Video Transcript
Marianne: …a few gadgets to get you all of the house.
Courtney: We’ve got our own superhero, Ryan Eldridge, in here.
Marianne: That’s right.
Ryan: Y Hear you guys got problems with your email. I guess will have to work on that later.
Marianne: Yeah, can you help us?
Courtney: Yeah, could you, please? Hot mess. You got hot tech to get us off the couch. I love that.
Ryan: Yes, the first one was getting off the couch. This one is getting outside. And who doesn’t like to play with toys?
Marianne: Toys!
Ryan: These are cool little gadgets. We got these. These are by Parrot. These are provided to us by Verizon Wireless, which who woulda thunk these guys sell these kinds of things. This one is called the Max Jumping Race Drone. You can see ’em down here on the ground. One of the cool things about it is…I’m gonna sneak in with this thing here, you can kind of see what he is doing…
Marianne: Am I in his way?
Ryan: I’m gonna freak you out.
Marianne: Okay.
Ryan: Are you ready? So, watch this. He can jump, and then you can drive him around, and do all kinds of… Whoa, he’s stuck…
Marianne: I guess I [inaudible 00:00:53]. Oh my gosh.
Ryan: You get about 20 minutes of charge on this little guy. I’m gonna make him go back right here.
Marianne: You stay in your lane. You stay over there.
Courtney: You’re like the last minute merges on I-5. You stay in your lane.
Ryan: That one runs anywhere from $70 to $100 depending on where you buy it.
Marianne: It’s cool.
Ryan: And it’s just a cool little drone and it talks. You can see the little video on your screen…
Courtney: Wow.
Ryan: …as you look through. It records it and saves it directly to your device.
Marianne: Hi, little [inaudible 00:01:20].
Ryan: Yeah, so you’re gonna go over here where we could scare her.
Courtney: Okay. Oh, oh she has no idea.
Ryan: We ran into a cord.
Marianne: Turn a little bit to the right, Okay, okay, there you go.
Ryan: We’re going to jump on her. So kids can, like, spy on their parents because they can record the video, so it’s all kinds of fun things. It’s loud enough that you’re gonna hear it, so you don’t have to worry about them sneaking up on you when you don’t want ’em to. Anyway…
Marianne: I’ll take that.
Ryan: So here’s another cool drone. This one is also by Parrot. This one’s cool. This one flies. And get ready this one…
Courtney: Wait, is this the one that that flew into your wife’s face?
Ryan: It went right towards her face. If she didn’t duck…
Coutney: Dude!
Ryan: …she would be like, “Aw.” So check this out. It just automatically launches.
Courtney: Oh wow, oh look at that.
Ryan: And it just kind of hovers, and you don’t have to do anything at all but then you can start flying it around and scaring people with it. Here’s the cool thing, here’s the cool thing about this drone, though. If you can do that kind of thing with it and not worry about it because the little propellers fly off…
Courtney: Just exploded into [inaudible 00:02:27].
Ryan: But the little fellows fly off and it’s okay. I promise. [crosstalk] It comes with a little safety module, so you can put in a little couple of wheels on it and so that will protect it in case it gets damaged. But obviously, these [crosstalk]. It pops back on if you know what you are doing. I don’t know what I am doing.
Courtney: Holy cow.
Ryan:Those are some cool things, but we’ve also got some more.
Courtney: You got more, okay.
Ryan: So, geocaching. Geocaching’s kinda cool. It’s been around for freaking forever.
Courtney: Right.
Ryan: But now with your iPhone and your Android phone you can go out and get all kinds of stuff. So this is the app, this is the geocaching app you can see all these geocaches that are around. And then all you gotta do to go to one of these is you just gotta go hunt them down. So let’s see where the closest one is here. We are in West Sacramento.
Courtney: Right.
Ryan: It’s not gonna load because it just doesn’t wanna load. But anyway there were a bunch of these seconds ago.
Courtney: Right, we saw the numbers.
Ryan: Yeah, there you go. There is one right here. So let’s pick on one of these. Let’s go in the middle of the river. So this is just telling us what it is essentially that it’s gonna be an advanced traditional, in other words, it’s gonna be a hidden gem somewhere, and you gotta kinda search around for it, might be under some leaves or under a bridge or something.
Courtney: Get you out of the house with the family, even. And have some fun with the tech. I get it.
Ryan: The last one, if we have time for it, is called Where I Go. It’s another version of geocaching. This kinda creates a little game. So where there’s a bunch of different games, you can get the ones that I put on here was like a…there’s a challenge for Sacramento train heists, so it kind of creates this little game. You can go to downtown Sacramento and you can play this little game on your phone.
Courtney: I dig it. You know what? This guy, he’s always got tricks up his sleeve.
Marianne: Yeah, he does.
Ryan: And a great drone pilot. Awesome. [inaudible 00:04:19] is going to kill me.
Courtney: We’re gonna link Nerds On Call to our website. You can get more details on the drone and whatnot. Back over to you.
Marianne: Fun. Those are cute. Thanks, you guys.
You may not think of Nerds as particularly outdoorsy folks, but there are so many cool gadgets and games these days that could get you, and your kids, out of the house more often! We are full of cool ideas to get you all out of the house and get excited about the great outdoors.
Let’s start with Smartphone controlled drones. We have two slightly different types of drone from Parrot to share with you. The first is the Jumping Sumo. The price ranges from $110 to $150, available from multiple retailers. We loaned one from Verizon to play with it and share it with you. This drone is controlled by an app on your smartphone or tablet, it can jump straight up from a tap of a button in the app. It always lands on its feet and stabilizes so you can continue operating it once it lands. This runs about 20 minutes of a full charge which is awesome for a drone with this capability. It streams live video to your piloting device and works great on elaborate obstacle courses you can create for it.
The second drone we’d like to share is called the Rolling Spider. The price ranges from $70 to $100, available from multiple retailers. Again we got this one from Verizon. Download the FreeFlight 3D app, available on iOS, Android & Windows phones. It’s super easy to fly out of the box with smooth flight and easy controls, making it perfect for beginners. The on-board camera can store several hundred photos which you can transfer to your piloting smartphone or tablet. The main drawback is short running time of the battery, it only flies for 8 minutes between 90-minute charges. We recommend getting an additional battery when you purchase this.
Geocaching is a modern day twist on the treasure hunt. Players hide a treasure or “cache” then post clues to its location online, there are more than 2 million active caches around the world. Some are easy to find, others are intricately hidden. By downloading the official app, you can see geocaches in your area and share experiences with fellow treasure hunters.
Lastly, we wouldn’t be Nerds if we didn’t mention playing video games outdoors. Whereigo is a platform where users create location-based adventures that are played out in the real world. Wherigo users create and post innovative walking tours of city sights, a great way to explore on vacation & engage your kids in experiencing a new city. Users also create custom scavenger hunts for around the neighborhood. It’s a great deal of fun, check it out!
About The Author: Andrea Eldridge is CEO and co-founder of Nerds On Call, a computer repair company that specializes in on-site and online service for homes and businesses. Andrea is the writer of a weekly column, Nerd Chick Adventures in The Record Searchlight. She prepares TV segments for and appears regularly on CBS, CW and FOX on shows such as Good Day Sacramento, More Good Day Portland, and CBS 13 News, offering viewers technology and lifestyle tips. See Andrea in action at callnerds.com/andrea/.
