By Peter Wells
The Parrot Disco is a drone built for fun. Unlike precision quadcopter drones such as the DJI Phantom, the GoPro Karma, or even the Parrot Bebop that aim to be filmmaking tools, the Disco is just too fast and too excitable to use in those environments. There's no middle ground here, the Disco wants to shoot straight up and hit maximum speed as soon as you let it go.
At 750 grams, it's light enough to fly without any special permissions. However, remember the CASA rules of operating a lightweight drone: do not fly within 6 kilometres of an airport, do not fly over major roads or railways, and never over crowds. The Disco will comply with the requirement to stay below 100 metres above ground level, so you don't need to worry about that.
Fast, furious and dizzying: the Parrot Disco drone.
But the trick that makes this drone so much fun is its First Person Viewer (FPV) capability. The FPV unit looks like a virtual reality headset, which when connected to a smartphone can stream from the drone's front-facing high definition camera.
Flying over the headlands of Bondi at 80hm/h then banking up and seeing the Sydney skyline come into view provides the kind of rush you'd normally only experience on a rollercoaster. To then catch a glimpse of yourself through the drone's camera delivers a bizarre out-of-body experience. It's not an exaggeration to say my knees were a little wobbly after my flight.
The Disco is a whopping $1299, including the headset and controller. This prices it out of the reach of hobbyists, but I have a feeling someone could make a decent living selling "Disco FPV rides" near popular tourist attractions.