mergeconflict314 === [00:00:00] James: It's here, Frank. [00:00:12] Frank: Oh boy. Nintendo product. I can't wait, what is it? No, our [00:00:17] James: latest drone is here. The snap pixie. It's the cutest little drone in the entire world. And I. [00:00:24] Frank: They did arrive didn't they, we, we both got lucky. We got 'em at the same time. Uh, this is cool because what we talked about this like a few months ago and they actually arrived a tiny yeah. Can you believe it? I really thought I was just throwing my money into like, you know, slash dead slash and all, but it turns out no, a product arrived in the mail and it's not so bad, James, should we do a whole episode? [00:00:47] James: I think we have to do a whole episode on it because we obviously have talked about building drones, talked about drones, ourself. We've talked about, you know, automation, we've talked about AI and there's a lot of things packed into this tiny little, what, $200 little machine, if you will. That revs like a jet engine that is just adorable. And I will say, has made me smile just like the first time I ever flew a. [00:01:16] Frank: Yeah. Yeah. You, you ruined my review. That, that, that was my review too. It's good. well, the, [00:01:23] James: the thing with this drone is that you don't drive it, you know? Yeah. And, and, and that's what sets it apart from the other drone. And we're gonna get into that, but what were your initial, initial impressions? You opened the box. You sent me a photo and then you didn't send me anything else for ever. I think [00:01:43] Frank: actually. We have to talk about how hard the app is to use okay. I'll make my excuses there. [00:01:49] James: Oh, but, and, and, and, okay. Let's, let's just say this ahead of time, Frank, you did not have a Snapchat account before this, correct? [00:01:58] Frank: No, I am a new Snapchat user. Hello everyone. I am [00:02:01] James: social. Perfect. Now Snapchat is a app that also does have a. Unique user interface. I will say that. So, um, let's go from there. no, let's [00:02:14] Frank: not side route. Let me get back to the drone here. Okay. So everyone I've, I've built my first drones and they're all very difficult to fly. It requires all your concentration. You have to be like a weather person. You have to like, put your thumb up in there. Air, you gotta know wind directions. You lose visibility after like 30 feet. And you're just like, well, God's speed, little guy. And you know, , there's a lot of faith involved in those. And my biggest impression is this is the opposite. This is kind of the fun, little creepy enjoy that we've always wanted. Did you watch OB one? [00:02:45] James: I did not watch OB one. It's on my list. [00:02:48] Frank: There's a little droid in O OB one that this reminds me of. So it's, it's cute. James. It's it's small and plasticy. I mean, first impressions are I pay $200 for this. [00:03:00] James: it's got [00:03:01] Frank: two cameras. It's got two cameras for it. Does it does. It's. It's. Yeah. So they had to make it very light. And for that, you know, light plastics just have a look to them, but you're right. It has two cameras. It has a godawful ugly little rotating button. Yep. And it has very nicely built batteries. Those were my initial impressions before I got it flying. Uh, Did did you think it looked super, you know, once it's in your hand, you realize the quality's actually really good, but just that initial impression, I was like, oh boy, what is this? [00:03:33] James: I opened the box. The first thing that I actually opened was I got a box and we both got the, I'm gonna call it the fly more kit because that's what DJ, I calls it. We got the fly more kit, which includes two extra battery with a battery charger. And I opened that first because it was separate from the, the main big box and. I initially thought, wow, I like this plastic in my hand. Cuz yellow is my favorite color. Ah, and I, I was like, okay, this is, this is something that is, it's a product. It feels like a real product. It, it I've seen cheaper battery chargers. Now it doesn't compare to the DJA ones. The DJI ones I think are much better batteries. Look and feel and the charger kit, but this is nice. And I'm liking that it's USBC. That is also nice as well. Yeah. And boom plugs in. And then I opened the, the box that had the pixie in it, and I love the presentation it's in this, um, plastic container that says pixie and that has a C through sarcophagus yeah, it has a sarcophagus. That is correct. And. And the pixie sitting there looking all cute, um, looks like it's floating. And on the bottom of it is clouds. So it looks like it's floating on the clouds, which it will never go up that high ever because you can't make it. But I just thought that that was a great presentation. Well packaged and we not only got the extra batteries, but we also. We also got the bumper carrying kit [00:05:03] Frank: thing, which I guess, whatever I, you know, I was using it. So, um, it's, it's just a little one, one fun thing about it's it's like a little rectangle. Yeah. It's not quite, but it's like a little rectangle and you can actually like, just strap it around you and. Around like a purse. Uh, I did that for a little while because I was actually one wheeling around with it and it was convenient actually. Yeah. Cause I didn't have to hold in my hands or stuff it into a backpack or anything. So I don't know if I'll, you know, go into any high fashion places with this things strung around my shoulder. But uh, if you're just going around and having fun, absolutely nothing wrong with that. Or just at a picnic or going for a hike or something like that. So I wanted to test its versatility because I found my biggest complaint with drones is just all the, um, fanfare you have to go through to get 'em like set up how much junk do you have to