A high-flying hobby for drone buffs

Parrot, which launched its first quadricopter in 2010, has improved its hardware and software specifications to make AR.Drone 2 much easier to fly and control the device. Better location and orientation sensors make the quadricopter more stable in the air, and a new pressure sensor will help it hold its altitude more accurately when it's more than a few feet off the ground. The remote helicopter includes a 720p-capable camera for sending 1280 x 720 video at 30 frames per second from the helicopter down to your WiFi connected iOS or Android device. It runs on ARM Cortex A8 1GHz processor with 1Gbit DDR2 RAM at 200MHz. The app was first launched only for Apple and now it is available to download on Android devices for free. The front and a vertical camera beam the image to your smartphone, and you can record that view as well. Getting the view from above is what this bird is about. You can directly access your own videos and photos, watch or upload to YouTube for the community to enjoy. This product is sold as a hobby product or a toy, but the live video capture tool makes it more important than that. The new Free Flight app allows users to record HD video or photos and share them, while the absolute flight mode allows the pilot to control the helicopter simply by moving or tilting their mobile device. There's also a director mode that lets you fly the copter in a sideways orientation, which is useful for recording video. The quadricopter creates its own WiFi signal enabling the control through your smartphone or tablet. You won't need any additional network connection and can control a range of up to 50 metres. The drone comes with a protective foam hull around the propellers for indoors and an outdoor hull for maximum manoeuvrability. It weighs 380 grams with outdoor hull and 420 grams with indoor hull. On the downside, the quadricopter will be limited by its reliance on WiFi for control and video transmission. And since it uses a direct WiFi connection, other WiFi can interfere with the it. It also comes with some "virtual reality" games in which you fly the drone around and the screen on your smartphone shows target information and game data, which can include "missiles" shot at drones that friends are flying, superimposed on the control screen. The device can fly for approximately 12-15 minutes with full charge and can reach a top speed of 18 km/h. You can adjust a setting in the application to reduce/increase the AR.Drone's tilt angle and therefore reduce/increase the speed. Games for the AR.Drone are available for downloading from app stores, but only for Apple platform. It is priced at around Dh1,499.