Parrot AR.DRONE 2.0 Flight Recorder: GPS, 4GB, return to take-off location feature

Unlike previous posts, I've never had any issues with this device. The GPS worked as advertised on my iphone5. (Make sure you update the firmware outside or else the install hangs. And when flying with it make sure there's not obstructions overhead for the satellite signal.) However this did leave me wanting more...I'd like to see the option to zoom in further in the satellite screen, you can zoom in but the map pulls back out. And most importantly i'd like to see the "Free flight IOS" app use multiple waypoints with the GPS in one flight. Currently you can only tell it to go at one waypoint at a time. I don't understand why, it's very doable.Lastly i'd like to see "when signal is lost" the drone would return home feature since it has a GPS. It also should keep itself more stationary even with wind pushing it off course it should check itself.The hardware could easily meet these requirements, there just needs to be an update to the app and GPS firmware which could be easily done.

I went ahead and got this in spite of some of the overwhelmingly negative reviews. I have not had any trouble....it does what it says it will do so far:1. Test flights with Freeflight GPS-enabled. Had no issues, but do agree with other improvement suggestions to allow better zoom and plotting an entire mission instead of one waypoint at a time.2. Test flights with QGroundcontrol were successful for 3 pretty short flights. Seemed to hit the waypoints fine and landed with no issues. Will soon test a longer flight.3. Haven't tried the other features...return to take-off, uploading flight data, etc.The only reason I didn't give 5 stars is that there could be some improvements but so far an awesome addition to the drone.

I love my AR.Drone. It's a fun little quadcopter that has quite a few features. With some upgrades to it, I've been able to get over 1,000 feet of range with solid video, so flying FPV using an iPad Mini proves to be a great bit of fun.When I got my AR.Drone, I was very interested in the idea that the Flight Recorder was bringing to the table. Flying autonomously using GPS coordinates would be awesome!!! Not to mention, it gives me yet another way to control the AR.Drone...one that would be very easy for someone with no flight experience to be able to use...just tap the map, and off it goes!!!All of these concepts seem great...however, the execution really brings down the overall package. I'm going to come right out and say it...I don't think this product was actually ready to be released yet. Let me get into the problems I had with mine.1. It had trouble locating the GPS satellites. I found that the only way I could get it to locate them was to unplug the battery and plug it back in over and over until I finally even got the Flight Recorder light to turn on letting me know it was trying to find satellites. I will say that once I got the light to come on, it seemed to find the satellites fairly quickly and get a bit of a position lock.2. If you just plug the thing in, the AR.Drone's internal compass can cause some problems. Let me explain...if you don't "calibrate" the AR.Drone after putting in the Flight Recorder every single time, it will think whatever direction it's pointing is magnetic north. The problem with this is in the way that it works with the GPS and the software.For instance, if I turn everything on with the AR.Drone facing east, it now thinks that east is north. When I plot a waypoint into the AR.FreeFlight program's map, the system does the calculations it needs to know about how far to send the AR.Drone.So, say I plot a point that is directly north of me, but remember, the system THINKS that east is north. So the AR.Drone sets off to the east, thinking it's north. Now here's where it starts to get a bit more tricky. When it starts to realize it's heading in the wrong direction, it tries to fix this by correcting everything, however, it's still way off because it doesn't actually know which way north truly is. So what you get is an AR.Drone that's desperately trying to get to where you've told it to go, but it's basically flying blind.What makes all of this terrible?? When I had experiences with this...even telling the AR.Drone to stop by going back into the virtual joystick control mode, it would NOT stop trying to go where it was trying to go...and this ultimately ended up in a few pretty nasty crashes.Okay, I get it...I need to calibrate every single time before