What Camera Can Go Onto 3dr Solo

What goes up must come down — and if it'southward a drone yous're talking nearly, it often comes downwards in the most unfortunate means possible.

It bounces off a tree trunk, smashes into a highway tunnel, or careens into the side of a building. Information technology runs out of battery and falls into a trunk of water. Your four-figure investment is typically merely as expert every bit your ability to handle it once it's aloft — which is why I'm a bit broken-hearted when I first accept the controller for the Solo, which 3D Robotics is billing every bit the smartest drone always.

Competition for that title gets tougher all the time: simply last week, DJI announced Phantom iii, the adjacent version of its best-selling consumer drone, with improved cameras and the ability to live-stream video from the drone to YouTube. Only Solo represents a footstep forrard in a few large ways: onboard computers in the controller and the drone, allowing for enhanced controls; full access to GoPro photographic camera controls in flight (a get-go); and software that allows novices to create intricate multistep shots using merely a couple taps. Solo also offers a level of customer back up previously unheard of in the industry. 3DR will give you a 30-day money-back guarantee if your drone bores yous and free replacement if Solo breaks while in flight.

The visitor is betting Solo volition appeal to drone enthusiasts and novices alike — and that it can begin to flake away at the consumer drone market that the Phantom helped create. It is a critical time for 3DR, which has raised $85 million from investors.

"We are a role player, but we are the underdog player," says 3DR's Colin Guinn. "How big of a defining moment is it? It is the moment. This is the introduction to the world of 3DR."

Meet the Guinnmeister

Guinn came to 3DR from DJI, where he was CEO of DJI'southward North American partitioning. He helped lead pattern and marketing efforts for the Phantom, the Chinese company's hugely popular consumer model. Thanks in office to a serial of pop YouTube videos where Guinn showed off the Phantom'south capabilities, he became well known to hobbyists. One drone web log continues to refer to him in headlines as "The Guinnmeister."

Simply Guinn'south relationship with DJI executives in China soured over business terms, lawsuits were filed, and last February he decamped with his team for 3DR. (Guinn declines to comment on the lawsuit, which was settled.) Now at 3DR, Guinn's official championship is chief revenue officer. But his role at the visitor is much larger than the edible bean-counter title suggests: the new Solo drone is his babe, 3.3 pounds of precision-engineered flying plastic robot.

"We're basically giving people a superhuman power for a g bucks."

And even all that doesn't really get at the main thing about Colin Guinn, which is that he is obsessed with drones. Considering he once ran an aeriform photography visitor, shooting scenes for Hollywood films, Guinn has an all-encompassing knowledge virtually how to make movies in the sky. When he speaks, what comes across is this overwhelming sense that to own a drone is to have a superpower — and that if you could only master that ability, y'all could bend the universe a little more exactly to your will.

He mentions the history of comic book and fantasy characters who have the ability to run into the world through the eyes of a bird. "What is the departure between those powers and Solo, with a high-definition video feed coming from the GoPro?" Guinn asks. "We're basically giving people a superhuman power for a chiliad bucks."

Information technology's fourth dimension for me to try out my powers.

Flying Solo

On a blustery day in Berkeley, California, we accept a pre-production Solo unit of measurement onto the roof of 3DR headquarters. Guinn pops the drone out of a separately sold backpack and spins on the rotors. He snaps in the battery and attaches a GoPro to the gimbal. The whole process takes about 60 seconds.

I pick up the controller and printing a push marked "Fly." The rotors spin up, and suddenly Solo is safely in the air, hovering 10 or and then feet off the footing. Autopilot keeps information technology roughly in place while I remember about what to do next. We decide to shoot a selfie, a pre-scripted shot you can find in the app that runs on your tablet. With a couple taps, Solo zooms off into the heaven, then slowly flies dorsum in, keeping me perfectly in frame. We watch it all unfold on Guinn'southward iPad Mini, which snaps onto the controller and accesses most of Solo's functions. When it's all done, we salvage the video to the iPad's camera curl. If I wanted, I could post it to Instagram while I'm even so flying.

