Holy Crap, it’s a Swinglet

Which is a little baby planelet that takes off by itself and lands (crashes) by itself. To get it to go, you shake it 3 times (I’d have used an “on” switch – although maybe that’s how you calibrate the gyros) and after it lands you can retrieve the photos that the onboard camera takes – you can program the route with a laptop.

Obviously the flight-case costs more than the machine itself. It looks like they make custom-sized ones.

Obviously it needs to be able to beam live video back to the mother-ship… and it would be better to use a little borg-attachment like this

Which is a little camera that you fit behind your ear. It’s called a “looxcie” because all the non-silly-noise names have been taken by domain-name-squatters, which should be banned.

Obviously this camera needs to pipe videos straight to the web so anyone who tries to censor you, gets to do it in front of a live audience, captured for posterity etc. Can eyefi do it? Yes I think it can – eyefi explore… though it would be better to be something connected to your phone so you don’t have to connect to local wifi routers. I think Verizon might be doing something along those lines.

So anyway, back to the swinglet… now that is cheap as chips isn’t it? It’s made out of that rubbery expanded foam stuff… little electric motor… various electronic bits, all of which look as though they’re cannibaliseable out of iPhones. I mean you could actually use your iPhone… if you didn’t mind your Swinglet fucking off with it and never coming back. It’s got a 2km data-link range, and a 20km flying range – once it gets past 2km it’s free. Flight-time 30 mins. Doesn’t say how long it takes to charge… but if you put solar-wafers all over the wings it could just sit in the sun for a couple of days… never come back. Use it’s eye-fi card to hack local routers. Brilliant. It could go off on a little robo-photography holiday on its own. Fuck you. You don’t own me.

(there’s a video at that link, but I don’t know what it is, because if you force me to watch an advertisement before I watch your video, then I don’t watch your video)

Looks like they sell the Swinglet witha a laptop with it as well – on account of needing (or at least using) specialised hardware, ie: a radio peripheral I should think. It looks to me like this is a desperate attempt to make something very valuable, but made out of really cheap stuff, very expensive… although they don’t actually say how much it is… preferring to weigh your soul / wallet with sensors under the “welcome” mat in the doorway.