As I mentioned earlier, we’ve got an AR Drone to play with. One of the common mods that popped up on the internet were ways of extending the range on the AR Drone. It normally uses a local Wi-Fi connection to your phone or tablet for control and video signals. Many found this quite restrictive and have gone pretty far in extending that range. The first and easiest was just to set up a higher power Wi-Fi Bridge where you’ll be flying. The Drone only has about 15db of wi-fi magic in it, so anything stronger than that is an improvement. There were too many variations on this to delve into the details, but as you see, there’s not much too it. The second method is to completely replace the Wi-Fi control system with a nice R/C controller. This will greatly increase your range as well as give you extra channels for triggering different attachments (usually lights).  I’ve seen two main methods used. One is called “MacGuyver mod”. This one is a plug and play kit that doesn’t seem to have much info along with it.

The other is called “MiruMod” and the creator has shared all the information they can.  You can find a parts breakdown as well as schematics, wiring diagrams, instructions, and software. [Miru] uses an Arduino Pro Mini or an Arduino Nano as a go-between from the receiver to the serial port on the AR Drone. You can see in the wiring diagram below that it is a fairly simple install, and all [miru] asks for is that maybe you donate some beer money if you appreciate his mod.With a few small AR drone mods, you can double the flight time and make your AR drone stronger. The Parrot AR 2.0 drone range can also be extended and it’s a great feeling to fly higher and further. These Parrot drone mods and upgrades will also prolong the life of the motors, gears and shafts as their will be less friction on the brushless motors and parts. With more flying, you will have more fun and that is the best part of owning a drone. Enjoy these drone modifications.  I’ve also added videos with instructions to assist you with the modifications.

By replacing your bushings with a new shielded sealed bearings, you will increase the battery time giving you more flying time.  With the new shielded bearings, you increase Parrot brushless motor life by approximately 4 times. You also have a better flying experience with less rolling. The Parrot AR Drone comes with 8 brass bushings (2 on each gear shaft). Upgrading is very simple and takes only 10 minutes to complete. Instructions:  Take the C clips off. Remove the propeller and shaft.  Using a small flat headed screwdriver, you can pull the old brass bearing out. Put the new bearings in and put back together.  Below, I have a drone video which walks you through the upgrade. NOTE: While you have the propellers and shaft off, examine each piece to make sure they are not damaged or bent, and give them a clean. Here’s a terrific video showing you how to complete an AR drone bearing upgrade. The Parrot AR 2.0 from the factory comes with a Lithium-ion polymer rechargeable battery 1500 mAh – 11.1V.

Upgrading to a better battery will give you longer flight times which is what we all want to do. 1) Upgrade to a Cheerwing 1800mAh 11.1V 20C Li-Po Upgrade Battery. When this battery is fully charged you can fly for around 20 minutes.ar drone battery flashing lights 2) Parrot also have a high density battery for the AR Drone 2.0. parrot ar drone trimIt is a 1500AH Lipo Battery.  buy drone iv bath saltsThis high grade Lithium-Polymer battery has a discharge capacity of 10C and includes a PCM (Protection Circuit Module) protecting the battery against over charge.ar drone motors emergency error Perhaps at some point in the future your Parrot AR drone is going to have a crash.  parrot ar drone for sale south africa

With a stronger base plate made of Carbon Fiber, you effectively reduce gear damage from the crash.  A Carbon Fiber base is easy to install and it fits perfectly on both the Parrot AR drone 2.0 & Power edition. The AR Drone forward facing camera has a much better resolution than the the downward camera. parrot ar drone alibabaBy modifying the front facing camera downwards you will will get a really nice aerial view.  From the factory, all you see is a treeline view.  If you want a little downward angle for better views of the landscape, then this AR drone mod on the camera will work. The Parrot AR 2.0 drone range is approximately 150 feet.  With these easy modifications you can easily fly an extra 50% further. These 2 videos show you the exact AR drone modifications you need to carry out. The 1st video shows you how to install a new modified main board along with installing an antennae on your Parrot AR drone.