Solo does more complicated shots, as well. A "cable cam" lets yous prepare a virtual line in the heaven and and then take Solo traverse it automatically, equally if suspended on a wire. We utilise it to create dramatic shots that rise up above the railroad tracks side by side to 3DR headquarters and smoothly pan to reveal the San Francisco Bay behind us. 3DR is already seeding Solo units with filmmakers; Guinn says director Michael Bay's review of Solo, having used information technology once, was: "Fuuuuuck."

I just wing Solo using trial and error

I'g no Michael Bay, though I'm pretty sure I could become the drone to explode if I could only figure out how to plow off the autopilot. Over a scattering of 20-minute flights, I never even develop the muscle memory for what the command sticks do; I just wing Solo using trial and fault. Information technology's a luxury that nigh drones but haven't afforded up until now; it helped me to relax and bask myself in a mode I can't imagine being possible even a year agone.

Toward the cease of one flight, while trying to get a shot, I discover myself walking backward while keeping my eyes focused on Solo overheard. THUNK. I trip over a pocket-size HVAC unit on 3DR'southward roof and fall flat on my ass. Diverse bits of plastic wing off the controller, and the battery comes loose, barely tethered to the unit.

I'm dazed, my video team is laughing, and Guinn is asking if I'm alright. And Solo? It's still humming away upwards above me, perfectly content in the xx mph winds, ready to do whatever I ask, with 70 percent of its battery remaining. Nosotros reassemble the controller and land information technology safely with two button taps.

I crashed; the drone didn't. Score 1 for the robots.

How it works

3DR is unveiling Solo today at the National Clan of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas, and information technology will begin shipping in a few weeks. For a base price of $999, with an optional $399 gimbal for enhanced photographic camera controls, Solo is the showtime drone to offering total control of a GoPro photographic camera. (I asked GoPro what they liked then much near Solo, and they sent dorsum a bone-dry argument that didn't really answer the question — I assume considering they worried about offending their other partners.) Only the integration turns out to be a big deal: with Solo you can start and stop recordings, or change the camera'due south frame rate or other settings while in flight. It's stuff filmmakers have been request for forever.

Most drones use a single estimator, located in the flying unit, and broadcast signals to it using a controller. Solo, on the other mitt, has one Ghz processors in both the controller and the quadcopter. The processor on the quadcopter is devoted entirely to autopilot functions necessary to keep information technology aloft. Meanwhile, the controller serves equally Solo'southward "frontal cortex," and operates higher-level functions — some of which volition arrive through future software updates. (My favorite of these, which I used in a examination unit of measurement, is a flight "rewind" feature — merely tap and hold the "pause" button, which usually functions as a kind of emergency restriction, and Solo retraces its steps. Information technology's expected to ship within 60 days from launch.)

Information technology'southward stuff filmmakers have been asking for forever

The Solo app will warn you when your battery is running low, flight dwelling house automatically to ensure you make it on time. (Yous can override the feature, but the controller will commencement vibrating until you state safely.) 3DR is also rolling out the world's about expansive customer service program for drone owners, for a product where service has been downright medieval. (Drone drop into the ocean? Sorry about that! Experience gratuitous to purchase another.)

It'south the first drone to offer a thirty-day money-back guarantee if y'all aren't satisfied with your buy; you'll merely have to consummate a five-question survey, providing data 3DR volition use to ameliorate future versions. Meanwhile, a team of virtually 100 in-house technicians will respond to calls for aid, using the information that Solo continuously logs during flights.

The Solo app detects crashes and volition enquire you lot if you want to submit a trouble ticket in the event something goes incorrect. If it's your fault, 3DR will offer to sell you a refurbished unit of measurement at a lower cost. And if the flight logs show Solo was at fault, 3DR will replace your drone — along with your gimbal and GoPro, if they also perished — at no cost.