pack into your backpack? How long does it take you to get set up all that stuff? And so when we were talking about this previously, I was interested in it because they were saying none of that, this is. AI magic camera stuff, you press a button and it works. And so I, I was excited to see that and I did appreciate its very simplicity batteries come out by popping 'em out. There is literally one button to turn it on yeah. And like, I, I chose not to read the manual. Uh, there are some hieroglyphs on it. I, I rotated the switch to a hieroglyph and I pressed the button in my apartment. Probably not the greatest idea, but also I. Test flown all of my drones in my apartment. Mm-hmm And so I just it's, it's a part of the system, you know, [00:06:38] James: my apartment can handle it. It's a decent apartment drone by the way, as well. And I think that's the one thing that appealed to me as well, because not only, like you talked about when it comes to drone, there is a whole. A whole thing you gotta do when you go out with a drone and it's a drone day, like, Hey, this is a drone hike. Hey, this is a drone voyage. Hey, Frank and I are flying drones. um, that's the whole thing because you gotta get it out. You gotta update all the software. You gotta calibrate. You gotta make sure you don't crash it into stuff and you gotta make sure your, you know, phones are all set up and charge and all this stuff. And, um, yeah, this one intrigued me because you actually don't even need a cell phone. You don't need anything with you to operate it at all. It doesn. You don't need anything. And that was really unique to me. And I think that also. Being so small, uh, everything is 100% guarded. So you said it's kind of like a square it's kind of like a squareish I would say, and everything is protected. So all the propellers are protected. The, um, The, the camera's a little insight on it. And I agree with you. Once I put it in my hand, I said, oh, wow. Like this is actually something that feels pretty decent. When you look at it from afar, it looks like a toy when you use it. It also feels a little bit like a toy, but, um, it is like surprising in a way now that's of course, once you get it connected to. App and you figure out how to update it, which wow. [00:08:10] Frank: I'm like you did that. I'm like, did you wait, are you one of those people that has to update their stuff before they use it? Oh yeah, [00:08:16] James: I am. No, no. Here's, here's what happened is so I'm a Snapchat user, very minimally just with a few close friends and my wife, um, and, um, the pixie. You have to use the Snapchat app. And I believe that this is a mistake. Um, but it makes sense because almost everything is inside of the Snapchat app, but it's buried. So you have to go into your Snapchat app, you have to go to your profile, you have to go to settings, you have to go to P Pix C that's where you connect it, update it, and also make several adjustments because, um, when you pair it for the first time, which this is my favorite part too, is. To par it, it takes five seconds and you're like, cool, your drone's ready. And you're like, what? Uh huh. Okay. Okay. It's ready to go. It's like, yeah, just go fly, go have fun. And you watch a little video for 10 seconds and you're, it's like go and you're like, yeah. Okay. I guess I'm gonna fly it, you know? And, and you go from there and you're you, it's kind of, I'm still exploring the, the little pixie, but I. I saw the software update and I couldn't get, I couldn't get it to work because I have a bunch of the, the settings turned off in Snapchat because I'm paranoid. Ah, and I had local network turned off and it needs to pair via wifi. The drone has Bluetooth and wifi in it, which of course why doesn't it? You know? And, uh, it, I got that working and then I updated it and I had taken it out for a few little, little flights, but in general, you know, it. The app is very, I would, it's not even an app. It's an app screen. It's very right. And, um, the main, the main setting is where do you save the photos? And you can tell it's a save to both Snapchat and your photo real [00:10:02] Frank: PO pause there. Cuz we just have, we have to talk about that. That's a whole different section. I, I wanna get back to set up because. You're bright. I totally forgot. There is a cute little video that you watch, but in the video they said, you press the button and it does the rest. So it was kind of nice to see that. And they're just like, yeah, just, just go fly buddy. And I should say if you're installing the app for the first time, uh, I didn't have any of those problems because I knew this thing's gonna wanna use every communication thing at can. So I was just like, yes, yes, yes. All the permissions, except I didn't give it contacts cuz never given app contacts. Never, ever. No, never. It's just mean to your friends? Uh, I, so did. Okay, so you, you wanted to do the update thing, but I just wanted to get this thing flying. I just wanted to try it out. I wanted to try all the different modes. So should we talk about some of the fun modes it [00:10:51] James: has? Yeah. Yeah. Because unlike other drones where you fly it, this drone flies itself, no re [00:10:58] Frank: remote. So I should say, oh, there it goes. It's so [00:11:01] James: cute. Look how cute that was. It just made a cute [00:11:03] Frank: noise. So I in its class, uh, so I always group all these drones as the 250 grams or less class. They're the ones that you don't have to register that you're, you're just free to fly. Uh, in, in this size class, the normal price is more like a hundred dollars to get a drone with a camera, a decent drone with a camera, but that is most definitely just like a $20 drone that you have to manually fly. It helps you. In places, it makes flying as easy as it can, but in the end you're flying it