Sounds pretty stupid at first, right? Who in their right might would willingly put propellers on their smartphone and allow it to fly up into the air? I’m a drone-happy hobbyist myself, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the experience, it’s that no matter how skilled or cautious you are as a pilot, you’re eventually going to crash. Gravity will always win in the end, and so from that perspective, yes, PhoneDrone is most definitely a bad idea — but if you look at it from another standpoint, it’s also kind of brilliant.
The problem with most drones, and the reason that it’s tough to find a decent one for less that 500 bucks, is that they generally have a lot of tech under the hood. Tear open any card-carrying consumer-oriented drone and you’ll likely find GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi radios, a high-resolution camera, and an on-board computer.
And all these technologies are typically what makes drones so expensive. Instead of building that tech into the PhoneDrone directly, xCraft designed a system that leverages all the sensor tech and computing power you already carry around with you inside your smartphone. Using this approach, they were able to create a drone that only costs about $250. In truth, xCraft is just providing the drone body, battery, and control software — your phone provides everything else.
But this system isn’t without its own set of shortcomings. If you want to get the most out of it, you’ll need a second smartphone. PhoneDrone can fly autonomously using your phone as its brain, but in order to utilize the craft’s auto-follow functionality or manually control its flightpath, you’ll need a second device on the ground.
xCraft has already raised over $65,000 in pledges on Kickstarter, and still has well over a month to reach its $250K funding goal. All the early-bird-backer rewards have been snagged at this point, but if you back the project now, you can still get your hands on the base model PhoneDrone for $250. If all goes well, xCraft expects to finish production and begin shipping sometime around November.
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