The AR Drone - ALL CONTROLLED BY YOUR i-Phone. If there was ever any doubt that an i-Phone is not a "device" but instead a "way of life", then this should settle it once and for all!



BTW - This post has absolutely nothing to do with rockets! However I remain confident that this will still be of interest to many here, regardless of whether they own a i-Phone or not.

http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/en/

Make sure you take a look at the cool video!



Coming March 2010!

I can't wait to see at what price these unit will hit the Oz market at.

Tarp

gimmee gimmee gimmee!!

Thats looks very kewl indeed. Apparently there is a developers kit for them for about $1200US, but I dont know what that includes.

Hey Tarp, go you halves in one? You buy it, I fly it hehe

FOR ANYONE WHO HAS EVER PERFORMED THE "CORNFIELD MARCH"

Just think of it's potential to find lost rockets in the middle of the jungle like cornfields that adjoin LA2 in January or February.



Tarp

Ahhhh yess... the cornfield march. I believe that the 45 minutes of doing this in January made me quite the pro at it... I would have to agree that it may have an advantage, however if it got swept away in a wind like the rocket then you would be marching for two items lost in the corn then..... urg...

Just imagine ......

Turning a wall of this



( At the very least ) into this



Tarp

P.S.

I know it's not quite "grass into lawn", but it has to come close. While the unit does NOT have a "return to point of origin" feature, it does default to a "Stop & Hover" mode, if it loses it's signal.

Also if priced at below $500, it is still less expensive, than walking in un-aided, and then loosing your whole i-Phone, while you are in there.



The AR Drone unit already has the following:

- GPS,
- Sonar,
- Accelerometer,
- Wireless Live Video

In fact the ONLY missing Cornfield recovery aide, now seems to be a robust yet light weight "mechanical claw", capable of lifting a 6 kg airframe and hauling it to the edge of the field.

Tarp

i need to have some of what you guys are smoking

We smoke APCP and BP once a month... you will get there my young padawan learned friend...

I must agree though that it is pretty cool, and if it works with iPhone then it will also work with the new Apple Tampon (aka iPad).

You have got to control the AR Drone kind of like a mix between an iPhone and a Wii.......

So....an iPad is for when you can't stop Wii-ing?

Yes indeed it apparently is.

Very sad... funny, but sad.

Many have wondered if the iPad comes with wings?

On a serious note, the iPad does look pretty kewl and shouldnt be too rediculously priced

However the Ipad does have issues with batterys, does not cater for all women and has strong preformace issues with technology 5 years old. Ipad is also uncomfortable however if I was that girl I would stick to a red dress.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a Mac fanboy from wayyy back - I worked as a Mac tech for quite some time until I figured the company I worked for (Next Byte) were just... um... See you next Tueday... If you know what I mean.

But the iPad does have some short-comings - mostly around multi-tasking. Ie. you can't be listening to music while you read your email. You can't switch between email and calendar... basic day to day functions. And they are listed as US$499 for the 16gb model.

As an alternative - if you really find you need a tablet pc, check out this - http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/touchbook/

Quoting up to 10hrs battery life (and even more with the plug-in keyboard). Doesn't have heaps of storage ( 512mb ram / 8gb storage) but is also only US$300 and you can run either the custom os, Ubunto Linux or Android (which has a growing list of apps already)

Krusty

I do believe it can play music, receive email and other stuff like that at the same time as running only a single third party application. The reason I gather for this is because they have streamlined, and allowed for memory usage of the base apps included in the OS, but then only enough extra to cover a single third party app.

I guess it comes back to Bill Gates' infamous line "640K ought to be enough for anybody". Now I regularly have customers asking for 4-8GB of RAM in their laptops on a daily basis!!!

Ahhh, I remember those days, before bloatware, when my 4.77MHz XT had a 40 meg hard drive partitioned as 2 x 20 meg drives and I could never fill either of them!

Thanks for the Memories!



One of the few benefits of getting old is that you can recall being there as all this stuff actually happened.

In relation to the 640K memory issue, you of course realize, that at the time when young Billy Gates was initially contracted to write the IBM Disk Operating System (IBM-DOS), IBM was only able to source Motorola 64K Memory Chips.

The whole personal computer project concept, was to build and source a computing platform, that utilized market proven "off the shelf" component and combine them into a new design. This is why IBM chose to use a proven SIPP based chip that were already being used successfully in the Commodore PET & 64 and also by Sinclaire Electronics.

Gates despite his denial of ever saying "That 640K of memory would be enough for anyone", did at the age of only 26. reason that his if he built an operating system that could address up to 10 fold the amount of available memory (10 x 64K), that am operating system would be remain current long enough for home users to become familiar it.

This was the premise that IBM based the launch of their personal computer on.

Gates also reasoned, that it would only be a matter of time before we would see 128K computers and as even the previous 64 standard had been derived by extending the 8k Memory chips of the mid 1970's x eight times.

Even with an OS that could address 640 K of memory most the original 1981 IBM users could not afford the full memory (640K) models. Most of the first wave of some users settled for PC's that ranged between 128 to 512K.


Look at all that on board (hence the term), 64K memory Chips!

Right up until the time that Compaq, NEC and others, that were known as Clone manufactures, entered the market in the Mid 1980's, could the average home users consider owning a full 640K XT Personal Computer.

All of this stuff was also expensive. I recall as late as 1990 having to get the approval of the manager of a Brisbane radio station to upgrade a PC to just 16 MB. The original AT 12 Mhz PC cost some $1400 and the memory (by now on a 30pin SIM), cost about $100 per MB for 4 x 4MB Modules of Motorola Parity RAM.

In other words the memory by itself cost $200 more than the whole PC.

As I site here writing this and are looking around my workshop, I still think I may have some of these modules here somewhere. At that price I could never bring myself throw them away (.... just in case they ever come back in to demand).



If you really fancy yourself a good "code cutter" and want to talk about lean mean software - take a look at the spec for the Primary Guidance system that took Apollo around the moon and back. It ran a "blinding" 2.027 MHz and at it's disposal an awesome 2K of magnetic core memory.


It would have taken the combined storage of 35 of these unit to even store this image of the unit.


Tarp