The DreamQii team closed out their hugely successful Plexidrone campaign on Indiegogo just a few days ago after passing the big $1million milestone and reaching all it's planned stretch goals - unlocking upgrades including a heavy lift X8 conversion and heavier pro focused gimbal designed for larger mirrorless imaging devices.
It is a clever design which clearly aims to address a number of the issues that detract from the experience of flying a multirotor. The PlexiPower Battery Pack saves the cumbersome process of fastening a conventional lipo and labouring with stubborn connectors, however does lock users into purchasing DreamQii's proprietory packs. Spin on props ensure secure fitment and allow you to swap out blades with ease. The modular system also allows for compact storage yet fast setup time, while facilitating easy replacement of arm and motor assemblies in the field (should something go wrong) without the need to fidling around with any tools.
The Plexidrone has also undergone somewhat of a transformation in terms of design over the past few months, and now looks far more polished and resolved than the earlier 3D printed prototype which began it's campaign back in early October.
While the initially planned campaign has now ended, the Plexidrone and it's list of ancillaries are still available thanks to a new Indiegogo initiative called 'forever funding'.
Comments
Interesting that they claim to be using their own proprietary flight controller...
The interesting point of these successfully funded projects is highlighting the growing demand for multirotors that you "don't need to pilot". Yep, they don't invent anything new, they reuse a lot of what we've been doing ourselves since some time, but their success shows how big the market segment is growing for such flying cams.
I can only remember of action cams like the GoPro that were first used by sport people and hobbyists until they became totally mainstream as people saw in these another way to capture their daily moments of glory which they couldn't capture with regular cams (or so they - were made to - believe so). I think there is a very large portion of consumers who don't look at these multirotors from a building/flying/piloting point of view and actually do not care at all about these, but kook at them as yet another type of camera they can use to record their outdoor adventures from another perspective. This is a booming segment, which I believe is totally overlooked by the UAV regulation in place or about to be released/updated depending on countries. And this is the segment which worries me the most... but flying our APM/Pixhawk/multiwii/... machines we know these flight controlers are not yet 100% bulletproof and you WANT someone with the fingers on the stick.
There is just sing what market volume absolutely not exhausted. Peps need much more drones =)
The props pictured are Walkera, The gimbals pictured are Walkera. What a scam. Wish that million was going to APM
I'd like to see how they'll have spin on props for the X8 configuration.
Hahahahahah, one fucking basic quadcopter. For 1 MILLION dollars, you really think they need THAT much to create technology that ALREADY exists?
1-200k would be more than enough, this is almost certainly a scam.
Plexidrone, Airdog, Hexo+ and pocket drone. That is four $1,000,000 crowd-funded drones and not one product shipped.