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Lily – Drone camera

news.ycombinator.com

361–370 of 496 posts

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#361
This will truly revolutionize the selfie. I am joking!! Seriously this is truly going to sell like hot cakes. The film industry would probably love to use these more ... Good job guys!

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If you are flying over people AT ALL you should be using an octocopter at least.

What about an hexacopter with opposing rotors (Y configuration)?

Y6 is barely controllable if one of the rotor fails but still able to land without much hassle. Hexa in normal configuration handles motor failure better. If you want real redundancy go for X8 or normal octo - 16 rotor copters would be even better but these are pretty rare.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can still (barely) buy model rockets. I see them selling in Target all over the place. When I was a kid you had to find a pretty specialized store.

I think I got mine from Toys R Us, but yeah they were harder to find 20+ years ago than they are now.

But... Obama!

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#364

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…

Why don't these things carry automatic emergency parachutes?

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#365
post #364

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…

Why don't these things carry automatic emergency parachutes?

Optional add-on:

http://www.dji.com/product/dropsafe

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The battery packs on those things have quite a bit of heft to them, hit anything at terminal velocity and it's gonna be pretty devastating.

Terminal velocity for these things will not be terribly high.

So, they go 25mph normally, i wonder if the terminal velocity is more or less than that.

Too lazy to do the calculations :P

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the tip. Are there any portable technology that would work outdoors ?

Vision works for animals, and a lot of people are working very hard to do it for computers. Google "UAV visual SLAM" for examples. LIDAR works already but is heavy, power hungry and expensive. Not good for these small vehicles.

Yeah, I pictures a Google Drone laughing.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I can't imagine that propellers play nicely with kites...

if you could but a beacon of the leading edge of the kite and setup a NO GO zone between the remote and the kite's beacon that would solve that issue.

Re: Lily – Drone camera

#369
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is okay with that, it's an asinine question. Am I okay with my new born infant's soft little squishy skull living in a world with drones, which occasionally drop out of the sky? Yep. And we do live in that world, actually. They've already been "introduced," as you put it.

Not even apples and oranges. I know that they can still fly safely with only two motors if they are opposing. They may be so safe that it won't be for years to come but eventually after enough mad mothers are up in arms about somebody losing an eye or it getting sucked into an airliner jet that they're going to start heaping on the restrictions. One of the concerns with using them for deliveries at least in a city li…

I believe a jet engine can handle this with no issues. They're tested to pass birds through with no issues.
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