around and everything. This is a very different beast. Uh, what you'd set, what you do is you turn the dial to what you want the drone to do, and then you press the very one button on it and you hope it does it. Yeah, [00:11:48] James: very much. Yeah. And so you're. And there there's even buttons that they don't even talk to you about either. And they're like, here's this other thing over here? And you're like, oh, okay. It is like a trial mode because while there are dials and knobs, there's other stuff that you can do, you know, later on, which is kind of crazy. [00:12:08] Frank: Yeah. And so I would say you're basically spending a hundred hours for AI and no remote and convenience. Uh, so we'll, we'll get to it. But in practical field usage, I found this thing so much easier to deal with than actually launching a drone and flying it with a joystick. So that that's the normal, terrible way to do it. But, uh, I do like, I do like the simple modes. So they have, uh, first is just hover in place and look at you. That was the very first one I did. Cuz it seems safest. Yeah. And all it does. all it does is launch from your hand, goes up a few feet stares at you menacingly. No matter how you walk around the room and it keeps. Pretty well framed. I did this indoors and it was very stable, but it was the, the tracking was really good. My only other good reference for all, this is my Lumo, my balancing robot that tries to do roughly the ki same kind of stuff. It'll try to sit there and watch you, and it'll try to follow you if you put it into those modes. And I found that it's basically as good as the Lumo. It's basically as good as this very refined, um, 1500 hours when it came out new, uh, device from a few years ago. So it's kind of amazing to see that kind of image processing working on this thing. And I'll, I'll even want to talk more about that when we talk about going outside, but how, how did you find that very first flight [00:13:36] James: so the very first flight I did the same exact thing I did go outside though. And it was a li little bit windy, not so now it wasn't like, it was a relatively calm wind, but there was a slight to breeze in the air. And I did that first mode. um, you know, you put the thing in your hand and you put it eye level and you hit a button. It's like, cool. Let's do this. And it takes off and you're like, oh my God, it's gonna hit me. And then it doesn't. Yeah. And it backs away and you look at it and you're like, am I, am I doing it? And then I, I start to move and it's like, following me. And I'm like, okay, it's doing it. And then I was like, I put out my hand and it was. Cool. I'm just gonna land right here. And I was like, oh my gosh. Now, you know what I mean? I was like, yeah, it was, it was, it was mind boggling. Amazing. And the, the little, I mean, it's so small, it's so light too. And it was very wobbly. And then I looked at the video and I was like, dang, like that was really smooth. Like it's relatively impressive. I was like, they did a really solid job of figuring out how to image, stabilize that thing in this tiny little camera that's in. Yeah. [00:14:42] Frank: Yeah. That must be a key to its success because when, like you said, when you see this thing, even in the lightest wind ignore the gusting of the wind, it's just vibrating there. You know, just trying to hold some kind of stationary pattern, you know, holding stationary is a hard controls problem. It's much easier to allow a craft to drift a little bit mm-hmm and so you can really, you can hold a position hard, but then your Jitt. Or you can be a little more soft than you get a soft thing. They found a great compromise where it'll drift the smallest amount. Like let's call it four or five inches tops, tops during August or something. Cuz it's so light. It has, it has it has no chance against the wind. Um, but man, that digital stabilization, when you actually get those videos back onto your phone, it's impressive. And I have to think that that's, uh, Part of why the tracking is so good because they are doing that stabilization. So congrats to the, the engineers over there. Well done. [00:15:43] James: Yeah. I was, I was very much impressed right away. I was like, wow, that's cool. Now, did you try any of the other modes after that? Like, you're like, okay, it's standing here now. It's go time. [00:15:55] Frank: Yeah. Yeah, but immediately I said, okay, we gotta take this test to the park. So I grabbed the one wheel because I knew it had follow mode and I'm not gonna walk. I'm not gonna one wheel. I'm gonna see it. Follow me on a one wheel. So I immediately tried the follow mode, which worked. Great, except it's definitely tuned to a very specific speed of movement. if you go, if you go faster than that, it can lose you. If it, if you go slower than that, it gets jittery. Cuz it's having a trouble predicting how fast you're going. But with just a tiny bit of experimentation, you can find out what speed. It definitely prefers you to move. And so I did that. The video was great, but I got confused and I tried to reverse on the one wheel and fell off my one wheel. So that was hilarious. Got that on. Yay drones. and then I had to try the orbit mode orbits. The other thing you always do with the drone, which means just fly around you, but try to keep you center of frame. I did that and immediately went into a tree, which is number three thing you're supposed to do with a drone But thank goodness. All the safety padding they put around it, it just buzzed right through all the leaves. It didn't get caught or anything. Thankfully it has little grills. Not a lot of grilling, cuz they're trying to keep it efficient, uh, overall the motors, but that allowed it to just kind of bounce off the tree and get through the leaves. So thank goodness for that. [00:17:20] James: yeah. It's uh, my, I