You can throw it around, it’s waterproof and it follows you where you want to go. What else would you want in a camera. Enter Lily. An easy to use and affordable (around $ 500) as a pre-order, drone camera filming in 1080 at 60fps. (see what that means in this blog). The idea is not new (the camera has not been reinvented as the Lily website claims) and we’ve seen other camera’s released in the past, such as the AirDog But the Lily, maybe because of its name just seems easy and fun to use. It connects to a bluetooth connected remote device which you can wear on your wrist, and to use it you just toss it up into the air and it starts flying. And will follow you around.
The presentation video makes for a really nice impression of the 26 x 26 centimeter quadcopter drone. It looks robust and cool to use. Looking at the flight spes however the main thing that strikes us is that the maximum speed is 40 kph (25 mph). That’s not really fast for a action cam drone. I won’t be able to keep up on a good downhill run on a snowboard or ski’s. Mountainbikes, kite and windsurfers will be too fast for it. The maximum distance between the Lily and the user is 30 meters and I am curious as to what will happen if a sudden acceleration breaks that threshold and the connection is lost.
In comparison the AirDog has a top speed of 40mph and a range of 300 meters. But then again it’s price tag is $1295,- for a preorder.
Hopefully in the near future we will be able to test the camera and tell you all about our experience with it. For now, we are just enjoying the constant innovation going on in the action camera segment.
We’ll leave you with another thought altogether. If these new action cam autonomous flying platform thing really takes off, and enters the mainstream market, what will the slopes look like, with multiple drones crowding the air, potentially crashing into ski-lifts, trees, each other or other people on the mountain. How will law-makers react? Where the laws concerning usage of drones in the Netherlands are already quite strict, aren’t all these technological innovation a bit moot if they do not address safety issues that dominate the discussions at this time?
