Tested: Hover Camera Passport Drone Review

10 thoughts on “Tested: Hover Camera Passport Drone Review”

1. Right, so you would actually end up putting it on a stick. :)) The idea is nice, but even there it fails as it takes 10-20 seconds to boot up. I can’t really get my head around them asking 550 Dollars for this..

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2. even with all it’s problems….. watching kishore just hold it and walk off while it stays in motion is so awesome. it is like, just add some lidar and you are almost to those little drones in Prometheus that Fifield used to map the cave.

   Add some AR goggles like CastAR or Hololens and you have the table that Idris Elba was looking at to analyze the mountain.

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3. Forget the face tracking, etc. – for indoor position holding that thing looks amazing. Are there other cheap drones with downward facing cameras that hold position that well indoors?

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4. Nice that you got almost the whole team in this review. 🙂

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5. Missed opportunity… if they had put a stabilize gimbal on it and used a much better camera system this would have been amazing.

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6. It might have its flaws, but that design is AWESOME!

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7. It might have? It’s totally flawed, we’re talking about 550 Dollars here and just for it to hold steady indoors or just for the design (which, yes is great) is ridiculous.

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8. Chinese source with no contact number on their website and a massive wait to ship that you find out only after paying them. Stay away!!!!!

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9. It might be a nice product but their service sucks. Be warned, if you email them it will take them a week to respond to you. I purchased in October and still have not seen my order moved from “payed” in “my orders” on their web site. Despite the fact they had a sale in the last two weeks before Xmas for people to buy it and have it shipped before Dec 25th (if you lived in USA or China). Meaning they decided to give priority with their stock to people who send them their money 2 weeks ago vs people who purchased almost 3 months ago, even if not in US or China it makes no sense since they know international shipments take longer. After a week of waiting for an answer to my email about it they told me mine would ship in last week of December, and guess what….not! Very bad service.

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10. 

    Don’t follow my experience and don’t lose your money on disappeared Hover Camera drone

    The Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a great topic and I’m a big fan of it. Both personally and professionally.
    Since I found a first news about planned Hover Camera drone which adopts advanced AI for face and person recognition in video and uses it for the drone navigation I was among the first ones who submitted the liable pre-order, paid about $550 and waited about 1 year until the drone was finally founded launched and delivered to the middle of Europe to my home.
    Unfortunately my pleasure last only for few days and the drone got very soon irrevocably lost. I tell you how it happened to let you avoid a similar experience.

    It was winter and I took the drone to record my wife during the downhill skiing. There was a morning and was little bit foggy and bit windy (very common weather in my country).

    I let the drone into the air and “lock” its focus to my wife.

    First unexpected finding was the drone don’t follow the downhill slope but keep flying into the same attitude. So after few meters of skiing the vertical distance between the drone and recorded skier set in too big and the drone lost focus.

    Secondly after several similar tries the drone suddenly climbed up from himself about 50 meters high, immediately lost connection with my phone and remote control app and disappeared somewhere to the side in direction of nearby forrest.
    One and half day I spend by combining the forest and looking for it in high snow. Unsuccessfully. The drone was gone and my $550 was gone.

    Now, was the cause the little foggy weather that makes the drone think the ground is approaching so let’s claim up? Or the white show ground that was indistinguishable for AI sensors in the drone brain? Or something else? Nobody knows.

    The most funny of this sad story at the end was the reaction of the drone producer (Zero Zero Robotics) when I claimed such a bug and strange behaviour of the drone what causes loosing it in the fog, high attitude and nearby forrest when I used their product for its essential purpose – recording me and my family during the outside sport activities.

    Their answer was in the meaning – Are you mad? Using this drone in so improper environments? Did you read the enclosed terms & conditions (T&C)? In the T&C we clearly state that you “can’t use the drone in rain, fog, lighting, hail, storm, winds, or any other weather. Also avoid flying over surfaces with solid colour (!), reflective or transparent, moving surfaces, strong sound absorption, irregular or unclear texture, repetitive textures, inclines and snow”. We even send you the copy of the subjected articles from our T&C. (attached).

    If you don’t follow those instructions we don’t take any responsibility for any damages and losses.

    Could you show me a single place on the planet which precisely meets such conditions?!

    So if I got it right the only proper and suggested usage of the drone is in very unique laboratory conditions without any weather conditions with psychedelic texture on the floor. No outside, no weather, no light, no darkness, no single possible ground texture, no action, no sport, no real life.

    Am I right?

    What is the drone for, anyway?

    The conclusion. The AI is great and emerging topic as well as video object recognition and drone navigation. Unfortunately the application of it in this particular product is not good enough to fulfil its very essential purpose – to record sport and adventure recordings. And the responsibility feelings of the product maker is simply childish and it’s a no-go for anyone who is thinking about buying such a product.

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