I’ll admit it, I have not kept up on paper airplane technology. I foolishly assumed that the paper airplane options of today remain the same as the options from my youth. You either folded the long and slim, or the fat and short. Of course some kids swore by their folded up wing tips but we all knew that was bullshit. Enough about the planes of the past, I’m here to tell you that paper airplanes have gotten a 2015 upgrade and will never be the same.
With the PowerUp FPV you can craft your very own paper airplane drone, complete with a live streaming camera and first person view controls. Take a moment to pick your jaw up from the floor and lets dive deeper.
The PowerUp FPV is not a paper airplane. As the user you will construct (read: fold) your own paper airplane and attach the PowerUp FPV module which provides propellers and a camera attachment.
After setup its time to pick your flight style. The PowerUp FPV offers a smartphone app to control the device, a full autopilot mode or a head mounted display – which is clearly the coolest and best way to control your paper airplane drone of the future.
Once in flight, the on board camera will send a video feed to your phone from a maximum range of 300 feet at a rate of 30 frames per second. After landing, the recorded video can also be downloaded and saved to a smartphone to edit or share later.
Video quality itself depends on a few factors, as the app allows you to adjust for lower latency vs quality. If you are flying in first person view they recommend setting it to the lowest latency which will give you the most accurate 1:1 representation of what your plane sees as it sees it but at the cost of image quality.
When flying the plane with the phone app the quality can be set higher to create more appealing footage to share. In the product pitch video the quality of the footage looks great but it is unclear what the settings were.
How can you get one? Why their kickstarter of course. The reward tiers here are a little confusing, but to clarify a pledge of $179 gets you the standard package which offers the full kit needed to take advantage of the PowerUp FPVs features. Anything less will leave you with only part of the package and anything more will simply add onto the package in the form of multiple batteries and modules.