using the GPS Flight Recorder...but to me that's just a strange hassle that shouldn't be necessary, and the one time someone DOES forget to do it, they could end up with an AR.Drone in a tree (or worse).It should be noted that this issue with the internal compass seems to be something that does NOT affect everyone's AR.Drone. I've read where several people say theirs works just fine with no calibration procedure, but it seems more than that have the problem.3. When using the Flight Recorder in virtual joystick mode, I had SEVERAL very bad crashes where suddenly the AR.Drone just angled down, sped off in a direction, and eventually slammed itself into the ground. When this happened, none of the times was I able to get control of the AR.Drone back before it met the ground at a pretty good velocity.The other thing of note about this is that the AR.Drone will do this regardless of what you have the angle limit set at. I typically have mine set very low (I think it's set at "8" in the app) so that it moves forward slowly and is a bit more stable. However, when the AR.Drone pitches and starts to run away, it will go to a VERY steep angle...almost to a point of being perpendicular with the ground...which it should NOT be able to do based on how I have it set up.Let me explain what I think is happening when this goes on. (Full disclaimer, I've taken a couple of years worth of classes dealing with GPS technology, I'm no expert but I have a firm grasp of how it works)When flying in virtual stick mode (or when tilting the control device) the AR.Drone uses the Flight Recorder to help with position lock when it's at a height that it can't use position lock with it's camera system. So, the Flight Recorder should be causing the AR.Drone to "stay put" better than if it weren't in there at all, due to the GPS location showing it where it needs to stay.What I think occurs is that the Flight Recorder suddenly loses signal, then tries to regain it and when it does, it doesn't have a full solid reading yet, and if that reading isn't showing where you're truly at, the Flight Recorder tries to get the AR.Drone there as quickly as possible. This could potentially be the issue even if it's not losing signal, but then somehow suddenly thinks it's somewhere that it's actually not.Let's see if I can explain this a bit better, as it's hard to put into words.Let's put it onto a bigger scale, just to explain. Let's say you have an AR.Drone that you are flying over Florida (we won't get any more specific, as it will make sense in a second). Your Flight Recorder knows you're in Florida, because it can tell that based on the GPS signals it's getting. Now, all of the sudden, your GPS THINKS (through glitching or a loss of signal) that you're actually flying over California, but it KNOWS you want to be flying over Florida. So, what does it do?? It tries to get you back to Florida as quickly as possible, despite the fact that you are still IN Florida. So, the Flight Recorder has to move you WAY east to get the AR.Drone to where it thinks it should be (but remember, it's already there) so it sends the AR.Drone on the 3,000 mile trip east...Now, that's all fine and dandy, except you're already in Florida when this happens...but your Flight Recorder for some reason doesn't understand that, so your AR.Drone is STILL going to speed off to the east, and in this case it will crash somewhere out in the middle of the ocean.I hope that makes sense. For the record, when I was having these crashes with the Flight Recorder installed, I was getting them regularly. However, when flying with the Flight Recorder NOT hooked up, I could NOT replicate these crash scenarios, which is why I concluded that the Flight Recorder had something to do with this issue.4. Finally, as reported it makes placing the hull on the AR.Drone more difficult. I ended up just flying without the hull whenever using the Flight Recorder, and it wasn't a big deal to me...but I know to others it may be.So, in closing, I think this accessory has some great potential. Unfortunately, that's all it is right now...potential. In practice, it's a device that could cause you to break (or worse, lose) your AR.Drone because of it's finicky nature.I'm hoping to start reading better reviews of this product in the future, and maybe I will give it another shot. However, for now, mine was sent back to Amazon for a full refund.Two stars because WHEN it works, it's pretty cool. The problem is, that's so few and far between it's not even worth trying.

