Click Selfies using this pocket drone that can take off and land on your palm

By Charles M. Mize Last updated Apr 29, 2022

Snap, formerly Snapchat, has come up with new social media-oriented material five years after launching its AR glasses called Snapchat Spectacles. Snap’s latest product is a small drone that follows you around and takes your photos. It is one of the most unique products as it is small and light enough to fit in your pocket and it lifts from the user’s palm and lands there.

Pixy costs around $230 and is available online in the US and France according to a Verge report. The drone was showcased at the company’s Snap Summit, where the company made a series of announcements focusing on AR purchases and the like.

The Pixy drone has a downward-facing camera that allows it to take off and land on the palm of its owner’s hand. When taking off, the front camera should be aligned at about eye level, then it automatically follows the owner as they move. To complete the flight, the owner simply needs to extend their palm and hand towards the Pixy, and it will return to land on the palm safely.

The Pixy drone doesn’t have a long setup and it doesn’t even come with a separate controller. There’s a small dial-like control on the top of the device that can be used to choose one of five predefined flight paths for the drone to roam.

These predefined flight paths are Hover in which the drone takes off from a user’s hands and hovers in front of them as a personal photographer; Orbit in which it orbits around a user in a circle; Reveal where it comes back to reveal the user in a bigger perspective; Track where a user will follow as they explore the world; and Favorites in which it will hover for 10 seconds in photo mode only.

Everything you need to know about Pixy

The Pixy mini drone comes with a single 12MP sensor camera on the drone along with 16GB storage. It can store up to 100 videos or 1000 photos.

When the storage is full, Pixy does not take off. A notification in Snap and the LED will flash red indicating the storage is full. The user will then need to dump or import photos and videos into Snapchat Memories to get Pixy flying again, according to a BGR.in report.

A full charge will give the Pixy five to eight flights, which can range from around 10 to 20 seconds.

Additional batteries cost $20, and Snap sells a portable dual-battery charger for $50.

Captured footage and photos are synced wirelessly using Wi-Fi to Snapchat’s Memories section, where they can be edited. The Pixy does not capture audio, but Snap allows users to add music from its library.

Snap has also included a few Pixy-specific AR effects to choose from.

An auto-crop feature has been provided which can quickly turn horizontal footage into Snap’s basic vertical orientation, centered on the main subject.

The Pixy is available online for $230 (Rs 17,603 approx) in the US and France.

(Edited by : Anand Singha, Priyanka Deshpande)