THE POCKETABLE PIXY: A CAMERA THAT FLIES

Here's The Verge reporter Alex Heath asking - Why on earth would Snap, which primarily operates an ephemeral messaging app, make a selfie drone?

It’s the first question I pose to CEO Evan Spiegel.

Snapchat’s flying camera

Snap takes another stab at hardware with a selfie drone called Pix

By Alex Heath@alexeheath Apr 28, 2022, 1:00pm EDT

Photography by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The Verge

 

Thanks to a bottom-facing camera, the Pixy’s main trick is taking off and landing in your hand. Its front-facing camera needs to be lined up roughly at eye level as it takes off, and then it automatically tracks you as you move around. When you’re ready to end the flight, simply outstretch your hand to the Pixy, and it returns to your palm. During both outdoor and indoor tests, I found this to be the most impressive part of using the drone; it just works and induces a rare “wow” moment the first time it happens.

"More than five years after it released Spectacles, Snap is back with a second hardware product. And this time it flies.

[Back in 2016, before Spectacles dropped, I noticed that Snap was advertising job openings with the tagline, “Toys are preludes to serious ideas.” First coined by the famed design duo Charles and Ray Eames, that phrase has since proven to be emblematic of how Snap operates. What started as primarily a sexting app a decade ago now has more than 330 million daily users, including 75 percent of 13–34 year olds in over 20 countries. Over 250 million of those users engage with AR effects, or Lenses, every day. Those Lenses started by letting people vomit rainbows and wear dog ears. Now, they can solve math equations and let you try on clothes.]

. . .Yes, Snap made a drone. Called Pixy, the small yellow puck takes off from your hand, follows you around, and captures video that can be sent back to Snapchat. It’s Snap’s attempt at making a drone that’s friendlier and more approachable than other products on the market — and it may hint at the more advanced, AR-powered future Snap is building toward.

Pixy is available online for $230 in the US and France starting Thursday. Unlike most existing drones, it’s small and light enough to fit in a pant pocket. There isn’t a controller; it takes off from and lands on an outstretched palm, and it uses six pre-programmed flight patterns that are accessible through a dial on the top of the device. . .

“Because we’re a camera company,” he tells me recently over video chat. Snap has brandished that tagline since 2016 when the company changed its name from Snapchat to Snap and released its first pair of Spectacles. “Our mission is to empower people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together. And this product does exactly that.”

. . .The Pixy stands apart from competing small drones with its simplicity. DJI has for years been building small drones that can take off from your hand and automatically follow you around; those drones feature longer battery life and higher-quality video, too. But these competing models are also more expensive and much more complicated to use. And they’re still much larger than the pocketable Pixy.

So far, drones haven’t caught on beyond professional use cases and early adopters. Most are heavy, loud, and expensive. Some even require a permit. A key focus for Pixy was making it approachable with friendly-sounding propellers and a design that could fit into your pocket. “We finally got to a place where we were like, ‘Wow, this is super fun. I guess we should probably release it,’” says Spiegel.

> The Pixy weighs just 101 grams with its swappable battery inserted. Snap says a full charge will get you five to eight flights, which can range from roughly 10 to 20 seconds — a short flight even by tiny drone standards. Additional batteries cost $20, and Snap sells a portable dual-battery charger for $50. The Pixy’s 12MP sensor shoots up to 100 videos or 1,000 photos, all of which are stored locally on a 16GB drive.

> The footage is synced wirelessly to the Memories section of Snapchat, edited there (it doesn’t capture audio, so Snap lets you use songs it has licensed from music labels), and is then shareable directly in the app or elsewhere. Snap has included a few Pixy-specific AR effects to choose from, and I’d expect more to be added over time from the company and its creators. An auto-crop feature can quickly turn the horizontal footage into Snap’s staple vertical orientation, centered on the main subject. The video quality isn’t amazing — it’s not something you’re going to want to display on a large screen — but it’s fine enough for viewing on a phone. . .

Ultimately, Pixy may prove to be more of a hit in the near term than Spectacles, Spiegel thinks. “After a couple versions of camera glasses, it just becomes very clear that the market for camera glasses is actually very small and constrained to people who want that first person POV,” he says. “I think the market for Pixy is bigger.”

Going into our conversation, I have a theory that, like the first version of Spectacles, Pixy is a Trojan horse for a bigger idea. Drones are already being used to create 3D maps, which would be useful for building more realistic Lenses that are grounded in the real world. Snap recently bought a French startup called NextMind that made a headband for controlling computers with your thoughts. Is a future coming in which I’m wearing AR Spectacles and controlling a paired Pixy with my mind?

When I ask Spiegel about all this, he chuckles, indicating that is the most I’m getting from him on the record. The Pixy is just a toy, at least for now."

Reference: https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/28/23043011/snapchat-pixy-drone-hands-on