was in the front yard, so it was very much open and the default modes that they put on it are very. Don't fly too long and don't go too far away from you. Um, in general. So even the go back and up a little bit is only like 10 feet and you're like, oh, okay, cool. Like the default on Aja is like, go halfway across this football field. And you're like, oh my God, where are you going? Um, you know, that's like the default. Yeah. So, um, I was quite impress and I didn't even know you could change the modes, cuz again, they're all just dials, like Frank said on the top and you just change the dial and there's little icons and you forget what the icons mean after the first time. um, you do it and there's also a star, which is a favorite, which, uh, I think you can like customize it so you can say, oh, do the fly away from me, but do it 30 meters. So you can have the default of, you know, 10 or whatever mm-hmm . But, um, what I was really impressed with was. Well, Heather and I were in the front and she's like, is it gonna come back? And I was like, yeah, I, I, I think it is. And then I'm like, oh, here it comes. You know? And it legitimately comes back. And the cool, the coolest part, which is something I've never been able to do on my actual drone is like, catch it in my hand. And this one, it lands in your hand and it was like, oh, it's happening right now? Like, let's do just do this. And I just thought it was really neat to be able to change these little modes. Walk around a little bit and go and using the follow mode. I use it in the front yard, just walking around that did work well, I didn't obviously try it on like a bike or a one wheel , but I thought that that was neat. And, and, and the other thing I will say is the other mode, which I think that you should use on your one wheel, but not. Have you follow is the hover mode because the hover mode follows you around. So you could launch it in the air, take your one wheel away from you, do some stuff, and it will follow you as you one wheel, which is like pretty, kind of neat in general, that it could do that and stick around for, you know, 60 seconds in the air. And I was like, oh, that's, that's really neat. So the, the modes are well thought out, however, since it's a dial. There will never be any more modes. Frank [00:19:31] Frank: that's what star is star means. Infinite. Infinite. Uh, yeah. uh, I, I like a lot of the safety features too, so, oh, sorry. I, I wanna go back to the launching and taking off from the hand. That's like a party trick you do with normal drones. Yeah. Because yeah, they can all do it, but you don't really want to, and this is with the compass and all that stuff. And so you never do, this is like, that's the preferred way to handle this thing. And I love it. It. Again, getting back to what is the time delay between me yanking this outta my backpack and actually getting it launched in the air. Yeah. It really helps for that. And so I, I, I love the hand launch and the hand return, I, I found like, I don't know, I'm, I'm getting wimpy or something. Every time I lands on my hand, I, I don't know. I, I feel like I was better at. In the beginning when I was a nube. And now that I've landed on my hand a hundred times, I over anticipate it a tiny bit. So I'm still, I'm still dialing that in, but that's a hundred percent user error. Um, it, it does a fantastic job of tracking your hand and attempting to land on it. I, uh, the other fun. Um, so I got to experience a lot of the safety modes of it, you know, thanks to the tree, thanks to the one wheel. Uh, it does a funny thing. If it loses track of you for roughly I think five ish seconds is what I could determine. It just lands it, just lands on the ground. Uh, so I would highly recommend not doing this. Water sources where I was doing it cause that those safety modes can be unsafe from time to time mm-hmm but in general, I think those are fantastic safety modes. This thing is not gonna hurt anyone. This could whack grandma straight in the eye and it's, she's just gonna get angry at you and throw something at you. It's it's gonna be fine. Um, but it's more of a safety mode of, I don't wanna lose my drone so it's good at protecting itself too. [00:21:20] James: Yeah, I think the other thing too, to also mention is that there is a part of the app. So once you connect up, you can only do software updates, but you can also, um, adjust those flight modes. So there's hover. So on any of them, you can adjust the duration, like up to a minute. So they're really controlling the fly time here. And we'll deep dive into this. Yeah. But you can have it capture video. Photos or both, you can turn on and off subject tracking for the reveal, which flies back. Same thing. You can adjust it to go up to 30 feet again, they're controlling it. They're like, eh, uh, you don't get to go too far. Same thing for follow up to 60 seconds. Orbit is kind of cool. You can set the radius, how far away? 5, 8, 15. And then there is that favorite mode, which is the last one, which I do think would be cool is if they had downloadable modes. Um, like a figure eight or so. I don't know something, you know, that does something I don't know, but that would be pretty cool. And that, that one is really adjustable. So you can set all those different items and turn into that mode. Um, And then talking about getting lost and landing, which did happen on me. And I had to like scoot under it. I was like, oh no. I mean, God, I wanna like in the grass, there's a loss mode in the, in the app and I, and a calibration too. But the loss mode, it just continuously pings and it just, cuz it's connected via Bluetooth Uhhuh. So it's like as long as you're in Bluetooth mode, if it's like over behind a tree, you can just say enable a loss mode. It like pings. I was like, oh, it's pretty clever. You know, but not