Now let’s see what the app is like. I was using a Samsung Galaxy Note and i must say it was shocking to see the app worked perfectly with it, I have had issues with other apps on the Galaxy note due to its high resolution cause adverse affects, There was nothing bad on the AR drone app for the Galaxy note.
This is the first thing you see when you launch the app, The device connects to the Ar drone through wireless, It’s actually quite ingenious, The AR Drone has it’s own wireless hotspot and you simply connect to it as if you would any router.
The app first checks to see if there are any firmware updates available for the Drone itself, As far as I know it’s pretty straight forward. The app was telling me to update itself, But i didn’t find any update for it.
Moving on we come to the main screen, You are immediately presented with a video of the front facing camera, Then you have your controls on the left and right parts of the screen, The take off button is actually a slider that you simply use your finger to slide up, Once up, The AR drone will take off. The top of the app has an emergency slider that you slide down incase you need to shutdown the AR Drone quickly, This will cut all four motors and the Drone will just drop from wherever it is. The top right contains a battery meter of the AR Drone, On the top left is two buttons, One for settings and another to change which camera you are using.
Now when you press the camera button twice, It will bring you to a picture in picture mode, This can be changed to either show the front camera in full screen with the vertical small and in the top right or the other way around with the vertical camera in full screen and the front camera small and in the top right.
Bringing up the settings menu, You can’t help but be overwhelmed with the settings that you are able to adjust, But very much in a good way. You have the option to enable or disable accelorometer control by tilting your phone to tilt the Drone itself, You can also increase and decrease the maximum tilt allowed. You can adjust the transperency by changing opacity levels. I find 50% is spot on, But obviously people might want to adjust it down to much lower levels for better video view.
Scrolling down the settings menu brings up more adjustments that you are able to make, Such as changing the name of the Wireless hotspot, The standard name is always the ardrone_xxxxxx. You have even more settings when it comes to the AR Drone in this part of the menu, You can enable or disable the Altitude limit. Enable or disable adaptor video, Which allows for a change in bitrate during streaming. You can just between VLIB or P264 as codecs(read more about that below). There is also the settings to let the app know if you are using the outdoor hull instead of the indoor hull and you can enable outdoor flight, This is rather important as the drone with the outdoor hull weighs 40g lighter then with the indoor hull. This app let’s the Drone know it’s not using the indoor hull and allows for the increase in speed.
There difference between VLIB and P264 is actually something i find interesting to know for the AR Drone.
VLIB VS P264
This is a codec that streams uncompressed video from the AR Drone to your device as with P264 compresses the video, What this means is that there will actually be more information being transferred from the AR Drone with VLIB. So if your are going to be using your AR Drone at a distance and the WiFi is low, It would be best to have P264 enabled as it means the command being sent to the AR Drone will have better connection with compressed video.
Scrolling down some more you can find the real adjustments you can make for the AR Drone. You can adjust the Yaw speeds maximum allowance, This is the speed in which the drone can rotate itself, You can adjust it until you find one that is comfortable to use and also for the environment you are using the Drone in, You can also adjust the Vertical speed which is how fast the Drone travels up/gaining height. You may also adjust the tilt of the Drone, This will also increase the speed it moves forward and backwards as with more tilt(Like a helicopter) It can travel forwards faster.
That’s Pretty much it for the app on the Android device, I did not have an iDevice to test out the apps that are specifically on the App store like actual games, But you would need another drone for them aswell.
