Released in last November, the Bebop 2 is the new high-end video drone from Parrot. More powerful, more robust and with an increased autonomy, the Bebop 2 is the first leisure drone of 500gr with 25 minutes of flight time! We will focus in this article on the major evolutions between the Bebop Drone (still available) and the new Bebop 2. First of all, in terms of size, the Bebop 2 is bigger than the Bebop 1, the Bebop 2 has a 290mm frame type while the Bebop 1 has a 250mm frame type. Its overall dimensions are now 32.8 x 38.2 cm (Bebop 2) versus 28 x 32 cm (Bebop 1) The Bebop 2 now has 6 inches propellers versus 5.5 inches propellers on the Bebop 1 which gives it more thrust (+10% output)! A Bebop 1 propeller (in black) and a Bebop 2 propeller (in red) The new Bebop no longer has dual arms but aviation inspired single arms. These new arms, flexible and robust give it a clean and aggresive look. The new Bebop 2 also has a new LED tail light, which is also the on / off button.

This very bright LED is visible from a great distance and helps you spot your Bebop 2 and checks its orientation while flying.parrot ar drone imu A major improvement of the Bebop 2 is its new high capacity battery !parrot ar drone 2500mah The capacity of the Bebop 2’s battery has been highly increased (2700 mAh) in comparison to the Bebop 1’s battery (1200 mAh).ar drone 2 buy online The battery also has a new locking system using a latch on its back which means velcro strap are no longer needed to keep it in place.the Bebop 2 now has an outstanding 25 min fly time in “Normal” piloting and about 21 minute in aggressive flying style or with heavy winds. The Bebop 1 has a 11 min flight time in normal piloting. The Bebop 2 has a whole new 180° fish-eye lens, more tilted towards the ground than the one of the Bebop 1 which allows the Bebop 2 to catch more ground and less sky.

You can also shoot from above (up to 90° on Bebop 2). The lens also catches more light for a better video quality in low light conditions. Click here to watch a video recorded by the Bebop 2 in low light conditions. With a maximal inclination of 35° versus 30° on the Bebop 1, the Bebop 2 is faster and quicker than its predecessor. It can now reach a top speed of 18 m/s (65 kph) versus 13  m/s (47 kph) on the Bebop 1. The climbing top speed has also been increased since the Bebop 2 can now have a maximal vertical speed of 6 m/s versus 2.5 m/s on the Bebop 1. The new Bebop 2 has a new Ublox Neo 8M GPS chip with an increased precision! The number of maximum visible satellites has also been increased (12 satellites max on the Bebop 1 VS 19 satellites max on the Bebop 2) This increased GPS reliability is a real advantage for automated flight modes (Return to Home, Flight Plan) and high altitude stability. The Bebop 2 also has new optimized motors with a higher winding density and reinforcements giving them a better resistance to shocks.

The ESC (Electronic Speed Controllers) have also been improved for more power, reactivity and performance (+10%). Thanks to theses upgrades, the Bebop 2 now has a way better wind resistance than the Bebop 1. Watch Bebop 2 wind turbine test video here! The Bebop 2 is sold alone or in a bundle with the new “Black Edition” Skycontroller . This new controller features a black body, a new position of buttons and a new battery connector identical to the one of the Bebop 2 allowing it to use the Bebop 2’s 2700 mAh batteries. The Bebop 2 remains entirely compatible with the older Skycontrollers to ensure a great connectivity on long distance flights (2km max) and a video streaming through the HDMI port. This HDMI port can be used to connect optional FPV goggles. In the same way, the automated flight planification tool: Flight Plan (available though in-app purchase) of FreeFlight 3 can be used on both Bebop 1 and Bebop 2 drones. You’ll be ask to choose which drone you want to use before planning your flights in order to adapt the settings to the chosen drone.

Whether you have a Bebop 2 or a Bebop 1, join the Bebop community without waiting further!Turning the Parrot AR.Drone into an autonomous UAV There are loads of open source quadcopters out there, but they're all a bit too DIY for me--I just want something cheap that works right out of the box. I love the Parrot AR.Drone, which fits that bill, but it's not really a UAV, because you can't give it waypoints and it doesn't know where it is since it doesn't have GPS. Adding GPS to the AR.Drone would be easy if you could get access to the datastream the AR.Drone is sending back via WiFi, and there is indeed a physical port that could allow that, but Parrot has not enabled that and they don't want to emphasize that possibility for fear that the AR.Drone might get regulated as a UAV, rather than a flying toy. So rather than wait for them to turn that on, I decided to take matters into my own hands. As you can see above, I just added an ArduPilot, a GPS and an Xbee to the AR.They're powered by a tap off the balancing connector of the quad's battery, but otherwise they don't have any connection to the onboard electronics.

(Note: you don't really need ArduPilot for this--you could probably connect the GPS right to the Xbee--but I'm using it right now to parse the GPS data and just send down the essentials, along with providing a power regulator for the Xbee and GPS module. But going forward, having ArduPilot onboard will let us add other sensors and do more onboard processing.) All this setup does is send back GPS coordinates to the ground station, with an Xbee at each end. But that's enough to turn the AR.Drone into a proper UAV, since Parrot has already released software that lets you control the AR.Drone from a PC. So all we need to do is modify that code to take the GPS telemetry in from the Xbee, compare that with given waypoints, and calculate a directional vector for the AR.Drone to fly to hit the next waypoint. Then that XYZ command can be sent back to the AR.Drone via WiFi using the Parrot data standard. So in a sense, the AR.Drone handles the inner loop (stabilization) of an autopilot onboard, but the outer loop (navigation) we'll do from the ground station, along with image processing and other mission planning.