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Soloshot: Automatically film outdoor activities without a camera operator
- Systemic33 11y agoShowHN?
- thenomad 11y agoThis is a fascinating product - I wrote about it a while ago over at http://www.strangecompany.org/will-your-next-cameraperson-be-a-robot-maybe-yes/ http://www.strangecompany.org/will-your-next-cameraperson-be... 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 certain to run into trees, and that's not a problem a tripod has.
- radiorental 11y agoNo cameraman? No problem 30 minutes later, No camera, problem.
- ape4 11y agoNeeds to be able to fly away when being stolen ;)
- Jemmeh 11y agoAndddd we're back to flying drone cameras.
- joshuaheard 11y agoIt needs to work in reverse so you can follow the stolen camera.
- ekianjo 11y agoThat's why you have flying military drones with guns to protect stuff :)
- louithethrid 11y agoOr a second one with a DIY-Sentry gun on top.. robot guards robot.
- maximegarcia 11y agoThey can have an alarm mode actionable, only the person wearing the tag can approach without triggering an alarm if set ON. That would be pretty neat, and reassuring.
- Thaxll 11y agoIt's a good product until your camera weights more than 1kg...
- michaelbuddy 11y agothat won't matter for most use cases. the heavier the camera setup the more likely manual control is desired or required anyway. this is more for set-and-forget kind of shooting. On the video they've got a good size DSLR with an autofocus lens on it. If it can carry that, it's gonna work for people.
- Someone1234 11y agoWhere are you getting this from? It says it supports a wide range of DSLRs.
- vog 11y agoThe site says they support 5 lbs, which is 2.268 kg.
- adpd 11y agoFrom the FAQs: Does SOLOSHOT2 work indoors? Not yet. SOLOSHOT is currently an outdoor only product due to some of the technologies involved. Anybody know why this is the case?
- ortuna 11y agoIt's using GPS to figure out where the camera should point.
- jamesshorten 11y agoAn educated guess would be that it uses GPS for location. It is often not possible to get a lock on the satellites indoors.
- Someone1234 11y agoThey're working on it however: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/126843-think-gps-is-cool-ips-will-blow-your-mind http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/126843-think-gps-is-cool-...
- discardorama 11y agoIs GPS really that accurate, though, that it'll locate you with enough accuracy to allow a camera to center on your position? If it is indeed using GPS, I'm guessing it's using a GPS in the camera base too, to figure out the correction.
- makomk 11y agoShort-baseline differential GPS with a base station can have cm-level accuracy, if I remember correctly.
- discardorama 11y agoThat's what I was thinking. Both are viewing the same satellites, since they're close to each other. The base, since it knows it's stationary, can derive the corrections itself, and figure out where the object is.
- ape4 11y agoI can see this functionality being integrated into some cameras.
- benjaminjackman 11y agoFor some reason the page keeps scrolling back to the top in my browser, very annoying.
- jamiethompson 11y agoIf only they could solve that 200 year old problem of having a website that you can actually scroll through.
- adeptus 11y agoIf only websites trying to be trendy could stop using eye popping font size 70 text that cause me to roll my chair back 10 feet to read the web page.
- teh_klev 11y agoAll of the above + auto-playing videos.
- irln 11y agoWill all due respect, for an old guy, I like large fonts :)
- marcosdumay 11y agoThen zoom-in your pages. I'm not old, but I also like large fonts. Except for sites that completely break if you zoom too much (like HN), there's not problem with designers using small ones.
- irln 11y agoIf only I could time travel into the future and ask your 30 year older self whether you agree with your 30 year younger self's comment. :)
- cddotdotslash 11y ago
- davnicwil 11y agoLooks 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. To pick on a few hinted at on the page: 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? 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. Dirt biking/other extreme sports: because people often do these alone, and so need an automated cameraman to get any filming done? 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.
- digitalsushi 11y agoPeople like to take photos and videos of themselves. You don't need a reason, just some vanity. These will sell like hotcakes.
- davnicwil 11y agoSure, I guess the main thing it comes down to is cost, and likelihood of the camera being stolen or damaged when left unattended. It's fundamentally very cool and if it was cheap enough to be essentially throw away, or at least pretty easily replaceable, I think there would be a massive demand. But that won't be true for a long time.
- icegreentea 11y agoI think you're being a bit too pessimistic. As an amateur athlete, I can definitely see the utility (albeit limited) in this. There are lots of parks in my area (I live in Ottawa... obviously this is location specific) where I could set this up and not worry about it being stolen. And I wouldn't set this up for a game, but it would be useful while practicing/training - and my teammates would not give me shit about it. I can't comment much on the other use cases that you've gone over, but as an amateur athlete this is totally something I could use. That said, I would rather rent this than own it.