This can increase the AR drone range by up to 50%. The 2nd video shows you how to use a WiFi repeater to extend the AR drone 2.0 range.  The video shows you how to setup the repeater on your smartphone to make sure you are definitely connected to both the repeater and your Parrot Drone. The problem with WiFi repeaters is that you need to plug them in which isn’t easy if you are miles away out in the open.  You can use something like a car power inverter to plug in your WiFi Repeater. How to Extend the Range of you AR Drone 2.0 using a WiFi RepeaterThinking about upgrading your AR.Drone to a more capable quadcopter? Have a look at this informative side-by-side comparison between a Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 and a DJI Phantom. The DJI doesn’t come with a camera but you can use it in combination with a GoPro. The DJI Phantom can be bought for around $450 at the moment of writing. That is excluding the GoPro. If you want an integrated camera you could go for the more expensive DJI Phantom 2 Vision which has an integrated camcorder but is double the price (~$1.000).

MAVLink is a very lightweight, header-only message marshalling library for communicating with micro air vehicles. MAVLink was first released early 2009 by Lorenz Meier under a GPL license. The MAVLINK Common Message Set describes the various message headers. You can integrate MAVLink with the Robot Operating System (ROS) in order to control your micro air vehicle. QGroundControl, the open source Micro Air Vehicle Ground Control Station / Operator Control Unit can be used to operate your Drone. It is based on PIXHAWK’s Groundstation. Further development is now done in a joint effort with the community. Have a look a the QGroundControl video to get an idea of its control interface. Parrot is planning to release the GPS Flight Recorder add-on for the AR Drone 2.0 on July 20th. The flight recorder connects through USB and will allow you to geolocate your AR.Drone, keep track of its position and store videos (4 GB onboard = 2 hours of video) in its built-in flash memory. You will be able to point to a location within the limits of the Wi-Fi connection on a map and the AR Drone will automatically fly there.

Pressing the Return Home button will make the AR.Drone come straight back to its take-off point in a straight line. Flight recorder mode will allow you to track your AR Drone’s flight in 3D. Micro Air Vehicle Communication Protocol (MAVLink) support will make it possible to program a detailed flight plan with QGround Control, available for Windows/Linux/MAc OSX. recently received their Leap Motion developer’s kit. Within a day they were able to control the AR.Drone with Leap Motion gestures based on the AR.Have a look at the video for some awesome Mission Impossible style Quadrotor controls. A short while ago Felix Geisendörfer wrote a tool to install node.js on the AR.Drone and wrote a library to control it with JavaScript. Although developed for the AR.Drone 2, it also appears to work for the first version of the AR. Graham Robinson has written a long explanation about the Siri-controlled AR.He based his AR.Drone+Siri hack on the Windows SDK for the AR.Drone built by Stephen Hobley, Thomas Endres and Julian Vinel, some SAP ABAP and the SiriProxy project by Pete Lamonica.

Skip to around 4’11” for the Siri-demonstration in the video below. Since this month the official AR.Freeflight App is also available for Android devices and can be downloaded from the Android Market. Previously you had to rely on third party apps like AR.Pro, but now you can also use the official Parrot App on your Android device. Researchers from the computer science department at the Stevens Institute of Technology have added a 3G-radio to an AR.Because of the mobile hookup the AR.Drone can be controlled from a greater distance than the normal wifi connection and can be maneuvred into the range of a wifi-network. It could then attack that network and gain access to the network with the onboard software. And once it has gained access it could be used to issue commands to a botnet, acting as a command-and-control-server, powered by a small solar panel. Because the attackers would dial-in to the AR.Drone through the 3G-connection and the drone would us wifi to hookup to a third party network it would be much harder to find out who was responsible for the botnet attacks.

You can read further details about the SkyNET project in the paper that was presented by the researchers at the USENIX Security Conference in August. Spooky stuff if you ask me. Below you will find a 23 minute video by kenv8 explaining the previously mentioned AR. The flight range of the AR.Drone is limited because the wifi range is limited to somewhere between 30 – 100 meters depending on where you fly and whether you have line of sight.Drone can be drastically extended to 1.5 – 2.5 kilometers by using RC equipment. The 2.4 GHZ RC hack instructions describe how the range can be extended in full detail. The actual flight range will depend on the RC transmitter & receiver used. According to the tutorial it has been tested to work with Spektrum DX6i and Spektrum AR6200 DSM2 6 Ch Rx Ultralite. The Spektrum DX7 with the AR6200 (2.4Ghz), Futaba 9CH with Assan module and X8R7 (2.4Ghz) and the JR790UL spcm Rx (72 Mhz) have also been tested to work according to the tutorial.