Tips for novice poultry farmers: Anatomy of Parrot AR.Drone

Well ... not exactly anatomy - dissect and delve into the inside of a parrot until it crashed to death, I will not. Let's talk about the structure of a quadrocopter without excessive dismemberment.

A fortnight ago, I talked about how I ordered a Parrot ARDrone spy drone from the States. The flight of the drone through the ocean on the wings of the USPS was normal, although not without some hassle. And here I have a box with a drone sleeping in it:

(pictures are clickable)


')


So, we came to:
- quadrocopter with a body mounted on it with protective rings (for launches in nature);
- removable housing for running in the premises;
- stickers on protective rings;
- a battery, a charger for it and a set of interchangeable plugs (among which are suitable for Russian outlets).



Before starting the copter, I had to charge the battery. Charging lasted about 2.5 hours.

Here is what the copter looks like with the body removed. In the center - a recess for the battery with velcro for fixing it. In front - a long “nose” with a camera. For some reason, a pink velcro is stuck. In the back is a magnetic lock, fixing the case.



If you turn the copter, we will see two ultrasound “eyes” - the copter keeps track of the height. Also on the bottom cover is a status LED of the drone, a reset button and a button that cancels the pairing of the drone with an iPhone, a computer and a mobile phone that was previously canceled. On each propeller unit - also on the LED.



I don’t intend to buy an iphone that the copter should control (I’m having a Nokia N900, it’s difficult to switch to some other device - it seems that this phrase started minus the post because of this phrase. Stupid. ). Thanks to the open protocol and the presence of libraries, the copter can be controlled from a Linux / Windows laptop, or from smart phones with Maemo or Android. For starters, I chose the option with a netbook under Ubuntu.

In order to build a “taxiing software”, I had to register at projects.ardrone.org and download the manual from projects.ardrone.org/login?back_url=http%253A%252F%252Fprojects.ardrone.org%252Fattachments%252Fdownload%252F335%252FARDrone_SDKDK.
Open the manual and immediately proceed to the desired chapter. In my case - “Building the Linux Examples”, but there is also a detailed description for iOS, Windows and Android.

Building the program according to the instructions did not cause any problems. And here the joystick is connected, the program is running, the key to start ... But the kopter only blinked with light bulbs and was not going to start the engines. The problem was that I did not use one of the recommended joysticks in the manual (Logitech Precision gamepad and Sony Playstation 3 gamepad), but the Genius Mini MaxFire Pandora Pro Vibration I had. Well, I couldn’t make changes to the program correctly at three o'clock in the morning so that this joystick could be processed normally. The next morning I went for Logitech Precision - and in the evening of the next day the drone took off ...

But about this (with a video chronicle of ups and downs, which I still can’t put into a short film) - in the next posting :)