- josefresco 11y agoSite is crawling for me - cdn.shopify doesn't seem to be handling the traffic well. The waterfall shows one image occupying almost the entire load time: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/shop.soloshot.com/JKiP7lSv https://gtmetrix.com/reports/shop.soloshot.com/JKiP7lSv
- thenomad 11y agoSearch on YouTube to get some practical demos. They're pretty cool. (Not OP but I follow this sector pretty closely.)
- iamthepieman 11y agoThis is begging for an API or open source firmware. Impressive technology applied to something with limited practical usefulness. For starters, I'd like to decouple the tracking system from the tags.
- thenomad 11y agoI'd cheerfully pay sticker price for just the tracking system, no tripod required (assuming I hadn't overspent on media gadgetry already this quarter, anyway).
- iamthepieman 11y agoI would too, but I want to track things I can't put a tag onto. Wildlife, cars speeding past my house. If I could hook it up to an arduino with infrared sensors that would be awesome.
- mainguy 11y agoI agree...I would buy it almost immediately if it could track an adidas smart ball...
- jredwards 11y agoIt seems like you'd still need to solve the problem of convincing anyone to leave their two thousand dollar DSLR unattended.
- ggrothendieck 11y agoNot the same but there exists a microphone which can be thought of as an audio version of this: https://www.acousticmagic.com/ https://www.acousticmagic.com/ 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.)
- apaprocki 11y agoYou can also get entire rooms wired for this as well. I recently helped design one of our presentation rooms where the system (with the help of a lot of array mics) processes who is speaking and if the speaker puts the room into Q&A mode it will focus on / boost whoever is speaking. The intent was to get rid of the "could you repeat the question" issue (anyone who has ever been to a NYTM knows this one :)) or awkward pauses as an entire room waits for someone with a mic to walk over. It helps make recordings of Q&A much more natural and fluid.
- DenisM 11y agoDid that end up working well when you were done with setup?
- apaprocki 11y agoYes.. it works remarkably well and is tuned so your brain doesn't even notice the amplification. If, for example, the reverb is jacked up to make the room sound like a cathedral then your brain immediately knows it is "fake" -- but under normal settings unless the system was explained, someone in the room would not notice what is going on.
- Animats 11y agoThat's a technology that's been available custom for a while, but it's hard to deploy. There's a startup opportunity for someone to do a moderate-cost presentation system that's installed in conference rooms, hotels, and such that Just Works. Lighting control should be automated as well; if someone is projecting something, the lighting should be automatically adjusted for that. And automate HVAC control properly, too. Put a temp/humidity/CO/CO2 sensor in the return air duct, and a motion detector in the room, and tie them into the HVAC controls. All conference rooms and college classrooms should have this, because the people load varies enormously from hour to hour. (As a room fills up, the temperature goes up and the CO2 content in the return air goes up. This tells the HVAC system to not only feed in more cold air, but to use less recirculated air and more outside air to bring the CO2 level down. This eliminates "stuffiness". If the CO level goes up, someone is smoking, fan speeds must rise and dampers dump the return air outside. When the room is empty, do one last air change, then drop to minimum HVAC levels and turn off almost all the lights.) You can buy all this from Honeywell or Johnson Controls, but it's not well marketed, costs too much, and requires too much engineering during installation. Somebody needs to do an industrial-strength Nest startup.
- dbuxton 11y agoI can see even school sports teams using these for player video tracking - imagine being able to analyse every player individually even as an amateur. Although that would probably require some nifty software to make the 16-odd hours of footage resulting from a single football match useful... Also that's a lot of DSLRs.
- Dwatson783 11y agoI've seen some interesting points in this thread about target users of the product and the big issue seems to be: - Target user group is unlikely to spend this much on the type of equipment and/or isn't technically inclined enough to leverage it. At first glance I'd say this is fair, based on traditional markets and camera use but I'd argue 2 things: 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
- trdrake 11y ago...and if you're the facility, you're renting the film to the team. Also, from experience an increasing amount of the coaching of youth soccer is outsourced to coaching companies (like QuickStrike or PlayersEye), and some of them are starting to include video analysis in their packages. And then there is, for what it's worth, recruiting films. There's a lot of people trying to video their kids and putting together a college recruitment highlight reel. People doing that would be happy to drop what is, in reality, not very much money to help put together something they hope will save them $10Ks in tuition
- traviswingo 11y agoThis is badass. As an athlete whos heavily into extreme sports I'd buy one in a heartbeat. 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.
- JulianMorrison 11y agoI think it's when the movie cycles?
- fpvracing 11y agoAgreed, this would be awesome for extreme sports. I'm wondering if it would track fast enough to follow a quadcopter around an FPV racing course.
