Nixie – Wearable camera that can fly [video]
flynixie.com
flynixie.com
What kind of development? Are you trying to figure out if you can do it? Are you building the first prototype? Do you have a prototype? Are you working towards making it mass-producable?
Don't just waffle, actually tell people where you are. Otherwise you run a good risk of being mistaken for snake oil peddlers.
>For now, it's just a delicate prototype that can fly off your wrist and not do much else.
I mean, you go and do whatever you want. I'm just really enjoying imagining that meeting.
Is this something the lead was just passionate about? Are they serious about the "friends walking around in a park who casually want aerial selfies" use case? Are they serious about the "people who go adventure sporting but can't plan ahead to carry an extra couple lbs of gear" use case?
Do any of them regularly think "geez, if only I could spontaneously capture aerial footage at any given moment of any given day"?
Did they assemble a team of experts, and this one guy just stonewalled them because his flexible wing design was a pet feature and they had no other way to incorporate it into the product?
Did they approach an investor, and the investor said "Nah, someone's already working on next-gen brain-dead easy adventure drones. You know what's sexy? Wearable next-gen brain-dead easy adventure drones".
Sometimes it's not about planning... When climbing for example it's really hard to take decent pictures, because it's hard to go to the places where the picture would look good.
Their focus should probably be more like sports than "friends in the park"
I also think they will face some serious issues with making this thing work and I don't know how big the market is.
But I would really consider buying one if they made this thing work.
As a bracelet it will easily fit your harness rings.
I wouldn't be surprised to see this company eventually move towards non-wearable drones, but this little R&D project doubled nicely as a marketing campaign.
Failing to include any actual pictures (or in this case, real footage) of a product "in development" always undermines my confidence by giving me the vaporware vibe.
I'm a much bigger fan of Oculus' "in development" communications. "Here's what we built, here's what works and doesn't work about it, and here's where we're going next and why."
http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/29/nixie-wearable-drone/
I presume that that's what they're shooting the video from currently...
The trouble with these small drones is that they are too light to be stable - the video will be shaky unless they do a lot of post-processing.
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/6/3297878/nokias-pureview-sti...
What I see as the biggest problem is exactly the thing that doesn't seem to add any value for me: being able to wrist-wear it. While small-scale RC flying things are incredibly durable these days (material scaling and all that), I think it'd be much too heavy, much too fiddly, and much too fragile to also make it wrist-wearable.
Also the demo video shows shots from what appears to be a drone; is it the actually Nixie, or is it another drone used to exemplify what the Nixie would be able to do?
I want this to be real.
However, I can't picture something comfortably wrapping around my wrist that also has enough battery power to have any significant flying time and deal with basic weather conditions, like a breeze. Just in trying to remember tiny copters and things I've had in the past, it would be kind of amazing to me if the power supply and utilization has advanced that much.
Any new action-cam is going to be referenced against the ubiquitous GoPro, so I feel ok making a comparison. I have a GoPro Hero 3+, and filming at 1080 the battery only lasts a couple hours. Turn on the wifi, and that time takes a significant hit. As far as I can tell from the renders in the video, this would have a smaller battery than those in a GoPro, but would need to provide more power, since the thing is flying. Maybe I'm wrong about this, again, just eyeballing form the renders.
It's a neat concept, and when I first got a GoPro I was surprised by how damn small the thing was, so I imagine camera boards will only get more intriguingly small and effective. I do wonder about the lens though, as it appears to be tiny. Perhaps more is explained in the video which I watched on silent. Would be nice if there was some text to parse somewhere for people without sound.
Most importantly and an issue which seems to have been affecting drones in general is battery life. Even current commercially successful drones only last a matter of minutes before needing to be recharged and they are several times the size of the nixie and dont have cameras to deal with. What happens if you are climbing as in the video and 3 minutes later the battery starts dying while you are stuck on a mountain face?
I've liked the concept ever since I heard about quadcopters though and I think it has a lot of potential. From the video I think they're suggesting that you could have an option which sets the Nixie up so that you basically just throw it in the air and it will track + record you. This is obviously a big software challenge (motion tracking the target) that they will have to face although still arguably easier than battery life or flight stability in bad weather conditions.
If they launch it as a glorified selfie taker though I think it would be a shame as it could do so much more. As shown it could compete with the GoPro - hands free and a much desired camera angle - for filming sports, as well as things like amateur TV/film recording, surveying, mapping, etc. That extra functionality could all be added with software updates, its the hardware and physical design which I'm hoping they have a secret answer to.
Very curious what their weight goal is and how they plan to deal with physics.
Would depend on how it's done, of course, but just because something is able to use battery packs doesn't force me to carry them with me all the time. Just having some I could keep in a car to replace quickly while 'out' would be sufficient for some (many?) use cases.
We're not talking thifty cpus at idle here, it's four motors at high rpm.
Even LiPo has its limits and I sure wouldn't want a high capacity LiPo on my wrist without a shield.
