Nixie Wearable Drone Camera Flies Off Your Wrist 63
MojoKid writes Over the past couple of years, drones have become popular enough to the point where a new release doesn't excite most people. But Nixie is different. It's a drone that you wear, like a bracelet. Whenever you need to let it soar, you give it a command to unwrap, power it up, and let it go. From the consumer standpoint, the most popular use for drones is to capture some amazing footage. But what if you want to be in that footage? That's where Nixie comes in. After "setting your camera free", the drone soars around you, keeping you in its frame. Nixie is powered by Intel's Edison kit, which is both small enough and affordable enough to fit inside such a small device.
The future... (Score:4, Funny)
The future is now. And it's freaking cool, man.
Oh, I'm sure some nay-sayers will be like "but who really needs this?"
To which I say "need? Who cares about need?"
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Well, for some values of "now" that don't include any indication that the product actually exists beyond crude and only semi-functional one-off prototyptes...
Vaporware... (Score:3)
Sure... You can tell it's the future cause the vaporware now comes as vaporwear.
From TFA:
Absolutely no information about availabilty seems to be listed anywhere, but if you head on over to the official website (linked to below), you can add your email to the company's mailing list to keep up-to-date.
And videos are just your run of the mill advertisement for imaginary products.
Showing diddly-squat of actual operation or even wearing of the product, while showing instead obviously fake videos of them throwing the "prototype" off screen (which does not even clip on to the hand at this point) and "drone footage" which is too well focused and stabilized to be from a wrist-mountable drone camera, obviously NOT wrist-moun
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Where is my propeller driven beanie hat with a camera. Now that would be useful.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like... [ebay.co.uk]
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One more for the toy collection.... (Score:1)
Might have to click a button further down the list on the Slashdot 'Toy Collection' Poll.
I would use this almost never (Score:2)
Re:I would use this almost never (Score:5, Insightful)
Lol.. then this isn't exactly designed with you in mind.
The concept is that whenever, doing whatever, that you are doing, you can easily deploy this thing, it will follow you and then return ready to do it again. So it is not comparable to a tripod and a camera as you sometimes never know what you might come across when hiking, biking or whatever. Even in a city environment (I don't know about using around cops at they might shoot it or arrest you or something), there can be times when you want something documented. With this, you do not need to lug around a camera and tripod and hope all the action happens only have you set it up and is times perfectly with the timer on the camera. You simply think hmm.. This is interesting, I want video/pictures, undo a clasp, make a gesture with your hand, a few seconds later, you have them.
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(I don't know about using around cops at they might shoot it or arrest you or something)
Worse than that, and possibly more likely, they would shoot YOU and arrest IT!
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The example video shows several hypothetical scenarios, and half could indeed be done by tripod. But the demo riding down an off-road trail with video trailing behind would be hard to capture even if you had a live cameraman.
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Yeah, I mountain-bike, and a drone following would be pretty amazing. Helmet mounted cams generally produce poor video -- lots of vibration, and it doesn't really capture what you are doing at all, air, drops, gap jumps, the incline ... none of it is really discernible.
Plus you can't see yourself or your bike.
Best a normal person can hope for right now is to have a friend following reasonably closely filming you with their helmet cam. But its still full of vibration, and still isn't terribly compelling vide
It's not real, it's just a rendering (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if an actual prototype has been built
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One of the videos in tfa does show a _very_ crude prototype (with only a small part of the suggested/promised functionality) and also an enormous (by "put it on your wrist" standards), seemingly non-foldable copter which was likely used for the videos. Most likely this is primarily a feeler looking for large investors, or potential employers. Anyone can come up with a nice concept (including countless Sci-Fi writers) it's delivering an actual, practical product, on schedule, within budget, and at sufficie
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It's in the final round of a contest for seed money from Intel; thus, the title of the video, "Make It Wearable Finalists".
That's beautiful. (Score:2)
That's a beautiful little project.
Awesome Concept (Score:2, Insightful)
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He said design sense of Apple, not marketing department of Apple.
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Apple doesn't have shades of grey and white. They have silver, "space gray" (whatever that means) and gold bling.
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Where do I put my money?
Back in your wallet, this thing is a joke.
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Object recognition is hard, which is why they didn't mention it.
Object tracking is not. It's done all the time. How do you think a Kinect works?
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Magnets?
At the very least (Score:2)
I can see military uses for a tiny lightweight personal spotter like this.
Otherwise, if it's cheap and it can track its 'owner' well enough it could be the next fad for YouTube clips.
Only good on calm days (Score:4, Informative)
The trouble with little multi-rotors is that the slightest breeze sends them sailing. They're fun to fly indoors but not very useful outside.
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Depends on the size, something as small as a Blade 350QX can handle moderate wind quite well.
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You realize this thread is about something far smaller and lighter than a 350QX, right?
Bummer (Score:2)
I am heavily into multirotor construction and design, I also love FPV and routinely film with a gimbal and several types of cameras.
So this disappoints me to see this offering, there are a lot of morons out there with their Phantoms causing problems.
Past a certain size these things are flying lawn mowers and if you take a look at the number of youtube videos of people flying these over people and property it's disgusting.
I'm certain my favorite thing in the World will be outlawed due to the number of idiots
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I get what you're saying, but this project isn't likely to cause a major issue like the Phantom has.
What they are designing is going to need to be about the size of a Blade Nano QX. I've no idea how they plan to get all that technology in such a tiny quad, but assuming they do the "impact" of one of these hitting someone will be practically nothing. The micro/nano size quads just don't have the power, mass, or prop size do to significant harm (unless maybe, it actually hits you in the eye).
Nixie (Score:2, Informative)
Nixies are already a thing [wikipedia.org], I'd appreciate it if you chose a different name.
UNLESS said drone is equipped with Nixie tubes. That would be wonderful.
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Apples and windows too...
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Nixie tube != Nixie drone
And nixie tubes suck, DMD [wikipedia.org] all the way. :p
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Just what we all need (Score:3, Informative)
More people taking selfies....
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I'm guessing you could probably 3D print most of the body and rotors, then add the electronics, camera and motors. But those would probably be the most expensive parts, anyway.
(And, yes, I do realize you were making a joke, but I'd imagine that someone out there with a 3D printer is already building their own version of such a device)
Paging Bruce Sterling... (Score:2)
The Artificial Kid [cyberpunk.ru]'s drone camera entourage has entered the building.
Sure, this is doable (Score:2)
It's only a concept, but, sure, this is doable.
You could probably do it with a Parrot ar.drone. In fact, I presume it's already been done.
I won an ar.drone 2.0 in a hackathon. I have to be honest, and say that, really, I won an ar.drone 2.0 by wandering down to a hackathon in my hotel seeking pizza and aspirin, found them, and then stuck around for a while. I showed somebody which API call to make to save an image in the Rhodes mobile platform, and got a drone as a contributor to the "honorable mention" Mot
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It's only a concept, but, sure, this is doable.
You could probably do it with a Parrot ar.drone. In fact, I presume it's already been done.
Yes, but the Parrot drone has to sit on your shoulder, not your wrist.
I can see this being useful for... (Score:2)
Uh oh (Score:3)
So this plus an Oculus Rift connected to a wearable computer == 3rd person POV for your own life?
As long as the batteries hold out, anyway. So, 20 seconds or so.
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For an over-the-shoulder view, just run a power cable from a battery belt to the drone :).
My first thought: (Score:2)
all it needs now (Score:3)
Blurred lines (Score:1)
"Life. Reading. Negative." (Score:1)