bad. [00:22:46] Frank: Yeah, it it's like a gen three drone. That's what I like so much about mm-hmm, , it's all those little tiny things that we've learned. Like, okay, you are gonna lose it. It's funny. They go into a Bush. It's annoying when they go into a Bush. Yeah. And so that kind of stuff. [00:23:00] James: Well, the one video I watch, I think I was an gadget and the thing that won me over is that, oh, turn back on, uh, is that they were inside of like a arcade and that's where they were testing it. Cause they had a really cool footage. And it was just like, eventually they were like, oh, let's do the 15 feet, like, oh, that's too far. And hit a wall and just like popped around. Like, it's fine. And I was like, oh, okay. Like, this is legit. Like, you know, I feel safe with it. Um, but I also like you, every time I put my hand out, like, I'm always putting my hand out for it. And like, I, I kind of wave at it and I want it to come back to me closer, but it's like, no, come to me. And I was like, okay. Yeah. I I'm always a little iffy on it landing because the fans are still on and I was just like, yeah. And it, it kind of moves a little bit, but sure enough, it lands in my hand every time it kind of mind, mind Bogg. [00:23:48] Frank: Yeah. And I, I was just thinking the, the usual trick with drones is most of 'em have a super safety mode where if you just grab it and flip 'em upside down, they tend to just turn off. That's generally a safety rule in drones. So I was wondering, could you do like the Frisbee catch with it? Could you just clamp it between your hands, do something like that? You know, it would be safe enough cuz um, yeah, they put lots of guards around everything. You got way more into the settings than I did. I was just having fun, taking it to locations where I wouldn't normally take the drone. It happened to be the 4th of July when I went out and I was a little bit nervous because there were a whole bunch of police policing, an area and like doing their policing thing. And I was like, I really don't know what the rules are with drones here or anything, but you know, this thing looks. Cute and harmless, I don't think they're gonna have any problem with it. And so I did a few launches and walking me around and they all stared at it, but I didn't get arrested. So I'm gonna say Frank approved, it's legal. You can take it anywhere you want to. And the truth is, I mean, they are, um, like you said, what 30 feet was the max? Yeah. Yeah, nothing's gonna happen at 30 feet. Um, the, the real rule for drones is like 300 feet with a few, uh, places you can't go. And so 30 feet is incredibly safer. It's something that weighs like, did you weigh yours? I don't even know what it weighs, but not much. Not much at all. No, the, the battery is a little bit annoying. I am so thankful that you talked me into buying the, uh, extended battery kit because what, what do you get is that I, I have, I haven't fully dialed in how long it lasts, but let's say I get like six, six or seven videos per battery. Yeah. You know, of a, of a somewhat length. I don't know, 15 to 30 seconds. Mm-hmm and. Fortunately, the batteries are tiny, so you can carry a bunch. Unfortunately they're tiny. So they don't last long. . How, how have you felt about the [00:25:43] James: batteries? Yeah, so, so far I've taken it out a few times. Um, I just took the one battery, mostly just doing it in the yard type of stuff. So I didn't go too far really working with the settings and, yeah. So it's about, they say five to eight flights and so far I've done. I did, I did about five and I was down to about 40% and the app tells you and things like that, which is, which is nice. And there's a little indicator on the bottom as well. Um, but I agree with you. I think the nice thing is that the carrying case is really small. You could put that in your pocket and you could swap those out. Um, but it does kind of limit you, even though we have three batteries, which means. Maybe 20 flights maximum mm-hmm , that's really, actually not that many flights, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Um, if you're going out for a day, I hope you are in your car and you have a USBC adapter with you. Cause you're gonna definitely wanna charge it up. Um, they are small they're light, but. [00:26:38] Frank: Yeah, I, I was charging mine off of just a normal battery charger that I carry around for my phone. Hmm. And I charged four batteries and it ended up taking up 15% of my little battery charger. Oh, wow. So that's pretty decent. You know, if, if you, if I were to go on like a super long hike, I would feel comfortable bringing just two or three batteries. And even then I would probably only need one or two because I could just throw it in my backpack and let it charge for a little bit of time in between then. But, um, yeah, it's definitely not a high frequency shooter. . But it, it totally came up. Like it was funny because you know, I'm doing all these fun little games with it, trying it out. Mm-hmm and I kept noticing groups around me where there's a large group. It's 4th of July. So there are a lot of groups around, uh, large groups trying to do like selfie shots of the group, and then like messing up and taking forever. I'm like, ah, I bet you, they wish they had a pixie yeah, it would've, it would've solved all these problems. You could've just popped it up. It would've gone a fantastic picture or a video. It would've popped down and you can continue your hike or whatever you're doing. [00:27:43] James: Yeah. And that's the one thing that we should talk about too, is that the, the videos that it does, haven't done photos yet, but the videos are landscape mode. So they're just normal. If you were flying and doing a picture, it would just be normal, normal mode. You know what I mean? It's not like it's a portrait mode