Well. I'm actually trying. So. Because the ar drone 2.0 is not compatible with ARC , I decided to try to do it myself. Right now, the Movement Panel for the ar drone 1.0 works with my 2.0, but I cant see the camera.
So here's what I've come up with:
1.Mounting ez-b V4 with camera on ar drone(somewhat straight forward)
Or
2.Find a way to connect to the camera via a different program and relay it to ARC either via http or by using a program that will make the camera feed a system device.(anyone who can find this kind of program I will give all credit to)
Anyone who has comments is welcome to comment. If you have ideas or you already have a ar drone 2.0 with the camera working in ARC somehow PLEASE TELL US HOW!
Thank you for any comments that appear.
Now lets get those Ar drone 2.0's flying!
The camera feed is probably available through HTTP. Check the API documents to find out more about it. If you can get the camera feed on a web browser then it is pretty straight forward to use it in ARC.
The easier way would be to use something similar to fiddler to sniff out the required URL(s) for the camera. Or check AR Drone forums, I'm sure there is a lot of info out there for hacking them, there is for pretty much everything else and I can't see something like the AR Drone not receiving the same treatment.
Here's something that could help. There has to be camera code in there somewhere!
nodecopter.com/hack
Here we go! npmjs.org/package/nodecopter-stream
And going by this website, the ar drone send the video data encoded. Here's the website and post. projects.ardrone.org/boards/1/topics/show/4282
Quote: "I was successful in decoding frames as they come, using "ffplay http://192.168.1.1:5555". Then I was successful in decoding the live stream within a gstreamer-based (http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/) application once I replaced its internal ffmpeg with a stock release (0.7.2 in this case was closest to gstreamer's own). A stream is a stream is a stream, if you're sufficiently feeding the "black box" that is the decoder it should just give you the frames when they're ready. In our sniffs I've seen nothing that indicates additional video information being conveyed outside of the TCP/5555 connection.
HTH!
It's an h.264 stream. Get a decoder and boom! You've possibly got a working video stream.
I would love to see the progress of the expirement. :)
I'll start working on it Wednesday.(maybe sooner)
No Rush , wait till you have time to kick back , relax and not be pushed for time. Those are the most productive days for creativity.
What video types can the camera control process?
Just checked, and there's definitely something on that ip when connected to the drone. getting a windows media player addon to play h.264.
My attempts to use VLC configured for the ar drone have proven wrong.
Have you tried using it like normal from a pc then look and see the properties for the video connection format?
I'm not quite sure what your saying, sorry. Your saying use a program to connect to the feed and then try to figure out the video codex and format?
Ok I have some options to try , download FFmpeg then use ... ffplay tcp://192.168.1.1:5555 to acces the video
Ffmpeg decodes the video compression from ardrone when connected and plays it through a tcp , you can download it here.
http://www.ffmpeg.org/index.html
Second alternative is a Google project that you can download a java app to convert the video and view it on the pc http://code.google.com/p/javadrone/
where do I use the command? CMD prompt? when I click ffplay or any of the other applications it flashed cmd prompt and disappears.
Try your web browser to see if it pulls up and shows the video feed.
browser try's to search google. you know one that wont do this?
tried tcp://192.168.1.1:5555 in VLC media player and it worked(!) but it was laggy and jumpy.
hmm ok so we are making progress! Sorry im trying to help just not having it in front of me I am having to imagine everything :)
Are there any settings on the ffmpeg app athat you can set a frame rate?
like I said, I can't open the ffplay, ffmpeg, etc. it flashes the cmd prompt and I cant read anything on it when it flashes. One thing is that ive connected to it with the ar drone 1 control before I tried to connect.
No problem man. I can imagine we're both somewhat tired. This weekend will be a good time to make big progress on this project.
Its late but i still wanna see this work lol. OK so VLC player is what your using and you used the TCP address i gave you.
yes. plus I have connected to the ar drone through ARC.
ok. with the tcp address was ez builder able to see the video feed, its just choppy?
No. Have not tested it with ARC. Movement Panel was connected to drone.
Connecting to ARC camera is my next task. ARC accepts codecs in the camera control. Get a h.264 codec in there and your able to connect I bet.
Probably yea ,hmm I wonder what style / codec ARC uses and we can try to find one.
If you look there's several codecs that it does use. What does that ffplay thing I downloaded do?
Everything you need to know, and more is on this topic from ARDrone.org
I'm sure there is much more info out there, the ARDrone.org post was one of the first that popped up on google, I spent all of 2 minutes looking. Do some digging, it's a popular item to hack.
Or, use the SDK, write an app to grab the feed and convert it to a jpeg stream. Use the path for the jpeg stream in ARC's camera control and voila.
Also, to view in VLC have a read of this topic
The while ARDrone.org site is full of useful info.
Going to test a different media software to see if it's just VLC that's causing the lag and jumps.
The select camera control works. Just tested with VLC.
My internet has got so bad posting on the forum is the most I can do;(737bytes/per second) so I cannot download the other media player to test if the lag is only in VLC. One idea to get video into ARC is VLC can let you save the stream to file. Why not have ARC open that file? Yes it will be laggy but its an idea.
I've never really been happy with VLC Player. It plays a lot of formats but its always seems lag and skip for me. And that's over the years on various computers.
I can't wait to see your progress.
@antron , what player do you use then?
Honestly I usually just use Windows Media player or stream to my Blu Ray player or Xbox or whatever the default player is on the device I'm using. I rarely watch stuff on my computers themselves and only sometimes on my tablet or phone. I haven't found a need for anything advanced like streaming from a camera yet. That's kind of why I find this topic interesting. That or I'm completely misunderstanding the thread.
I don't have any advise to offer on the topic I just know VLC player has always ran kinda clunky for me. But it's small and supports a ton of formats. There were a series of 3D rendered Transformers done in .flv format back about 9-10 years ago and I discovered VLC then to view those. It was never really important enough to me to find a better option so I've just kind of stuck with it as my back up.
I'm sorry I don't have a better answer :(