Instead of focusing on professional grade video, the FPV is all about the experience.
But ultimately, those two drones are designed for a different type of activity. At $199, it falls just below Parrot’s AR.Drone 2.0 and is significantly less than the DJI Phantom 4.
The 30fps capture rate is down from its competitors but so is the price. PowerUp’s FPV fits more in line with Parrot’s consumer drones than DJI’s. Much like the alternatives, you can stream and record video or still images from your flight. Users can expect up to 10 minutes of flight time on a single charge, which frankly is a little disappointing. It’s obviously more immersive with the VR kit and, if your plane is a low quality build, scarier. Each mode provides a first-person view from the front of the plane.
POWERUP FPV MANUAL
The plane can be controlled two different ways: via the manual touch controls on your iPhone/Android device or with your VR kit of choice. You’ll want to be sure to build a strong aircraft from heavier grade paper since the motor is capable of pushing speeds up to 20MPH. Once you’ve built a paper airplane and installed the kit, it’s time to fly. A Google Cardboard VR viewer is included with purchase, although you could use a third-party alternative from Amazon or DODOcase. It has a camera in the front, Wi-Fi radio and two propellers in the rear. What you’re actually purchasing here is an add-on camera module and tiny engine that attaches to your homemade airplane. PowerUp FPV will retail at $199, but PowerUpToys promises to offer both early bird and general discounts to backers of the Kickstarter campaign.PowerUp proclaims that the FPV allows pilots to “experience flight as you were sitting in the cockpit.” Sounds good to me. Funding for the PowerUp FPV will similarly be launching in early November on Kickstarter and you can sign up to be notified when its crowdfunding campaign begins. This was well over the Kickstarter's original goal of $50,000 and holds the record for highest funded campaign for a "flight" project ever. PowerUp's previous smartphone-controlled paper airplane did very well on Kickstarter, amassing the princely sum of $1.23m (£798,000) in 2013. Its antenna supports 2.5Ghz and 5Ghz Wi-Fi and it can stream and capture video at up to 30fps. When in the air, the plane's battery allows for up to 10 minutes of continuous flight and it can travel at speeds of up to 20mph. Once your flight is complete, you can share the video or any images taken from the plane straight to social media and video sharing websites from the app. If you want the plane to tilt or swoop, you move your head, and the motion is picked up by the app and sent to the plane, or you can tap an on-screen gamepad in the smartphone app. The footage is sent to a companion app on your smartphone, which converts the plane's video stream into a virtual reality experience that you can watch on a smartphone VR headset, like Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear VR. The idea is that you launch the paper airplane from your hand, and its propellers keep it going, while the camera relays back whatever the plane sees while it's in flight. Obviously with such technical capabilities, paper wouldn't be able to cut it, so while the PowerUp still looks like a paper airplane, it's actually made reinforced carbon fibre and nylon. PowerUp FPV comes with Wi-Fi streaming with a range of 300ft, a 360-degree rotating camera, a rechargeable lithium polymer battery, fancy sensors and even a microSD card slot to record videos. But that wasn't good enough, so the firm teamed up with Parrot – a UK firm specialising in a range of consumer drones such as the Bebop Drone and racing drones – to give the plane the controls and functionality of a drone. The Powerup FPV drone is the brainchild of PowerUp Toys, which previously made the news for designing a paper airplane that could be controlled by a smartphone. PowerUp is launching a paper drone that offers you a virtual reality flying experience PowerUp Toysĭid you enjoy folding and flying paper airplanes as a kid? Well, today's children (young and old) can enjoy flying a paper airplane drone that live streams video footage and lets them experience the journey on a virtual reality headset. You'll never look at a paper airplane the same way again.