just because it is Snapchat from my understanding is that you can. Do it in real time with the Snapchat out. I haven't tried it yet, but like get a feed from it and then post that or something like that and edit it in the app. I'm not really sure how that works. Yeah. Um, But in that instance from my understanding is it's just crop to be portrait mode. So the things that it's doing are landscape and yeah. If you were trying to take that, that photo, I think that would be, yeah, pretty neat is everyone's doing selfie and how far can my arm get out? And you get a little bit of your arm in there. It's like, oh no, here, just, and like do a thing. And you're like, wow, cool. So even if you're just doing it for that, that's a pretty neat, uh, use case for it. [00:28:38] Frank: Yeah. I, I want to try to get some group photos with it. That's what I want to use it for. What were [00:28:44] James: you gonna say? I wanna talk about the cameras that are on it. And would you actually want to use those photos or videos that it's producing? Because yes, some people are probably thinking $200. I've seen $200 smartphones, and I know that those are not very great. Right. And this camera, which we've talked about before has a 12 megapixel camera, 4,000 by 3000 and the 2.7 K. Video camera up thing on it, whatever that means. Mm-hmm and up to 30 frames for a second. [00:29:18] Frank: And, and it's all due in digital stabilization with that. I wanna reiterate that point because sorry, every, my very first drone that I built, I just jammed a video camera on it. Like you would see on the FPV racers and things like that. Mm-hmm. And when you go and fly that, what you realize immediate is just how terrible video is when it's recorded on a vibrating platform, oscillating throughout the air. Uh, cameras just weren't designed for that. So you do certain things. You add noise, dampening, physical noise, dampening to the camera to help remove some of that high frequency noise there. And then in the more extreme case, you put it on a gimble and have the gile compensate for all that drift stuff. This thing has none of that. None. and they're still getting to my eye. I haven't, you know, posted a, a super high res one, but to my eye amazing video. So, yeah. Um, it's, it's not. Native 12 K because I think it's doing some sub sampling and maybe a little bit of integration to smooth out the video or the image. But I think, you know what they say, photography is not the resolution. It's the lighting and it's the angle. So this thing's gonna be able to get all those much better. I think it's gonna get a, a better composed image than anything I could get by sticking my arm out. Okay. All. Excellent camera. Yes. I I'm answering your question with a yes I would. [00:30:52] James: And when you think about it, it kind of makes sense because Snapchat is a camera company. like they put cameras in tiny little glasses and now they put 'em in a tiny little drone and they, you know, work on your phone. And the one thing that I'm impressed with is the. Clarity. They're obviously doing some, um, um, they're doing some cleanup digital on that, but I am also impressed with the white balance. Actually. I thought the white balance was really, uh, well executed compared to my DJA pic mini V one, not V3, which apparently is like way, way, way better. And it's a pro model, so, you know, it's good. But, um, I thought the white balance on the video was also very good. Now I. Exported them off of my phone yet. I did send you one on iMessage, but I will be fascinated to see what that looks like in. My Google photos, which I I can do right now. Let me see what it [00:31:44] Frank: looks like. Yeah. When, when you can side by side it with an iPhone or something, you'll probably be able to tell the difference better. Yeah, I will say, um, can't say all praise, right? We gotta say some negatives. It does have auto exposure. Mm-hmm so sometimes they can get the exposure wrong. You know, the thing that you want to be lit nicely is actually in shadow or something like that. And it's hard because you're not getting real time feedback with other drones, you'd be doing a preview. So one thing, you know, it brings you a little bit back to the Kodak days where your exposure might be wrong when you had to wait for your film to be developed. But you know what? We all have. Photoshop or some knock off of Photoshop on our computer. You can change the exposure later. Don't worry about it. No one cares about a little noise in the image. It's fine. Uh that those are my low standards. Have you discovered anything? [00:32:29] James: Um, so far, I mean, like I said, you know, I think about, what am I gonna use this footage for? I'm gonna try out the photo mode as well. It's gonna be more for just fun things, right? I'm not going out. Yeah. I'm not, it's not, I'm not expecting DSLR quality stuff. You know, when I think about the combination of the, the cameras, the design, the battery, the portability of it is really why I think we bought it is that was that. And, and Heather asked me right. Is what is this for? Right. Yeah. Um, and, and I wanna answer that now, and then we can come back to any loose odds and ends. Cause I know you have a few mm-hmm , but we've sort of mentioned it a little bit. You on your one wheel, right. Um, hiking is a good example on a holiday, you know, where you don't wanna bring a full drone and you don't wanna go out on a drone day or maybe you. Like you said, Hey, I'm just gonna go to the skate park. I'm gonna one wheel around. I can literally strap this on myself and if I use it awesome. And if I don't, I don't, but compared to the drone, which again, I love my drone. I love it. And I just haven't flown it very much because it's a process. I'd be like, Hey, I could take this on a walk and I could be like, oh, I'm just gonna