4 ms·

Yep. Take a look at Parrot's support for the Disco and Bebop drones. As of a few months ago, the FreeFlightPro app[1] no longer connects to Parrot servers so th

Yep. Take a look at Parrot's support for the Disco and Bebop drones. As of a few months ago, the FreeFlightPro app[1] no longer connects to Parrot servers so that you can login to your account on their servers, and only then connect to the drone a few feet away from you. All this obsolence, just so that they can sell you the new Anafi drones (which will be similarly obsolesced). Thank god for the Ardupilot community[2ŧŦ] stepping in to open up their drones for at least some semblance of autonomy, so that people can once again control the devices that they've purchased... 1: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.parrot.freeflight3 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.parrot.fre... 2: https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/controlling-parrot-drones-using-skycontroller2/52647/54 https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/controlling-parrot-drones-us... ŧ: admittedly some ex-Parrot developers helped port some stuff over. Ŧ: Andrew Tridgell (of "reason for chaging VC in Linux from BitKeeper to Git", and other true-coder fame) is pretty active here. It's a very talented community.

aftbit 3y ago
Thanks for the post about this. I have a Parrot Disco that I was planning to take for its first flight in about two years next weekend. Honestly these companies need to be sued over this behavior. Shutting down the servers without updating the app to work without needing login essentially bricks a product that I paid for.
- tetris11 3y ago
  For Disco you're in luck, there are some really decent ardupilot-based projects out there[1]. Plus, unlike the Bebop camera which is inaccessible via the shell (you can only use the Parrot SDK), the Disco camera can be commanded to stream/record with a few simple commands, and even bound to controller inputs. A caveat with the controller: it needs to have custom firmware[2] to get it communicating with ardupilot, and to get the firmware onto the controller you need telnet/adb into it via SkyController→usb→ethernet→usb→Laptop adaptor(s) setup. For a ground control system (GCS), there's three to choose from: Mission Planner, APM Planner, and QGroundControl[3] (ignore the rest, use this one). For configuring the drone, mission planner is pretty good... but you can also just use MavProxy[4] which is a fantastic commandline program that all the GCSes use in some way, and can even be installed in Termux/Android. 1: https://github.com/uavpal/disco4g/ https://github.com/uavpal/disco4g/ 2: https://github.com/ArduPilot/dema-rc/ https://github.com/ArduPilot/dema-rc/ 3: https://github.com/mavlink/qgroundcontrol https://github.com/mavlink/qgroundcontrol 4: https://github.com/ArduPilot/MAVProxy https://github.com/ArduPilot/MAVProxy

aftbit 3y ago

Thanks for the post about this. I have a Parrot Disco that I was planning to take for its first flight in about two years next weekend. Honestly these companies need to be sued over this behavior. Shutting down the servers without updating the app to work without needing login essentially bricks a product that I paid for.

tetris11 3y ago
For Disco you're in luck, there are some really decent ardupilot-based projects out there[1]. Plus, unlike the Bebop camera which is inaccessible via the shell (you can only use the Parrot SDK), the Disco camera can be commanded to stream/record with a few simple commands, and even bound to controller inputs. A caveat with the controller: it needs to have custom firmware[2] to get it communicating with ardupilot, and to get the firmware onto the controller you need telnet/adb into it via SkyController→usb→ethernet→usb→Laptop adaptor(s) setup. For a ground control system (GCS), there's three to choose from: Mission Planner, APM Planner, and QGroundControl[3] (ignore the rest, use this one). For configuring the drone, mission planner is pretty good... but you can also just use MavProxy[4] which is a fantastic commandline program that all the GCSes use in some way, and can even be installed in Termux/Android. 1: https://github.com/uavpal/disco4g/ https://github.com/uavpal/disco4g/ 2: https://github.com/ArduPilot/dema-rc/ https://github.com/ArduPilot/dema-rc/ 3: https://github.com/mavlink/qgroundcontrol https://github.com/mavlink/qgroundcontrol 4: https://github.com/ArduPilot/MAVProxy https://github.com/ArduPilot/MAVProxy