Configured RPi with EDimax to connect to unsecured ARDrone access point. Found a relatively up-to-date pure Java ARDrone V2 api. Numerous projects seem dropped after V1 of Parrot ARDrone, and V2 of ARDrone platform is radically enhanced with no backward compatibility. Found a ROS ARDrone pure Java project for V1 and will modify to create perhaps the first pure Java ROS ARDRone project for V2. The ardrone_autonomy project is V2, but has no provision for providing a Master ROS node. I'm building something that you can drop right on an RPi and run a ROS master to control the ARDrone such that the entire thing could theoretically be carried aloft, but thats another project.

At any rate I am getting nav data from the ARDrone boards through Java now. As far as status, of course it thinks its not flying, and the complete absence of its motors does not go unnoticed by the system. Is comes back with motor problem/emergency/not flying state but the sensor data and video still flow. The actual moving of the motors is probably the smallest part of the drone firmware so its no big deal to carry a few extra bytes and a couple board headers unused. The main board is still green light even with no motors attached.

You have to be careful mounting the boards and mind the standoff height as the sonar sensor is on a short leash. ROSCOE has a somewhat insectoid appearance as the camera sticks out like a proboscis and the sonar has those metal screen covers. The sonar sensors are a bit 'uplooking' due to short cable length. A very minimal amount of hot glue was used to secure the camera and sonar to the camera case. It always comes down to the hot glue. Hot glue: The duct tape of *real* engineers.