Gadgetory

so the first time I saw the parrot bebop in person was at CES this year and man did they have a cool demo running they had quadcopters flipping and spinning and dancing and at one point we even saw a pretty spectacular crash although we didn't get it on camera unfortunately and why I actually haven't really gotten into a lot of the more advanced quads that have come out over the last year or so with the most sophisticated flyer in my fleet being an aerodrome 2.0 the bebop piqued my interest and I asked parrot to send over a sample so I could put it through the paces for you and for those of you asking because I'm sure it's all over the place yes scrapyard wars 1c is going to contain the epic conclusion and it's coming out next Saturday night but first this video save on select until 730 series SSDs with instant rebates during presidents week February 22nd to March 1st 2015 click now to learn more so I got the sky controller package and this is a must in my opinion since it dramatically increases the range and ease of control of the be-bop compared to using the Wi-Fi antenna and on-screen controls on your tablet or smartphone and the out-of-the-box experience was actually really really good mostly the included documentation is abominable but everything was nicely packaged and environmentally and cat stomach friendly paper material and unlike many hobbyist grade products it really comes with everything you need to get started the bebop drone the sky controller 3 1200 milliamp hour lipo batteries - for the drone and one for the sky controller a charger for the batteries a full set of replacement propellers with a tool to do it a hole to protect the props from damage when flying indoors or near obstructions a micro USB cable and neck strap and then awesome and essential when you want to use first-person view on a bright day foldable sunshade with an iPad Mini adapter so you can use it with a full sized tablet or a smaller one so let's start with a closer look at the bebop itself the four motors have been upgraded to brushless compared to the ar.drone 2.0 Parrott has added eight gigs of on-board storage about enough for three flights worth of video and some photos from the 14 megapixel camera speaking of which the camera now features a 180 degree fisheye lens Full HD 1080p recording and an unbelievable virtual gimbal stabilization setup that makes first-person piloting a bit more challenging more on that later but allows the bebop to deliver some astounding aerial footage on the back is the power button and a micro USB connector for offloading footage to a computer although this can be done over Wi-Fi and then on the underside is an ultrasonic sensor for low altitude height detection and a smaller camera to control drift and measure speed along with a couple of landing gear mounted antennas rubber Isolators that will provide some impact absorption in crashes we'll keep the motor vibration away from the rest of the internals because as interesting is what I've said so far may actually be that is where the bebop got most of its upgrades it now features a dual-core cortex a9 CPU a quad-core GPU whatever that means AC wireless a three axis magnetometer a 3-axis gyroscope a three axis accelerometer and a pressure sensor lets it know how high it is once the ultrasonic sensor gets out of range of the ground gps is now built in out of the box so you can see a little map of where you went if you sign up for a parrot account and it can return home with a dedicated button oh yeah and the bebop runs a Linux operating system with an open source SDK in the works Wow and the sky controller is actually much more than a couple of joysticks with an adjustable tablet or phone mount - I mean it has that you know the right stick does forward backward and side-to-side movement while the left one controls alte - Dan rotation or yaw but there's other stuff too it's got its own Android equipped computer inside with GPS HDMI out for head mounted displays a USB port for optional accessories down the line and even head tracking for your HMD a microUSB port for applying updates a serious business Wi-Fi antenna that increases the range from pretty fun - holy crap this thing goes really far away like a hundred and fifty meters up in the air with a live video feed that's actually working not half bad it's got battery and Wi-Fi strength indicators record and still image capture buttons and joystick for panning around the recorded camera view - but enough of that what is it like to fly the answer is really really fun I've always kind of liked RC stuff I've got a dx7 radio and su-26 ready to fly in a blade MSR that I can sort of fly but helis are hard and I kind of suck at it and compared to those the bebop is really stable and really easy to handle almost to the point where it's kind of boring weight line is boring you just said it was fun yes I'm getting to that flying around staring at the drone is okay but about as exciting as flying a kite for 10 minutes if you're not a die-hard RC aircraft person because there's really not much challenge in it the bebop with some exceptions that I'll get into a bit more later pretty much just goes where you put it and then stays there but even though I just spent the last minute griping about what I'd like to be better your focus shouldn't be on the complaints but rather on what kinds of complaints they are none of these are show stoppers that will lend the bebop permanently in my closet collecting dust their usability tweaks that I really want to see addressed because this thing is so much fun and I want my experience using it all the time to be as smooth as possible and I have a lot of hope for it rift dk2 doesn't support first-person VR operations I couldn't try it but the consumer one which I am getting will I am stoked to play with that and parrot opening things up to the open-source community has already resulted in some cool mods like this users on the pair forum who figured out how to turn the gimbal off for more true to what the bebop is seeing first-person view and this other one with LEDs added for better visibility of the drones orientation in the sky so is the bebop the best drone for the price at nine hundred dollars with the sky controller I don't know this is my first kick at the can for anything better than toy grade is it a really really cool gizmo that's going to provide hours of fun for me and my son when we want to go out and do something on the weekend yeah it is speaking of something to do on the weekend browsing the internet privately tunnel bear is a consumer VPN company with over 4 million users people use tunnel there for all kinds of things browsing the internet privately unblocking websites we've got mobile and desktop apps so they support iOS Android PC Mac and Linux and they encrypt all of your traffic so it can't be seen or logged by governments ISPs and corporations so all you need to do is turn on tunnel there with a single click of the on-off switch within the app and you're pretty much ready to rock you can tunnel to 13 different countries depending on what it is you are trying to access or circumvent and they are serious about collecting the minimum amount of information possible oh man that that pun gives like my puns a run for my money anyway they're based in Canada which means customers are protected by some of the world's best consumer privacy protection laws and they have more than three times the Bears users of any other VPN so you can check out the link in the video description if you want to learn more about tunnel bear use offer code Linus TT for 20% off a grizzly it's an annual subscription of $39.99 the subscription will allow you to use tunnel bear across any three devices so guys also in the video description we have a support us link which is a link to our forum where you can discuss this video rather than doing it in the YouTube comments it's better and where you can buy a cool t-shirt like this one give us a monthly contribution or change your amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code so we get a small kickback well if you buy a bebop with it it'll be a pretty large kickback so thank you very much for using our affiliate code for stuff like that I think that pretty much wraps this up like the video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment on the Linus tech tips forum if you'd like for me or Luke to actually see it because we're going to be making a point of monitoring comments a little more over there and a little less under YouTube videos moving forward although don't worry I'm not planning to turn them off either thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe