Congrats to the Hexo+ team, which is the first of the Kickstarter Follow-me projects (all based on Pixhawk/PX4) to make it to $1 million!
Airdog is not far behind, at nearly $600,000.
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Congrats to the Hexo+ team, which is the first of the Kickstarter Follow-me projects (all based on Pixhawk/PX4) to make it to $1 million!
Airdog is not far behind, at nearly $600,000.
You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!
Comments
@Ben.. Just a small chinese company like cheerson or the likes...
looked to me like a pixhawk and droid planner
Don't forget that that figure includes all the costs of the kit as well as the research/design. Its not going to leave that much profit left over at all. People get carried away thinking that these guys have made megabucks but think about how many people it will take to put together these hundreds of drones.
I want to go back in time to the 80s, when success depended more on innovation than marketing.
I am impressed by their fund reaising, but if anything is the demise of our hobby it could be because of these things.
relying solely on gps without any form of manual controlled flight mode that a RC transmitter offers is just plain dangerous if you ask me.
If my math is correct they raised 1900% over their initial goal!!! This proves our industry is set for huge growth!!! Get ready guys, the coming years will be amazing.
@Bogdan Ryabyshchuk
yea i agree, I think they are being a little dishonest, they explicitly say 'HEXO+ is communicating with the smartphone through the MAVLINK protocol over 400MHz or 900MHz RF band (depending of your country). The smartphone is used as a tracker: no need for additional hardware to carry'. For the average consumer who doesn't know what the MAVLINK protocol is, they are going to take that to mean you only need your phone with nothing else plugged in or connected to communicate.
@FMcC, I think they have to use WiFi due to apple restrictions on use of USB and Bluetooth. So you probably have to carry in your pocket another device, a transceiver, that communicates with the drone. They are using the standard 3DR telemetry link.
If that's indeed the case, then they might as well use the airleash, like with airdog. They make a big deal out of the fact that they only use your phone for controlling the drone, but that's not really true, you also need to carry that transceiver on you. Also, an airleash like device has many other advantages over using your phone for position telemetry:
1. Faster communication because the position data can be collected, processed, and sent from one device, as apposed to being first collected on the phone, then sent to transceiver over WiFi or BT (most likely wifi), and only after that, communicated to the drone.
2. Airleash can be maid waterproof. You can also make your phone waterproof, but it's difficult to operate the phone when it's whet.
3. Airleash can be operated using gloves, phone, not so much.
4. By designing custom hardware for the airleash, vs. using the phones accelerometers, you can incorporate several, 3 for instance, gyro/accelerometer units. This would allow you to collect readings from 3 units at the same time, and average the readings together, giving you a much more precise readings. Gyro units always experience slight gitters on occasion, averaging several of them would improve stability significantly. (I have no idea if Airdog is doing this, but they should).
In general, I think these guys have a nice looking drone and very nice looking software, but I think they are quite misleading and dishonest in their advertising, and their technical choices are quite questionable.
All things being good, the bad thing is they ship the product after 1 year, i.e. by May 2015. I pledged decent money into this!!
That is too long to wait. By that time, something better may just show up!!
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