First, a request: someone (YouTube, listen up) needs to develop a framework for displaying synchronous graphic data streams. I’m envisioning a thumbnail(s) embedded in main screen – clicking on a thumbnail embiggens it while returning whatever was on the main screen to thumbnail status. It would be nice for videos like those below and for something I’d like to mess with this summer – synchronous heads-up videos, GPS/map data and maybe even heart rate info from a bike ride.
I recently won a Parrot AR drone at a benefit auction. I’ve been wishing for one since discovering them on a gagdet blog last summer? fall? and the auction was too good a chance to miss. The drone is a quadcopter with 2 video cameras (forward-facing and down-facing) that feeds video to and is controlled by an iPod/iPhone/etc. There are good videos on the Parrot site showing how the control system works; I just wanted to mess around a bit with the 3rd party control app that allows one to record the video stream from the drone. Aside – why this is not part of the standard Parrot software is beyond me.
Here’s what an innocent bystander would see (the 1st minute is crap – I’m trying to set off a flash on the cell phone to act as a visual clap-board):
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And here’s the view from the drone:
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Finally, the theme song:
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It’s an amazing little device – I may not have a jetpack, but…
Not a very sophisticated use for such a device, but all I could think was how a Certain Dog would like the drone even more than he does his Frisbee.
The AR aspect of the drone are dogfighting games that use little marker tags on the drone and virtual (pew! pew! pew!) blasters that are visible in the display. There was some talk of tagging my homing pigeons until I realized that, aside from the appropriateness of scaring the crap out of the birds, it’d be no contest – 2 wing beats and the pigeons would be gone. Playing keep-away with a wild Chesapeake seems like an appropriate Plan B *grin*.