The Lily drone is the perfect selfie machine that can follow you anywhere – it has about 20 minutes of flight time, and that is more than enough to take superb pictures.
It can take photos, and also video footage from the air while it follows you skying, biking, climbing a mountain, or just simply sitting on your couch and eating your microwaved frozen pizza rolls.
This consumer drone seems to be a big hit, and at an affordable price too – $499.
It’s going to ship starting February of 2016 according to the official website.
It’s hard to take a proper selfie and also maintain that duckface pose, and we, the human race, seriously need a high-tech machine that can solve this problem. What? Did you say end world hunger, and poverty? Don’t be silly, sharing pics of you doing ordinary things is more important than alleviating the suffering of the poor.
But I digress. Lily is actually a really great machine that can help out young up and coming filmmakers to get that perfect shot for their début movie.
Lily’s camera is quite top notch, and it can even film at 1080p. Down below you can read some tech specifications:
- Video Resolution: 1080p 60 fps / 720p 120 fps
- Video FOV: 94º
- Video Format: H.264 codec, .mp4 file format
- Photo Resolution: 12 MP
- Digital gimballing
- Image stabilization
- Fixed Focus
- Waterproof
- Non-Removable Battery
With these features it can stay in the air for about 20 minutes, and after that it will require you to put it down, and re-charge it – 2 hours for a full charge is really not that bad. It also has 4 hours of life-time if you plan on not flying the little bugger.
In order to not demolish buildings, signs, and people, Lily has a top speed of 40 km per hour, and it can go between 1.75 meters and 15 meters up in the air.
The drone can track only the person holding, or wearing the tracking device, so your plans are foiled once again Mister Internet Detective – no, but seriously, it would be horrible if you were able to task Lily to track some random dude; from the perspective of the random dude, I think I would go berserk and try to land it “smoothly”.
Also, Lily makes some noise, so spying on your neighbours is out of the question. Their FAQ page states that – “Lily is always pointing at you and less than 100ft from you. Also, Lily’s motors make noise, so other people will most likely notice Lily and quickly figure out where you are. You are better off climbing up a tree and using binoculars.”
Although the price at the moment is $499, when it will hit the street it will almost double, so pre-order a Lilly now if you don’t want to pay up to $999.
Lily was created by a group of graduates from the Berkeley University in California – “Our passion for personal robotics led us to believe that there is a better way to capture and share the world around us.” chief executive Antoine Balaresque on Medium has stated.
I’ll definitely buy one for myself. I’m not a skier, nor a snowboarder, but I would love a drone that documents my trips to the market, or just hanging around in the park.
