Snap formerly Snapchat has come up with a new social media-oriented hardware after five years since it launched its AR glasses called the Snapchat Spectacles. Snap’s latest product is a tiny drone that follows you around and takes your pictures. It is one of the most unique products as it is small and light enough to fit in your pocket and it takes off from the user’s palm and lands back on it.

Pixy costs about $230 and is available online in the US and France as per a Verge report. The drone was shown at the company’s Snap Summit where the company made a series of announcements focused on AR shopping, etc.

How does Pixy Work?

The Pixy drone has a bottom-facing camera that allows it to take off and land on the palm of its owner’s hand. As it takes off the front-facing camera needs to be lined up roughly at eye level and then it automatically tracks the owner as they move around. To end the flight, the owner needs to simply outstretch his/her palm and hand to the Pixy, and it will return to land on the palm safely.

Also read: Instagram tests out ‘pinned’ grid view feature, to roll out soon

The Pixy drone doesn’t have a lengthy setup and it does not even come with a separate controller. There is a tiny dial-like control on the top of the device that can be used to pick one of the five preset flight paths for the drone to move.

These preset flight paths are Hover wherein the drone takes off from a user’s hands and hovers in front of them as their personal photographer; Orbit wherein it orbits around a user in a circle; Reveal wherein it flies back to reveal user in the broader perspective; Follow wherein it will follow a user as they explore the world; and Favourite wherein it will complete a 10-second Hover in photo-only mode.

All 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 pictures.

When the storage is full, Pixy won’t take off. A notification in Snap and the LED will flash red to indicate that the storage is full. The user will then need to empty or import photos and videos to memories in Snapchat to make Pixy fly again, as per a BGR.in report.

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

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

The captured footage and photos are synced wirelessly using WIFI to the Memories section of Snapchat, where they can be edited. The Pixy doesn’t 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 given that can quickly turn the horizontal footage into Snap’s staple vertical orientation, centered on the main subject.

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

Also read: Gizmore launches its first ‘Made in India’ smartwatch, priced at Rs 2,499

(Edited by : Anand Singha, Priyanka Deshpande)