I've had the SoloShot 2 for almost a year now. I use it for surfing, but just got a small racing dinghy (RS Aero) and will probably use it for that too.<p>The device paired with the recommended camera works fantastic. If you're using it to review your technique, I think it's better than a go-pro.<p>My only complaint is that the arm band isn't really ideal for surfing. Before I ever used it, I emailed solo shot saying that it would easily fall off and was assured their user base didn't have a problem. Sure enough it fell off on a closeout barrel the first time I used it. That's a $150 replacement part.<p>I've since customized the arm band so that it can't come off. Let me know if you have any questions about the unit.
This is badass. As an athlete whos heavily into extreme sports I'd buy one in a heartbeat.<p>I think you've got some JavaScript issues going on with your page, though, It keep jumping to the top of the page when I'm scrolling down.
There was AIMe [1] which was supposed to do much the same thing. But then, instead of shipping the $299 version they still advertise on their site, they decided to market a $5000 "professional" version instead.[2]<p>There's Pixio, which has a kickstarter.[3]<p>Soloshot is $399 on Amazon, with customer reviews, so it's a shipping product.[4]<p>Reviews of Soloshot indicate that it has a minimum range. You have to be at least 30 feet from the camera before it tracks properly.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.jebiga.com/aime-automatic-tracking-camera-mount/" rel="nofollow">http://www.jebiga.com/aime-automatic-tracking-camera-mount/</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.jigabot.com/launch/" rel="nofollow">http://www.jigabot.com/launch/</a>
[3] <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-first-indoor-outdoor-auto-follow-cam#/story" rel="nofollow">https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-first-indoor-outd...</a>
[4] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/SOLOSHOT2-with-Base-and-Tag/dp/B00DSGIS2A" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/SOLOSHOT2-with-Base-and-Tag/dp/B00DSGI...</a>
It's very cool, but the demo videos suggest that the tracking isn't ideal yet. Which susprises me, because we only have what, 50+ years of R&D with tracking moving targets. As in, if you can figure how how fast the target is moving across the field of view, you should be able to predict where it is going to be in the next frame, PLUS, take into account the latency of the Soloshot motor, and calculate that all together in real-time such that the target stays as close as possible to the center of the field of view. Right now, based on the demo videos, it appears that either the CPU is slow, or the Soloshot motor is slow, or both, with the result being that the target gets ahead of the Soloshot and gets to the edge of the field of view regularly, making for less than optimal viewing afterward.<p>Seems like a totally, well, 99% fixable problem, and given Soloshot's been out for a while I'm surprised the demos aren't more stellar.<p>Still, it's impressive and I'm surprised GoPro hasn't acquired the company already.
Not the same but there exists a microphone which can be thought of as an audio version of this: <a href="https://www.acousticmagic.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.acousticmagic.com/</a> It senses the direction of the speaker and outputs audio from that direction filtering out audio from other directions. As different speakers in different locations speak it changes the direction it uses. It also outputs a location signal that can be used by software to, for example, have a computer position a camera toward the current speaker. (I don't have one - this is just based on the material I have read.)
This seems much more useful:<a href="https://www.lily.camera/" rel="nofollow">https://www.lily.camera/</a><p>However - I'll wait till the separate approaches are priced accurately before I form an opinion on which is better.
This is a fascinating product - I wrote about it a while ago over at <a href="http://www.strangecompany.org/will-your-next-cameraperson-be-a-robot-maybe-yes/" rel="nofollow">http://www.strangecompany.org/will-your-next-cameraperson-be...</a><p>I'd love to get hold of one to do a practical test, actually... It strikes me as a much more immediately usable technology than the follow-drones, because the latter just look like they're <i>certain</i> to run into trees, and that's not a problem a tripod has.
From the FAQs:<p><i>Does SOLOSHOT2 work indoors?</i><p><i>Not yet. SOLOSHOT is currently an outdoor only product due to some of the technologies involved.</i><p>Anybody know why this is the case?
From the site:<p><i>> Range: 10-2,000 ft</i><p><i>> Cameras: Supports up to 5-lbs</i><p>Is this meant to be for the US market only? If not, I'd recommend to provide internationally recognized units (mostly SI units), such as <i>m</i> and <i>kg</i>.
Looks to be an amazing piece of engineering but seriously, what's the usecase? It looks to be targeted at the amateur market ('shoot like the pros') and I just don't see the demand or workability in this space.<p>To pick on a few hinted at on the page:<p>A game of football: Leaving a camera on a tripod on the sideline while I'm focused on the game? Not in any park I've ever played in. Taking the stick from my teammates for being enough of a nerd to set this up?<p>Skiing: Putting a camera on a tripod, unattended, on the piste? Then get the lift up to the top so you can ski back down towards the camera? Again, I can't see this ending well for the poor old camera.<p>Dirt biking/other extreme sports: because people often do these alone, and so need an automated cameraman to get any filming done?<p>EDIT: reading some of these comments my opinion has changed, there are more compelling use cases for this than I first thought of (like letting the person who would have done the filming relax and watch the event, whilst still attending to the camera, that's a great one). This is amazing tech but the main limiting factor for now is the risk of leaving such expensive equipment unattended. When the price falls I have no doubt this will be an extremely widely used tech, as widely used as cameras themselves are now.
