The biggest seller this Christmas apart from smartwatches will apparently be drones, I'm told.
Drones are of course the same as various radio controlled vehicles of yore; calling them drones is catchier, but means writers like yours truly will have to suppress their inner schoolboys and not come up with headlines like "RC-ing about", which is a pity.
Parrot sent three of its drones to try out: the Bebop with the Skycontroller, the Hydrofoil Drone boat, and the MiniDrone Jumping Night Drone.
These are toys for adults really, and quite advanced ones too. The Bebop is a quad-copter drone that weighs 400 gram, and has a 22 minute flight time per battery (the newer Bebop 2 manages 25 minutes).
It communicates via its own WiFi network in 2.4 and 5GHz, and has a reach of up to 250 metres with a sending power of 26 dBm - apparently, some users have flown it up to 200 metres up in the air.
The Bebop features a full HD 1080p camera that shoots video in 30 frames per second, and can take stills too at 14 megapixel resolution, stored in 8GB of flash. The whole thing runs on a dual-core Parrot P7 custom processor, with a quad-core graphics processor as well.
You control the Bebop via a smartphone app, or the optional Skycontroller harness.
Thanks to all the technology the Bebop is very easy to fly. It's fast (13 metres a second or approximately 47 kilometres an hour), stable and heaps of fun. The onboard computer reads input from the three-axis accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, ultrasound and pressure sensors to stabilise the Bebop up in the air, and it works amazingly well.
When the battery runs low, the Bebop lands safely instead of falling out of the sky too.
It's not cheap by any means, at NZ$899 including GST. You can get it with the Skycontroller harness that houses an iPad that communicates with the Bebop and shows you the camera view, as a $1,699 package. The Skycontroller makes it a bit easier to fly the Bebop thanks to the joysticks, compared to using a smartphone screen controls.
By signing up to Parrot's Drone Academy you can record flights and share them with others, and the whole experience can become geeky-as if you want.
The only problem is that it's not that easy to find places to fly the Bebop, especially around Auckland. Go to the park? Nopes, forget about that. You may be able to fly the Bebop in the garden, but the neighbours might get upset when they spot a buzzing drone with a camera onboard, hovering near their house.
In the US, drones weighing over 250 gram have to be registered with the authorities who have become fed up with people using them carelessly, near commercial airliners and to film fire rescue operations. Over in NZ, the Civil Aviation Authority too is starting to get concerned about Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) and have issued safety guidelines for operators.
Also, at 400 gram you have to be careful not to smack the Bebop into objects and more importantly, people and pets. Needless to say, my cat hated the Bebop and didn't want to star in a drone movie.
The Hydrofoil drone boat is cheaper ($279) but again, it's tricky to find somewhere to pilot the thing unless you have a fairly large swimming pool for instance. I mean a swimming pool of your own, not the Tepid Baths or whatever. Salt water isn't recommended either.
Given the space constraints, the drone that I ended up using the most was the $329 Jumping Night ground vehicle.
As the name implies, it can jump (up to 80cm), goes quickly at up to 7kph, can be programmed into following prerecorded paths and has two bright LED headlights for visibility after dark. It'll completely ruin any social event with males around, and it's quite noisy which the younger crowd loves. The camera is just 640 by 480 pixel resolution but it still takes fun videos.
The Jumping Night Drone too is remotely controlled using WiFi, which turned out to be difficult to get working properly until firmware updates from Parrot sorted it out. Its battery is on the small side at 550mAh and the quoted up to twenty minutes run time turned out to be overly optimistic, especially if you make the Night Drone jump and use the LED headlights.
With a powerful USB charger, you make the Jumping Night Drone go again in 25-30 minutes though.
If it's to be a remotely controlled vehicle for Christmas, the Parrot Jumping Night Drone is an amusing device that kids too can use. It's robust and easy to pilot with the smartphone app. Be warned that it'll be nigh impossible to get the drone and smartphone back from kids who try it out though.
And that's it for me for 2015.
Hope you have a good break over Christmas and see you in 2016.