Catching upwards to Phantom

Will all that be enough to brand 3DR the biggest player in the game? Nosotros may soon find out. The company was founded in 2009 by Chris Anderson, the author and erstwhile editor of Wired, and engineer Jordi Muñoz. (Anderson had been inspired in part by a 2007 incident in which he crashed a photographic camera-equipped, remote-command aeroplane into a tree at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.) The pair met on a web forum Anderson created, DIY Drones, whose community had adult powerful open-source software for decision-making flying objects. Today the company has 300 employees, with offices in Berkeley, San Diego, Tijuana, and Austin, Texas.

Concluding fall 3DR introduced a consumer drone named Iris+. But it has lagged in sales behind DJI and Parrot, according to estimates from Gartner Research. DJI sold an estimated $500 meg in drones concluding year for professional and amateur utilise, focused on aerial photography and videography. (Last summer, its Phantom two Vision+ was The Verge'southward pick for best consumer drone.) The market for consumer drones is even so well under $i billion, according to Gartner.

But an FAA ruling in Feb finally gave explicit permission to what had previously been a legal grey expanse. And the cost of consumer drones is coming down, albeit slowly. The big iii manufacturers are betting that if drones go a bit easier to use and develop an expanded range of applications, the market will grow more quickly.

"You printing the button and y'all get the shot."

"As the production becomes more sophisticated, the users can become less sophisticated," Anderson says. "In the same way the iPhone transformed the telephone by turning it into a unmarried push button — all that complexity reduced to a unmarried button — what Solo does is it takes all the complexity of flying and robots and data acquisition and turns it into what is finer a unmarried button. You lot press the button and y'all become the shot."

Information technology'southward in that sense that 3DR sees the latest drones as the get-go of a new historic period in drones. "The first era of our industry was getting robots to wing. It was super hard! Just nosotros got at that place," Anderson says. "The next era was making them easier to fly. I think nosotros all got there. The next era is not flight them at all — making information technology so that their intelligence can be so profound that you tin can virtually non care well-nigh the vehicle itself."

Life later gravity

For all the fourth dimension I spend with Solo — I visited the team several times over the past half-dozen months, flying prototypes in Austin and Berkeley — I never see a true production model. Even days before Solo is set to premiere, the team is however refining the software and hardware. Guinn pays fanatical attention to the product, and he rattles off requests to the software team throughout my visits. ("He's killing me," one executive laments.)

In my tests, Solo performs generally as we would hope. Just Guinn fixates on a small tremor in the gimbal that might brand captured footage less than butter-polish, and while it'due south quite windy for my last flight, I tin't aid but notice that Solo sometimes has trouble staying withal. Instead, it floats around in a roughly 3-foot cube, and I wonder how that might bear on the footage I shoot. Meanwhile, information technology'south difficult to see what I'yard shooting, considering the glare is so bad on the iPad Mini. (Non Solo's fault, of form, but information technology does bear upon the user experience.)

Flight Solo is a blast

Flight Solo is a smash, and even so I'm all the same non certain I see the regular utilize case for myself. Getting slap-up shots requires travel, and bringing Solo with me on vacation will mean checking one more than bag and lugging it around. At that place are just so many drone-shot selfies a person needs, no thing how fun they are to shoot. Then while I'm convinced Solo will make it easier and more fun for novices to fly drones, I'm skeptical of how much it tin can broaden the market place for drones beyond hobbyists and filmmakers.

Whether or not there'due south space for iii players in the consumer drone market or not, 3DR isn't content to remain in 3rd place. The Guinnmeister may not want to talk virtually his days at DJI — about the fact that the Solo, had he stayed at the visitor, would accept been the Phantom 3 that was announced final week — but there's no doubt that he wants to win. "We're an order of magnitude less well known than our bigger competitor," he says. "But I think that's all gonna change actually before long." He notes that Solo is launching in 10 countries and will be available at thousands of big-box retail locations, featured in giant kiosks with flight simulators. "The world is about to know who 3DR is."