This is begging for an API or open source firmware. Impressive technology applied to something with limited practical usefulness.<p>For starters, I'd like to decouple the tracking system from the tags.
I've seen some interesting points in this thread about target users of the product and the big issue seems to be:<p>- Target user group is unlikely to spend this much on the type of equipment and/or isn't technically inclined enough to leverage it.<p>At first glance I'd say this is fair, based on traditional markets and camera use but I'd argue 2 things:<p>1. The demand of this type of product is likely to rise. As self broadcasting goes up, the demand of this type of ingenuity will rise. What Twitch is doing for gaming, this could help bring along for many other areas of interest.<p>2. Through internal development or by going open source, the development of tracking could be increased to support a number of different objects. Pucks/Balls in sports in particular could be very interesting to automate the recording of sporting events.<p>With these 2 points noted, I can imagine the use of these in a number of scenarios- for consistency of an argument, I'll take the use case of hockey.<p>If I'm a minor league hockey team, if I can obtain the proper quality of cameras at a reasonable enough price to surround my rink, along with the proper tracking system applied to each player and devices of the game (pucks, nets), and if I can coordinate this with software to turn on which devices I follow per camera at any point, I could create a system for broadcasting a top quality version of my game online without the cost of camera men as well as the space that may be required for the setup.<p>Additionally, if I'm the team, I could use this in practice to follow each of my players setting a camera to each so that I can review their particular actions and do video review with each - without having to limit what gets taped for each guy or having multiple camera guys at each practice.<p>Add this to object recognition software and I could start using the cameras to collect more about where people are on the ice during games and plays and push along my ability to analyze what is happening and how I can work on tactics/strategy to manage it.<p>Again, a lot of this is relying on additional software/tracking/processes but I believe as a technology, it's empowering. I'm not sure the current use case/expected market is ready for this (or at least not in the form it's likely to have technically) but I believe in a few iterations, we'll see something that serves a significant market share, especially if the product roadmap includes abilities and integrations to further its use with other software and mutiple unit tracking capabilities.
Awesome, I always wanted to make one of these. I had the idea about 10 years ago, when I was really into making stunt videos and timelapses as a teenager. This was way before Raspberry Pis and Arduinos, so I think it would be a lot easier today. Of course there's a huge difference between a hobby project, and a commercial product. But watching all of those Youtube videos was like seeing my idea come to life.
Seems to me the Lilly is a better product and can do what this one does more or less, check it out, I love it, wish I had the money to get one. They are several discounted if you pre-order, around 600, then almost 1000 when they are officially on sale. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWrApA8oRbI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWrApA8oRbI</a>
Seems like some serious tech. It looks to be using GPS and some wireless signals to determine distance and direction?<p>Im guessing GPS because their user manual says it can only be used outdoors.<p>I wonder if it can be miniaturized in future versions- seems like you could eliminate GPS if you used a synthetic aperture bluetooth or wireless receiver to determine direction and ranging for tracking.
Site is crawling for me - cdn.shopify doesn't seem to be handling the traffic well.<p>The waterfall shows one image occupying almost the entire load time: <a href="https://gtmetrix.com/reports/shop.soloshot.com/JKiP7lSv" rel="nofollow">https://gtmetrix.com/reports/shop.soloshot.com/JKiP7lSv</a>
I can see even school sports teams using these for player video tracking - imagine being able to analyse every player individually even as an amateur.<p>Although that would probably require some nifty software to make the 16-odd hours of footage resulting from a single football match useful...<p>Also that's a lot of DSLRs.
As a hobby, I drive racecars. I have been thinking about something like this near the track to video me going by. (Far away vantage points look boring.)<p>It seems like for much less than $500 you could build an RPI and just track moving objects via optical flow (assuming you are alone on the track.)
Does anyone know how this and the other cameras in this field (e.g. Lily) do subject tracking? A few people have commented in this thread that it might be a combination of GPS and inertial tracking, but does anyone know any specifics?
Would it be possible to mimic these features in post prod? Essentially gather a giant high res shot, using the money spent on fancy feature on higher res. Then run the same algorithms in post to get a similar video?
Like many ideas I have had, I'm both happy and sad. I had this idea a good 5 years ago. Kicking myself, but then again, I' not a hardware guy.
Wow, I've been making professional and entertainment videos for over 12 years (I'm not a camera man), and I would never use this. You can't replace human skill with this. At least not if you want to produce something really outstanding. I suppose this is fine for mediocre content, but then why bother in the first place?