COULD THIS BE? DRONES FOR RVers?
Before the turn of the century we wrote an article encouraging RVers to explore geocaching. It was a very new technology based “activity” that was perfect for the RV traveler. It took up no space, and the “game” could be played anywhere. The rest is history.
But this is 2015 — and we’re predicting a new techno-topic that we think RVers will become attracted to in the years immediately ahead. The word is “drone”. It conjures up many different images, from warfare to Amazon landing at your doorstep. But there is a niche here RVers will thoroughly enjoy. It’s a new class of small flying devices that are easy and fun to use, and offer some very sophisticated new ways to look at photography. Unlike radio controlled aircraft, which are much larger and can be extremely difficult to take along in an RV, this new class of drones are compact, and ready to fly right out of the box. And the “box” becomes the traveling case. Ours is about 14” square, and perhaps 3 ½” high. It fits easily in our RV or yours...
Finding the “right” product can be a challenge, because there are a lot of options, levels of sophistication, and price points out there. Some admittedly are pricey. But one can confidently predict that in the next year or so these prices will be dramatically lower.
We settled on a product called “Bebop Drone”. The features we found intriguing were (i) the device used to fly it is a smart phone or tablet; and (ii) it has a very powerful video camera mounted in the nose of the drone that captures HD video, or takes HD pictures. As you control it with the iPhone or iPad, it constantly streams back a picture of what it is “seeing”. Learning to use it (more on that in a moment) is relatively simple — and it’s incredibly forgiving. It essentially takes off and lands by itself; and if for some reason you lose control, after two minutes it returns to its exact takeoff position (yes, it has GPS too) and lands itself. Moreover when you use the two “controls” on the App screen, it responds with up/down/forward/sideways/rotate as you direct it to do. But when you’re not giving it a command, it just hovers in place — right in the same spot — until it gets the next instruction. That’s pretty comforting.
The one issue we found with this device was the “instructions”. There is a flimsy sheet that comes in the box; and more of a manual online. But we did not find it particularly friendly for novice users. We really wanted to know the basic essentials to get it up and operating. And it took a collection of materials from different sources to do that. Since there was no one source that told us what we, as rank beginners, needed to get started — confidently — with this comparatively expensive toy, we decided we’d write one of our own. Having no particular place to publish it, we’ve decided to include it as part of this article. We've entitled it "Bebop Basics" and it can be downloaded here.
Bottom line: We’re predicting there will be a growing interest among RVers in the various flavors of this product that will be on the market over the next year or so. It’s small, it has amazing features, and with the right instructions can be both easy and fun to use.