go. Oh, cool. And it wouldn't be distracting. For the Walker, the hike, it's like, I'm just gonna grab this footage really quick. And I'm done just like someone taking a quick video or a photo, because it is so easy to turn on and off. You don't even need your phone. Right. You don't even need it because there's built in storage, you know, 16 gigs in there that hold like a, you know, thousand photos or whatever, it just does it. So to me, there are those drones you can get for like 50 or a hundred bucks that you have to fly around. But this one is, I want something to do. The work for me, and I want to have a cool memory, uh, out of this, and I'm not expecting pro level video footage, X, Y, Z. I want something that's pretty good that I think will bring a smile to my face. And you could bring this drone anywhere. Like I would feel very comfortable bringing this on a hike through a national park, on an international flight, on a domestic flight on a road. Again, just throw it in your backpack or throw it around your waist and like, you're good to go. And I think that is the neatest part about this compared to, um, anything else that I I've had. Right. I've had, I've had, you know, the DJA, Osmos a thing that's, you know, gonna levelize out your stabilize, your camera and your phone, and I've had the drone and I've had these other things. And I was like, wow, this is really cool. A year from now, how often will Frank and I use this? I don't know, but I do think that this is a, any, any single person could use this. And I think that that is a triumph. Like I think that I, I, I, I literally handed it to Heather and I was like, Hey, she's like, what do I need to do? I said, hold it up. So it looks at you in the face and hit the button and she's like, that's it. I was like, that's it? And like , and then naturally it came back and she just put her hand out and it landed in her hand and she was. That's it. And I was like, that's it? You know what I mean? Like, like I think that was what was cool. And we did the follow mode with her and it like brought a smile to her face and I was like, yep. Mission accomplished. Like there was at least one moment of joy, you know, that this, this brought and that. I could not see that happening with a normal drone, if I was like, and here's the remote control. And like, you can figure it and calibrate it. You know what I [00:35:55] Frank: mean? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, like I said, I've done the manual drone thing. It's a lot of effort. . If, if you want the sensation of flight or you wanna do the racing thing and you like that adrenaline pumping of flying a thousand dollars at a hundred miles an hour through a forest. Go go, go get an expensive drone or something like that. But I love robots and autonomous things. I like thinking computers and this, no, this has no personnel. It's not a droid. I'm not under any delusions like that. but it's not an RC card. Yeah. You know, I had RC cards when I was, you know, in the eighties, you know, they're old, it's old tech. I don't need to be manually flying or driving everything. I wanna see something smarter and this is. 200 bucks is still a lot. Let's not . Yeah, but you know, it's a reasonably priced, um, autonomous thing. I don't think I'd ever make this as a first drone, but if you've ever suffered through a first drone and you just want a nice camera, that takes drone shots. This is the thing to get, um, Wow. It just sounded like a salesman there, but , but it, honestly, if you're not going for that, I, I need to race drones thing. Um, but you still want the photography I'm excited, uh, for it. I think we should challenge each other. Now that I have a Snapchat account, I'm gonna use it for nothing but drone footage. So I'm just gonna be posting and we'll, we'll see in a year, uh, how much I've posted to my Snapchat. Yeah. [00:37:24] James: Yeah, and you gotta friend me on Snapchat and then we'll be good to go. [00:37:28] Frank: I guess we could, uh, post our, no, you don't wanna post yours. I'll post mine. People can follow my terrible drone [00:37:34] James: shots. There you go on there. Yeah. Yeah. And Snapchat is an interesting one. Cause I use Snapchat for its original purpose, which is sending photos to friends and they disappear after they view them. Ah, But there is a stories mode. And I think that you could add it to a story. I don't really know. That's the thing. [00:37:52] Frank: Okay. Thanks [00:37:53] James: for explaining that. I don't even know how half of the Snapchat works, but that being said. Frank will probably post to Twitter. So probably just follow up on Twitter. [00:38:01] Frank: Yeah. I'll probably do the other thing. Hey, can we talk about real quick, how terrible it is to download things onto this? Mm I, as a not user of the Snapchat app was getting very frustrated because I could not figure out, although I did know about the click, your picture, go to settings, click pixie. That is not how you get videos or images off of it though. No, those aren't a whole different place. A place. The Snapchat app likes to. Memories, huh? Yes. Memories. Yes. Yeah. Memories and James, is there a memories tab at the bottom of the app? There [00:38:32] James: is not [00:38:33] Frank: Frank. Is there a, is, is there a memories option on the hamburger menu of the app? Nope. Nope, no, no, no. There's not. In fact there is not one place in the app called memories. And when you search the Googles and you're like, hi, I'm old. Uh, how do you get to the memories and Snapchat? The very helpful instruction is swipe up. Just swipe up, James, swipe up, obviously. And so. Me and iOS developer knows that swipe up. Doesn't do that. Swipe up, switches the app, a swipe up, does all these other things. So I'm just befuddled, completely befuddled. And the one screen that I decided to swipe up on