- monk_e_boy 11y agoWe kitesurf and use GoPros, often on tripods on the beach. People come up and take them as soon as we're more than 200m away. It's quite easy for us to spot them, confront them and get it back. But it happens all the time No. 1 rule - don't leave anything of value on the beach.
- trose 11y agoSo next we need to add some stabilization to this platform and then you can just stick it out on a bouy ^_^
- estefan 11y agoThat's so cool. How does it stop itself getting stolen? Oh wait, I guess it just films the thief... :-D
- gmvidr 11y agoWow, 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?
- Nadya 11y ago>You can't replace human skill with this. What people have been saying for nearly 100 years now. Every time, they've been wrong.
- damoncali 11y agoYou can replace nothing with this, though, which is what most people have access to. I don't think anyone expects these to spit out Kubrick films. But I bet it records better than I do.
- pcardoso 11y agoI could see this being used as a hands-free iPad stand for FaceTime, so it always points in the direction of the speaker.
- vog 11y agoFrom the site: > Range: 10-2,000 ft > Cameras: Supports up to 5-lbs 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 m and kg.
- vog 11y agoTo those who downvoted this: Do you care to explain? What's wrong with criticizing overly US-centric business? In the world wide web, being more international should be good for companies as well as customers. Did I miss something?
- hacym 11y agoI think you miss that most people probably don't see this and say "Damn those US companies for using feet." Get over it?
- vog 11y agoI'm not talking about anti-US sentiment. I'm talking about people looking at "10-2,000 ft" and asking themselves "Uggh ... how much was it, again?" Then they google for some unit converter. Then they stumble over "5-lbs", google again, but abort the search and decide it is not worth the trouble. This is simply a bad user experience for the majority of their potential customers.
- andrewchambers 11y agoI'm from a country which uses Kg and meters. I can read the US units no problem.
- vog 11y agoI'm also from such a country, and most people I know have trouble with US units, even if their English is pretty good.
- tripzilch 11y agoI like to think I'm pretty good at mental arithmetic. Converting feet (0.3) and inches (2.5) are easy enough to do with good accuracy, but lbs requires multiplying the number by 0.45 in your head. Sure I could do that, but it's hardly what I'd call "read the US units no problem", and definitely not something to expect of your general customer base. The other option would be to try and get a mental "feel" for the size of a foot, 10 foot, what's 5 lbs of water look like, etc. I did something like that back when we switched from Dutch Guilders to the Euro, cause I knew it was going to stick around, so keeping a conversion in my head was just holding me back. But with US units, nobody's switching, and further, there's no ubiquity in my IRL day-to-day life of things that are supposed to be exactly 1 lbs, 5 lbs, 1 gallon, 10 foot, etc. to calibrate with. The only time I come into contact with inches is in the abstract space of the Internet, where they mean nothing except a quick mental arithmetic puzzle getting in the way of what I actually want to know.
- IanDrake 11y agoI'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. 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. 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. 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.
- danielweber 11y agoShouldn't the camera let you track exactly where it is so you can find it?
- IanDrake 11y agoThe transmitter is normally on your arm (above water) to keep a signal with the base. As soon as it goes underwater the signal is lost. They asked me if I had a floaty on it. So I asked them which floaty? The one you didn't include with the product, or the one you don't sell on your website?
- dredmorbius 11y agoFloaties are quite readily available aftermarket. Most boating / marine / rec stores. Or on this newfangled thing called "The Internet" via "electronic commerce": http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=key%20float&index=blended http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=key%20float&i...
- IanDrake 11y agoI just checked it out! That Internet thing is pretty cool! However, I saw nothing in your hypertext link that would easily attach to the armband and not interfere with my stroke. SoloShot should sell a floaty or provide one of those new-fangled affiliate links I hear the kids talking about these days to a compatible 3rd party floaty.
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoDoes it have a built in anti-theft deterrent? But seriously, this is one exciting piece of technology. Very, very cool.
- segmondy 11y agoLike 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.
- nathan_f77 11y agoI had the idea too, maybe even 10 years ago. But don't worry, it's not like you narrowly missed winning the lottery. Building a product like this takes years of dedication and hard work.
- ZeroFries 11y agoIt's a fairly obvious idea; the difficulty is definitely in execution, not conception.
- nicklovescode 11y agoWould 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?
- hellofunk 11y agoNot really. The level of resolution necessary is an obstacle. Additionally, having a rotating tripod mount as part of the flow means the angle of view is changing, as opposed to a static angle you describe. That said, it could be faked, but wouldn't be the same.
- nicklovescode 11y agoMakes sense. Thanks!
