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Lily – Drone camera

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Lily – Drone camera

#131

Post by bglazer »

This is really, really cool.

That said, flying objects are inherently dangerous. I was at a bike race and a guy was following the pack with a DJI drone. One motor suddenly failed and the thing plummeted to the ground from 40ft and broke into a bunch of pieces. Luckily, it didn't hit anyone but it would have been a major incident if it had.

There's a lot of excitement about the cool, flashy features of these drones (following, waterproof, nice camera) but no assurance that it won't suddenly break and kill someone.

I want 99.9999% reliability and strong safety guarantees as a feature.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#132

Post by euphemize »

The max speed is 40 k/h - I'm no expert cyclist, but what happens when you go 60, 70, 80 down a long hill? Can the Lily catch up to you, and up until how far? What happens if it can't?

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#134

Post by sean-duffy »

TkTech wrote: post #120
sean-duffy wrote: post #115

The video looks cool and everything, but I don't really understand the mentality around these kind of hands-off 'follow me' drones. If you want high-quality aerial cinematography, you need a lot more than just an autonomous drone in your general vicinity. Does this thing really have the intelligence needed to correctly frame and compose shots?

Why does it need to be high quality? Mom and dad aren't exactly pro photographers and they still enjoy taking pictures. Just look at the design of the thing, it's clearly more for play than work.

Mom and dad probably aren't into extreme sports or spending $500 on toys either, though. Which is why I think in a lot of these new drone ideas are disconnected from their target audience.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#135

Post by Zombieball »

bradbeattie wrote: post #32

Without a human operator assessing risk, what's to stop the drone from accidentally flying into someone and cutting them up with its blades?

I see multiple comments saying that the blades are harmless, but a quick search through google photos seems to imply otherwise to me. Not to mention the force of this thing dropping on your head after it clips a nearby branch, or has a system failure.

I suppose the answer is that the owner needs to be responsible with its usage. The example footage seemed fairly reasonable use-cases (no bystanders).

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#136

Post by themodelplumber »

bglazer wrote: post #131

This is really, really cool. That said, flying objects are inherently dangerous. I was at a bike race and a guy was following the pack with a DJI drone. One motor suddenly failed and the thing plummeted to the ground from 40ft and broke into a bunch of pieces. Luckily, it didn't hit anyone but it would have been a major incident if it had. There's a lot of excitement about the cool, flashy features of these drones (f…

Agreed. I'd be satisfied with nothing less than a mid-air explosion into fine particulate matter upon engine failure. wipes drone gook off face

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#137

Post by imaginenore »

ccozan wrote: post #59
imaginenore wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It actually is about the drone being able to fly faster than the wind. If it can do it, it can go in any direction it wants (though slower against the wind).

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#138

Post by rubicon33 »

bglazer wrote: post #131

This is really, really cool. That said, flying objects are inherently dangerous. I was at a bike race and a guy was following the pack with a DJI drone. One motor suddenly failed and the thing plummeted to the ground from 40ft and broke into a bunch of pieces. Luckily, it didn't hit anyone but it would have been a major incident if it had. There's a lot of excitement about the cool, flashy features of these drones (f…

This is a big, big worry of mine. I'm considering doing commercial work with drones, and the major thing holding me back is the risk of injuring others with these things. The DJI Phantom, and Inspire, could kill someone if they fell from high enough. And I can tell you from personal experience, the software is simply not even CLOSE to bug-free enough for me to be worry free.

The more I think about it, the more I think, the risk of flying these things in populated places just isn't worth it.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#139

Post by evo_9 »

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.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#140

Post by QuotedForTruth »

storitn wrote: post #94
bennesvig wrote: post #80

Impressive. One typo in the video. It should say 120 fps at 720p. When I saw the text I wondered why anyone would film in 720p.

Good point but storage capacity is a reason to use 720p

You're probably pretty unlikely to hit capacity when it can only fly for 20 minutes.
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