion of improved battery life.