The protox only has 4 minutes of flight time and it doesn't have a camera or gps. http://www.revell.com/radio-control/estescontrol/4606.html
Drones are not that safe unmanned yet.
Something this small will never deal with wind.
The flexible spars that form the bracelet need to be rigid to reliably transfer force from the rotors to the frame.
Battery life will be terrible
The real difficulty as far as I know (for automated drone cameras) is tracking elevation without an operator, for what I know the error via GPS data is really large *like =- 5000 ft, and completely unreliable with real features (like the cliff the rock climber is on).
How long does it fly? How to control it (especially during a rock climbing...)? What's it's range? How does it land? How to find it after landing? Which flight controller is used? Does it have GPS?
I am super curious of the answers.
At least I believe this is the rules for flying model planes in the UK. Other countries might differ.
The FAA (US aircraft regulation organization) has issued 'notices' and 'guidance' for model aircraft operators dating back to the 1960s and 70s, but none of those notices have been legally binding 'FAR regulations.'
The FAA also claim that 'model aircraft' must be operated non-commercially and that once they're flown commercially, they become 'aircraft.' Using this reasoning they tried to fine a famous first-person video flyer for flying for money last year.
He won his case (FAA v. Pirker) with the judge finding that the FAA's regulations for model aircraft are indeed, non-binding, and that the distinction between 'model' and 'aircraft' does not include commercial use. However, the FAA appealed the decision and because of the procedure for transportation courts, the appeal immediately stays the decision.
To complicate things even more, our Congress passed a law in 2012 requiring and authorizing the FAA to regulate drones specifically. The FAA's rule-making process has (as usual) been very slow and they have yet to issue any final guidance or FARs.
The FAA controls all airspace in the US. It's not true that they don't control airspace below 400ft. However, FAA has published guidance for operation of radio-controlled vehicles that includes altitude restrictions.
I didn't say the FAA don't control airspace below n feet. I appreciate my wording was rather vague, but by "involved" I meant that model plane pilots don't require prior permission to fly in the aforementioned airspace (presumably bar some caveats such as whether you're sat next to an airport).
Above a certain altitude and you need that area submitted and signed off as a flying club / whatever. Below that altitude and you can basically just fly your models on an adhoc basis.
Again, I accept I could be completely wrong on this so appreciate your input :)
I continue to be disappointed every time I see projects or companies with teams full of PhD's. I am sure there are some that are fantastic, but that has not been my experience.
We have a number of PhD's in our family and circle of friends. Some have trouble putting together Ikea furniture or can't fix a toilet. Maybe they just don't want to. And maybe that's the root of the problem.
I don't know what it is in PhD education that might cause this. I stopped after my BSEE due to life circumstances (parents sick, had to go to work and provide for the entire family). Yet, having come from an entrepreneurial family my life has been about just that. Because of this I like to think I became a Computer Scientist (more on this later), Mechanical Engineer, Optics Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer, Machinist (CNC and manual), Expert Welder, Expert Woodworker and a whole pile of other skill sets I can't even recall now.
In other words, having acquired a solid technical and scientific foundation through my EE education I launched into entrepreneurship. This forced me to learn other disciplines because back then I didn't have the money to hire people. So it was years and years of 18 hour days doing and learning at the same time. Devouring books with a purpose and applying the knowledge right away in real world practical scenarios. When I wrote an occasional paper, article or ran training sessions at conferences they were always characterized by real-world applicable and actionable information rather than the walls and walls of unintelligible formulas that characterize PhD publications.
On the Computer Science part. I don't think a Computer Science degree existed when I was in school (early 80's). If it did it may have existed in places I could simply not afford to attend. These were the days of such things as the Elf single board computers (google it). If you wanted to work with computers you had to become an EE and build them yourself, sometimes out of raw chips (as I did many times with 6502's, 8080's, 8085's, 8086's, 68K, etc.). If you have experience wire wrapping you are my people.
I know solid experienced PhD's exist. I do know a few of them. Most of them are in aerospace. And most of them got there by being tinkerers since before going to college. I other words, they were natural-born makers before they entered academia. This meant building things in the real world, failing, learning, trying again, etc. Some of these guys have worked on some really amazing projects anyone would recognize when mentioned, for example, stealth technology.
The one characteristic that distinguishes these PhD-led projects from the ones that make me say "Yup. Another bunch of clueless PhD's" is that they are practical, very real and have goals and milestones that are met or exceeded. No pie in the sky stuff. At least none I've been aware of.
I am not criticizing this project in particular as much as making a general statement and asking the question: What is it about PhD education that creates this kind of an effect? Are they too used to functioning in a world of grants for research that seldom touches reality (or leads to anything in the real world)?
To speak to this project. This looks like a bunch of guys who are really good at writing grant proposals who got together and got some money from Intel to play. I remember attending an SBIR converence many years ago. I walked away calling it the "PhD club of America". It's PhD's giving PhD's money to play. And in a lot of cases --not all-- nothing practically useful come out of the process. Yet it feeds the PhD machinery.
Interesting.