Tell HN: Parrot abandoned their Bebop and Disco drones
The FreeFlight Pro[1] app used to fly the Bebop and Disco drones no longer synchronizes with the Parrot servers. The Bebop drone was released in 2015, and the app worked until 2020.
The app requires an online login for you to sign in with your Parrot account, so that you can access the drone lying right next to you.
[ What about open source solutions? ]
Ardupilot[2] is a fantastic arduino-based autopilot framework that supports all sorts of autonomous vehicles (quadcopters, planes, cars, submarines...).
It has attracted all sorts of talented developers such as Peter Barker and Andrew Tridgell (yes, that tridge[3]).
For the Disco, the camera can be controlled and streamed by native scripts in the plane itself, that can run alongside the autopilot.
For the Bebop and Bebop2, no such hack reliably exists[4]. The fantastic 3800x3188 pixel fisheye camera (selectively cropped for "pannable" video streaming) is a dead product.
[ What can be done ]
* Ask Parrot to open the source for a paid product that they will no longer support.
* Boycott future Parrot products until they do so.
[ Refs ]
1. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.parrot.freeflight3
2. https://ardupilot.org/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Tridgell
4. https://wiki.paparazziuav.org/wiki/Bebop