Parrot Bebop 2 Flight Plan Demo

I have finally tested the Flight Plan feature of the Parrot Bebop 2 and it works quite nicely. I did have to purchase (one time only) the Flight Plan App for P999.00 but it was hassle-free and definitely worth it. After watching a brief tutorial in YouTube, I inputted a couple of flight plans into memory and opened it when my drone was ready to fly. Below are links to the two demo flights:

Around Two Hectares
New Napier Plot (formerly the airstrip at the ranch)

From the time I pressed the "play" button, the drone executed the flight autonomously until it returned and hovered at its final designated spot in the flight plan. For the purpose of an aerial survey, this Flight Plan feature may actually be better than manually piloting the drone. It's precise and economical. No detours or distractions, which normally occur with manual piloting. This is a very useful feature I will be using more often in future aerial surveys.

Parrot Bebop 2 Auto Follow Demo

As I have been banned by Selina from flying an aircraft, I have had to settle for flying a drone. After evaluating the multitude of recreational drones in the market, I opted to purchase the Parrot Bebop 2, which has an FPV or First Person View feature. It basically puts the pilot at the "cockpit" of the drone, so it feels like you are flying a helicopter without the risk of crashing yourself. I should point out that the real time resolution of the pilot's view (FPV while flying the drone) is NOT great--no where near the resolution of the actual video recorded and played back after the flight. And just to be clear, the drone will crash if you are not careful. The pilot, who is really a virtual pilot (because he or she is NOT actually inside the drone), just doesn't crash with the drone! You'll just have to spend on replacement propellers (which is more than I care to count when you are still learning to fly the drone properly), among other spare parts, due to the many crashes you will most certainly experience over the course of flying your drone.

The Parrot Bebop 2 has a maximum range of two (2) kilometers with direct line of sight. I have actually flown the drone as far as 2.4 kilometers out to the sea and back with direct line of sight--almost lost it too! However, this maximum range is substantially curtailed by any kind of physical obstruction or electro-magnetic interference (usually in urban areas).



Recently, I decided to check-out the "auto-follow" or "follow-me" feature of the Parrot Bebop 2. It's a decent image recognition feature that enables the drone to track and follow a moving subject--in this case, me. Enjoy my demo video by clicking the following link: Parrot Bebop 2 Auto Follow Demo. It also happens to contain the last images of the airstrip I carved out of the ranch over a decade ago for recreational flights. Oh well . . .

On my next drone flight, I will check out the "Flight Plan" feature of the Parrot Bebop 2, which allows you to pre-program the flight path and the camera orientation of the drone from take-off to the point before landing without any intervention from the pilot. In this case, it functions like an unmanned aerial drone. Watch out for this next demo soon!