- smackfu 11y agoYou could go up to 4K video for $1500 or so. But that will only get you 4 1080p screens stitched together, so you can really only focus in on a quadrant.
- c-slice 11y agoSeems like some serious tech. It looks to be using GPS and some wireless signals to determine distance and direction? Im guessing GPS because their user manual says it can only be used outdoors. 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.
- c-slice 11y agoSeems like some serious tech. It looks to be using GPS and some wireless signals to determine distance and direction? Im guessing GPS because their user manual says it can only be used outdoors. 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.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ocb 11y agoAs someone with social anxiety disorder who loves making videos... that's the point
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pj_mukh 11y agoUse a drone! :).
- s_dev 11y agoThis seems much more useful:https://www.lily.camera/ https://www.lily.camera/ However - I'll wait till the separate approaches are priced accurately before I form an opinion on which is better.
- simonk 11y agolily only lasts at best 18 minutes.
- joshu 11y agoAs 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.) 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.)
- rickr 11y agoLeMons racer? That's the first application I thought of but when are you ever alone on track? You could throw one or two of these in common passing places and combine that feed with in car video. You could get some really neat video.
- joshu 11y agoSCCA Spec Miata. I rent the track privately sometimes. This would have been much more exciting if it were closer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfQC0135Vfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfQC0135Vfs
- nathan_f77 11y agoAwesome, 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.
- comrade1 11y agoEd powers is going to love this.
- brianstorms 11y agoIt'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. 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. Still, it's impressive and I'm surprised GoPro hasn't acquired the company already.
- IanDrake 11y agoIn practice, tracking has never been a problem for me. Have you seen the demos of it tracking quad copters?
- bitJericho 11y agoThe skier video on the website is just plain bad. The camera should zoom out slowly and smoothly, instead it was jerky.
- IanDrake 11y agoYeah, that one is bad. If I had to guess, I'd say that the further away you are, the more the camera is zoomed in, the more jagged the panning will seem, as the distance in one degree of arc at 100ft is much less than 1000ft. I imagine this could have been easily taken out in post production.
- emcrazyone 11y agowas having similar thoughts. I was also wondering why the soloshot had to track a device you wear instead or in addition to something like openCV that can be trained on your face or physique.
- Istof 11y agoPlace a remote controlled gun next to that camera and you have a remote hunting system? (probably illegal in most jurisdictions though)
- lvs 11y agoUh, one that shoots at you? How are you going to get the tracking beacon onto your target?
- MichaelGG 11y agoSetup system across from office entrance a month beforehand. Drop the tag into the target's coat at restaurant coat check. Trigger remote system based on proximity. Someone's probably already done this in a spy movie. It'd be a much better idea to simply have a remote controlled system, using tech that's been around for decades. Though I suppose if you're truly paranoid, you might be worried about signals tracking. Maybe have it connected to the Internet and use thermite to wipe out the evidence after shooting.
- Istof 11y agocouldn't you use the signal from the target's phone instead? ... cell, wifi or bluetooth.... whichever suits you
- tmaly 11y agoI use a radio remote for my DSLR that gives me about a 100 meter range. I wish there was a version of this for Iphones
- eggoa 11y agoThe uncle from Napoleon Dynamite is super excited for this.
- Animats 11y agoThere 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] There's Pixio, which has a kickstarter.[3] Soloshot is $399 on Amazon, with customer reviews, so it's a shipping product.[4] 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. [1] http://www.jebiga.com/aime-automatic-tracking-camera-mount/ http://www.jebiga.com/aime-automatic-tracking-camera-mount/ [2] http://www.jigabot.com/launch/ http://www.jigabot.com/launch/ [3] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-first-indoor-outdoor-auto-follow-cam#/story https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-first-indoor-outd... [4] http://www.amazon.com/SOLOSHOT2-with-Base-and-Tag/dp/B00DSGIS2A http://www.amazon.com/SOLOSHOT2-with-Base-and-Tag/dp/B00DSGI...
- biturd 11y agoSeems 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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWrApA8oRbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWrApA8oRbI
- ntaylor 11y agoNot sure if it's necessarily better. The Lilly also requires a tag to work, but it can only handle 20 minutes of battery with no way to insert a backup. This is relatively low-tech and seems to be capable of enhancing your existing hardware, rather than replacing it. That's a big win. Still, the Lilly is really cool.
- kristinac820 11y agoDifferent use cases. Soloshot lasts for 4 hours. If you are doing an athletic endeavor you are likely doing it for longer than 20 minutes
- markbao 11y agoDoes 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?
- Schwolop 11y agoMy primary use-case for this would be to go back in time and replace my wedding videographer with this robot.
- justwannasing 11y agoIt doesn't "film" anything and, yes, that irritates me.