had like a table view. So the swipe up didn't work. The table view scrolled. As should happen when they swipe up on UI. Oh my gosh. So every I'm just like, where do I swipe up in this app? So imagine this, everyone Frank going around to every tab in the app and swiping up on every UI thing he can find. Well, the trick is the joke is on me. The very last screen I tried, the screen you're supposed to swipe up on is the camera screen. Mm-hmm . Course you have to go to the live camera screen, swipe up. Oh, by the way, is, is there a button for memories on the live camera screen? [00:39:42] James: There there is. It's left of the it's the left of it's left of the camera button. Yeah. [00:39:47] Frank: It doesn't say memories though. No, it doesn't. You have to swipe up. That's how you get to it. So for all the olds in the audience here, that's how you get to memories and [00:39:56] James: Snapchat. Well, I learned how to get to memories accidentally, cuz I was swiping. I was like, whoa, what does this screen go away? Um, so that that's usually what it is. And Snapchat is a, a, a terrible. Yeah. Combination of all the things and well done and terribly done all at the same time, they pack so much into it. It is astonishing. [00:40:15] Frank: We've talked about it on the podcast before and overall, I like it because they are so wacky, they're willing to go places, other apps aren't. Yeah. But in this case it was just making me very mad yeah. Cause I could not find my videos [00:40:28] James: and it's fascinating too, because it connects and then it creates its own wifi hotspot and then it downloads via wifi kind of slowly actually. [00:40:37] Frank: It is slow. It is slow. Um, they are most definitely trying to save battery at all possibilities because these batteries are tiny. Um, a complaint my friend had was why doesn't it just download the videos automatically? I'm like, cuz that would probably eat up the entire battery yeah. If you tried to do that. And so that was my assumption why they're not doing that, that said. Say, I'm pretty happy with the process of switching over to that wifi network. I remember in the early I do a lot of IOT stuff and a lot of IOT stuff. It's terrible where they'll actually make you manly go and switch over to their network. And then forever, you've got this stupid network in your settings that you can't remember what it's from, that has dramatically improved in iOS to the point where. Probably after you gave it permission, James, it was able to automatically temporarily switch over to the drones, wifi network, do its downloads, and then switch back to your normal network. And that's good because downloading, um, off of Bluetooth would be even slower than wifi. Now [00:41:39] James: I will also point out in case people are curious is that there is also a setting to download photos and videos over USB, but you have to turn it. So just see. Oh, thank [00:41:47] Frank: you. I, I didn't know about that and I will go find that because that sounds good. it's in the [00:41:51] James: setting, so. All right. So what is your final RA rating outta here? If you give it out 10 initial impression, initial review calibration. Out of 10, $250 in that's what you spent for the fly more pass. Oof. What do you give really? Yeah, [00:42:09] Frank: I'm giving it a nine. I, you know, I'm just, I'm principle. Not gonna give it a 10. There's always something to be fixed. It's loud. I don't think we said how loud it is yet. loud is loud. I'm giving, I'm giving it a nine, but you know, I have, I love drones and I haven't bought a new drone in probably five years. I don't know. Maybe that long. This is the first one that got me excited to buy a drone again. And I'd say I was not disappointed. I'm happy I bought it. And I'm happy. It's my newest [00:42:36] James: drone. Yeah. I, I would agree with that. I'm gonna give it an eight outta 10, because I do wish that they made a separate app because I think the experience could have been more tailored for this because it also feels weird. That it's in the Snapchat app. Now I'm gonna experiment more with understanding if there's a deeper reason, like, can I get a live feed or can I integrate it and actually snap the footage to people? I don't know. And I need to figure that out. Um, but if I do we'll, we'll give an update there, but I do think that is. Uh, a benefit for it being simplistic in the app, but also a downfall where I wish that it wasn't five clicks to get to it. Instead of it, I wish that like, it was like, oh, you're connected. And it goes right to the screen and it figures it out. Um, but beyond that, I brought a smile to my face, Frank, just like my first drone and for 250 bucks, [00:43:24] Frank: that's not bad. Yeah. And I think, honestly, this one's gonna get a lot more used to my other drones. It's it's the simplicity. It's the, oh, I want a group photo. I can press a button and get a group photo. Agreed. [00:43:37] James: All right. Ooh and it makes very cute times. I love it. You were making [00:43:42] Frank: me think these apps are like AOL now, you know, they just, it, it's more about a brand and just pulling you into the app. These apps are like old, old 1990s telecoms. Oh yeah. And it's yeah. Wow. That that's a dystopian future. We'll cover that on the next episode. Exactly. Well, that's gonna [00:43:59] James: do it for our pixie snap. Drone review. And this episode of merch conflict, let us know if you bought a pixie based on our initial impressions from months ago. And if you did let us know what you got. Go over to merch conflict. FM hit us up on Twitter at James Monte Magno at pro CLA and at mech conflict FM, but that's gonna do it for this week's merch conflict. So until next time I'm James Monte Magno. [00:44:20] Frank: And I'm Frank [00:44:21] James: Kruger. Thanks for listening. [00:44:38] Frank: Peace.