This opened up a whole new world on my parrot. It is huge fun to send it zipping off on a mission and then checking out what it found. It's hard to describe it, but it is just plain fun. The drone is out of WiFi range in a hurry, so that requires some care. Also, you have to be careful that you clear those waypoints because otherwise the drone will up and leave you as it heads to wherever you flew it last week.As for software - use qgroundcontrol on a laptop. None of the android flavored stuff I found would not run a parrot.If there's anything negative about this gadget it's that you end up flying the parrot without any hull at all. I wish it accommodated the indoor hull because it looks so cool.

Nearly perfect. if you want a more stable AR Drone and want to use the Autonomous ability that this will bring then I would not hesitate to get it. My first one had a problem and about half way through a remote flight it stopped. That was not good. but just seeing how stable this is will make you want one. And as I said if you want to use Autonomous software it is really cool to send it as far as you want and then have it come back all on its own !!!!!

Looks cool. Still we fail to understand how to control the AR Drone once it leaves for its journey...The GPS really expands its capability and control. Without it, we have lost connection for several times (one time it escaped into a zoo... took us two days to locate it on a tree and get it down).The controlling application is cool as well. We made some basic test using the GPS but yet.. once it leaves to its journey which is beyond the Wi-Fi coverage, how to gain control with it??

The media could not be loaded.  Der Flight Recorder ist schon eine echt gute Idee, keine Frage!Durch die GPS- Unterstützung kann die Drone besser die Höhe ermitteln und das abdriften durch Wind vermindern (auch in großen Höhen).Mein Hauptgrund für den Kauf war die "Home" Funktion. Meine ich nicht mehr zu wissen wo die Drone ist, oder mich unsicher fühle mit der Steuerung, drücke ich die "Taste" und die Drone kommt zum Startpunkt zurück...Soweit in der Theorie und wie in meinem Video gezeigt...Leider aber macht der GPS Empfänger in der Praxis auch Probleme die man vorher nicht hatte...!Das Modul unterstützt die Drone bei der Positionsbestimmung und das halten dieser Position. Nun ist (je nach Umgebung, Wetter...) das GPS Signal mal genauer bzw. ungenauer. Es kommt als nicht selten vor, dass das Modul feststellt das sich dieDrone z.B. nicht an der angegebenen Position befindet, sondern einige Meter weiter rechts (für unser Beispiel). Nun greift das Modul aktiv in die Steuerung ein! Sie korrigiert die, sagen wir mal 3 Meter, nach um die Drone auf korrekte Position zu bekommen.In der Theorie richtig, in der Praxis aber äußerst ärgerlich, wenn in diesem 3 Metern sich ein Hindernis wie ein Baum oder Haus befindet, die Korrekturen kommen unverhofft, manchmal sehr stark und machen ein genaues fliegen auf kleinem/engen Raum so gut wie unmöglich/unberechenbar, leider.Leider muss ich auch die so gewünschte "Home" Funktion teilweise negativ bewerten. Mitunter (wie in meinem Video zu sehen) klappt es sehr gut. Aber aus unerfindlichen Gründen kommt es auch vor, dass die Drone nach dem Betätigen in die Richtung schießt, fast schon zu "überschlagen" droht! Am "Ausgangspunkt" angelangt, schießt sie darüber hinweg und wird erst einige Meter später langsamer, sofern sie nicht vorher unsanft aufgeschlagen ist.Diese Tatsache hinterlässt immer einen faden Beigeschmack, da man nie weiß wann die Drone so reagiert.Ich hoffe dieser Fehler wird mit einem Update gefixt. Sollte dies der Fall sein, passe ich die Bewertung an.Zur App und Unterstützung, hier ist oft zu lesen das das Modul Android nicht unterstützt wird... das ist nicht (mehr) so. Seit Oktober 2013 wird Android unterstützt, wie auch im Video zu sehen (Nexus 7 Tab).Trotz der negativen Punkte fliege ich NUR noch mit dem GPS Modul, wenn gleich ich schon einige unschöne Abstürze damit hatte lernt man mit diesen umzugehen. Jederzeit die Drone "zurück pfeifen" zu können ist mir am wichtigsten.Die Auswertung nach dem Flug über die App ist klasse, diese zeigt einem genau die Flughöhen, Max. Geschwindigkeit usw. an, sowie die genauen Bewegungen der Drone Virtuell auf der Google Maps Karte.Ich hoffe das ich weiterhelfen konnte und stehe bei Fragen gern zur Verfügung!

Tut was es laut Beschreibung angibt zu tun. Man kann sich nach dem Flug ansehen wie / wohin man geflogen ist. GPS ermöglicht jedoch in anderen Ländern den autonomen, vorprogrammierten Flug. Dies ist durch die gesetzlichen Bestimmungen in Deutschland verboten.

Good gps flight recorder when used with computer control ,I have never used it with I-phone or i-pad but in the future when someone make a good mapping app i might try it on my i-pod

Der Parrot AR.Done Flight Recorder ist ein nettes AddOn für die Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 und bereichert die Funktion um eine Positionsbestimmung, die Möglichkeit einen Waypoint für den Flug festzulegen der autak angeflogen wird und die "Comming Home" Funktion. Alles in allem funktioniert das ganze sehr gut, allerding wäre es schön wenn die Android App endlich den vollen Funktionsumfang bieten würde wie es die App für iOS Geräte tut. Aber das ist ein anderes Thema. Einen Punkt habe ich abgezogen, da leider mit montiertem Flight Recorder die Outdoor Flughülle nicht mehr auf das Modell passt. Diese muss mit einem scharfen Messer etwas bearbeitet werden, was aber leider vorher nicht erwähnt wird.

As per review for the Drone I bought this after viewing the videos on YouTube. I wanted to be able to view and record the flights done with my Drone. It is a small plug and play unit and I had to update the firmware as soon as it was connected. One USB to connect to the Drone and another for using with a USB stick if required to record videos and photographs. The positioning of the Velcro retainer strip gives the impression that there should be full contact with the Drone straps but I found if I did that then the upper hull would not fit. Re-positioning the Flight Recorder so that the Velcro strap just catches the lower edge of the Flight Recorder seems to have done the trick and it feels firm enough. Again this was bought in December and I look forward to better weather to try it during a flight.