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Lily – Drone camera

news.ycombinator.com

51–60 of 496 posts

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#53

I wonder how this handles obstacles. The trails we ride are not wide open ski slopes, or rivers, often times they are tight/wooded trails. Would like to see how it handles "close following". Lastly, the part in the video where the guy just tosses it into the river was definitely mind-blowing.

The biggest showstopper for me on this is the hugely disappointing top speed (40 km/h). I'm an alpine skier (ex-racer) and the only times I go that slow is on transport stages. This thing literally wouldn't be able to keep up with Usain Bolt running the 100m. It needs at least twice the top speed.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#54
post #21
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiousity, what does your AMEX card offer if this is VarporWare?

Amex allows you to dispute charges very easily. Their dispute resolution process is slanted in favor of the cardholder rather than the merchant.

Re: shortstuffsushi

Generally, merchants don't take AMEX because it's expensive to do so. The fee rates are usually higher (~3.5% vs ~2.5% and there is a monthly access fee as well.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#55

I wonder how this handles obstacles. The trails we ride are not wide open ski slopes, or rivers, often times they are tight/wooded trails. Would like to see how it handles "close following". Lastly, the part in the video where the guy just tosses it into the river was definitely mind-blowing.

I guess the drone wouldn't be able to launch from the water if it had landed upside-down? (As a concept, this is amazing - excited to see how well it works in practice.)

Waterproof will be amazing safety for kitesurfing and surfing in general, quadcopters are super cool, but you don't want to drop one in salty water. There are already techie stuff for kiters, we use the Woo device and gopros a lot.

Most areas have a club to keep members under control (irresponsible kiting can be dangerous to people not in the sea, unlike surfing) ... our club is keen on getting Woos, GoPros, webcams, internet enabled wind-o-meters etc... Hope they decide to get one of these!!

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#56
post #36

One feature (or use case) that I would like a follow-me drone for is path-lighting. That is, let's say I'm going on a walk in the dark and I don't want to use a flashlight or wear a headlamp - I've thought of a drone flying 8-10 feet up, a few feet ahead of me, shining a light to light my way. Since the Lily people seem to be here answering HN comments, I wonder, how far off is your product from doing that ?

Duck tape and led torch (flashlight).

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#57
post #45

Nice. We were doing sailing last week and was quite hard to figure the whole activity with a GoPro, because I was focusing only on what I was doing, but my fellows trimming the sails were not that much in the video. So I was thinking of a drone to film us from the side or above, but our skipper thought that no drone could handle the 15-20 knots with 30knts gusts winds we were sailing in.

There are definitely drones that can fly way faster than 30 knots, but they are not waterproof, and the ones I've seen are rather dumb, they don't follow you. Here's a drone that can fly at 100 mph (87 knots): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p5uDf9i_Yc

That's oddly scary to watch for some reason. I'm not sure why?

Maybe due to the fact drones are primarily used for war at the moment...

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#58
post #37
post #35

Video made me want to have a more active life. I thought "cool!" but then I imagined my video output would be hours of me typing, browsing HN & Reddit.

Somebody should do a spoof video of their marketing video that shows exactly that.

Same concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VudWv9pQNdE

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#59
post #45

Nice. We were doing sailing last week and was quite hard to figure the whole activity with a GoPro, because I was focusing only on what I was doing, but my fellows trimming the sails were not that much in the video. So I was thinking of a drone to film us from the side or above, but our skipper thought that no drone could handle the 15-20 knots with 30knts gusts winds we were sailing in.

There are definitely drones that can fly way faster than 30 knots, but they are not waterproof, and the ones I've seen are rather dumb, they don't follow you. Here's a drone that can fly at 100 mph (87 knots): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p5uDf9i_Yc

Well, is not about the speed of the _drone_ but being able to fly in a 20knts wind, with 30, maybe more, gusts. Which means in order to keep course it needs to know the wind speed and compensate. It's been done ( for auto-boats ) but I doubt this drone has this.

Last time on Hintertux at 3500m we had also strong winds while snowboarding. I'd give it a test nonetheless!

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