It's impressive, no doubt, but I wonder about the actual utility of the device.
My main concerned is the 20m battery life/record time - that is pretty limiting. If I were to use this to record myself snowboarding (like the video shows), that would be a problem. Here in Colorado a typical blue rated mountain run is easily 20m from top to bottom, esp. if you aren't gunning it the whole way. When I ride alone I can maybe go top to bottom in slightly under 20m but I'm flying and really pushing it the whole time, I wonder if the drone could even keep up in that situation (speed would be over 25mph almost the entire time).
Pretty cool but I personally think there is much bigger market for a device designed to record kids playing hockey, basketball, soccer etc... imagine a tripod that tracks your kid, that would be way way more killer and useful for most people and probably a ton cheaper as you could use a smartphone as the camera.
Technically it's impressive as hell, I just don't know about how practical is in actual use.
I haven't been able to figure out how these work. GPS alone wouldn't give the resolution and responsiveness required. It doesn't seem to be CV-based either, since there's often no line of sight of the tracking device. Perhaps the tripod has two directional signal strength sensors so it can tell if the beacon is to the left or right, and move in order to keep the beacon centered.
The popular theory is that it's a RTK differential GPS system: base station in the tripod transmitting correction information to the remote unit. The explains the warmup time, the accuracy, as well as the big price tag.
Ha! I found your question a couple months ago after youtube hit me with the soloshot ad, and I couldn't figure out how it worked. Despite being downvoted, it still ranks fairly high on the SERP for "how the hell does the soloshot work, their site is useless".
This is by requirement line of sight. So indeed a cheap radio frequency tracker should be able to do the job. There are just minor issues with multipath and transmitter power.
EDIT: The included antenna is a wifi-like omnidirectional antenna, so I guess it's just using GPS. The precision is greatly improved due to large distances (linear precision is amplified into angular precision by O(distance) )
A bigger issue to me is what do you do with Lily after it has run out of battery. I don't think I want to carry it for the rest of the day on the ski fields, mountain biking, trail running or anything else, it is fairly cumbersome. And I wonder how tough it is when it is in a back pack and I fall and land on it.
Very cool device and it would have a lot of practical uses, but not sure it will ever be that useful for the masses.
"When I ride alone I can maybe go top to bottom in slightly under 20m but I'm flying and really pushing it the whole time, I wonder if the drone could even keep up in that situation (speed would be over 25mph almost the entire time)."
Where do you ski? 20 min at 25 mph implies an 8.3 mile long run.
That 25 mph is not all horizontal, and any downward movement would mean less power drain from the drone. Though I'd definitely agree that the battery life is a pretty big problem.
I'm sure they will also sell a Lily branded external battery that can be kept in your backpack and used to recharge it.
Maybe, but the FAQ states the current battery isn't replaceable. So it seems more likely they'd have to come out with an entire new unit in order to have external batteries.
It doesn't seem like something they're interested in for the launch.
Since they're using the upfront pre-order money to cover manufacturing costs, I would bet enough feedback from customers (or even speculative customers) asking for a 30 min minimum would have enough impact for them to source different batteries or reduce weight. Features like this can make or break a flashy new product like Lily.
A bigger issue is that drone power consumption goes down as they go faster. Even if 20m at 25MPH is fine, you'll actually get less than that if you go slower. Hovering uses a lot of power.
Multicopters have this time limitation in general. They don't have great flight times due to the power density of the batteries. It's the main limiter of the platforms really.
My main concerned is the 20m battery life/record time - that is pretty limiting. If I were to use this to record myself snowboarding (like the video shows), that would be a problem. Here in Colorado a typical blue rated mountain run is easily 20m from top to bottom, esp. if you aren't gunning it the whole way. When I ride alone I can maybe go top to bottom in slightly under 20m but I'm flying and really pushing it the whole time, I wonder if the drone could even keep up in that situation (speed would be over 25mph almost the entire time).
Pretty cool but I personally think there is much bigger market for a device designed to record kids playing hockey, basketball, soccer etc... imagine a tripod that tracks your kid, that would be way way more killer and useful for most people and probably a ton cheaper as you could use a smartphone as the camera.
Technically it's impressive as hell, I just don't know about how practical is in actual use.