Mounting a GoPro action cam on a stick and filming yourself during all kind of different activities seems to be a thing these days. Be it skiing, skateboarding, or hiking, a pole-mounted action cam is pretty much one of the easiest ways to include yourself in a video of your sports adventures. But what if your day lasts longer than your GoPro’s batteries?
You may not always want to carry spare batteries with you, be it to reduce the overall weight you’re carrying, or simply because you’re out surfing and don’t have a pocket where you could put them (and water and batteries also don’t mix, but you knew that). In the case of the PowerPole’s creators, it was a skiing trip during which the action cam they used to film their shenanigans ran out of juice.
So they set out to create the first GoPro mounting pole that comes with an integrated battery that supports the camera with up to 5400 mAh of extra power. Just to put things into perspective: that’s about the same amount as five GoPro batteries. All that power is hidden inside a sleek, durable, and well-balanced extendable pole that’s made of 100-percent aluminum.
But holding a GoPro action cam isn’t all that the PowerPole can do. It’s extensible, which means that you can also stick your smartphone on it and use it as a remote control for your action cam with the GoPro app. With its two USB outputs, the PowerPole can charge two devices at once, so you won’t have to make any compromises.
At the same time, the PowerPole is rugged enough to go hiking with you, and it’s even splash-proof in case you get wet or run into bad weather. Mind though that the PowerPole isn’t actually waterproof in the sense that it’s submergible, so you might not want to drop it in a puddle, a lake, or the ocean.
The PowerPole is currently seeking crowdfunding over at Kickstarter, and has already surpassed its original funding goal of $25,000. The stretch goal has been set to $50,000, and if it can be reached until September 18, Polar Pro (the startup behind the PowerPole) will also add a GoPro remote mount to its product portfolio.
If you’d like to support the project, you can do so by pledging as little as $1. A pledge of $119 will get you a PowerPole (plus a T-shirt and some stickers, yay!) and for $4,999 you can get it plated with 24k gold. No kidding.
