By Yadira B. Arnold 
Drones are everywhere these days, filming dramatic revelations and impressive landscapes for social media platforms. The problem is that they are not really accessible to beginners who have previously used only a smartphone. Last month Snap launched the Pixy drone with 230 precisely for these people. It requires very little abillity and acts as a personal photographer robot to help you take artful aerial photos.
You don’t have to drive the Pixy. Actually, you couldn’t if you wanted to. Rather, it flies by itself and performs pre-programmed patterns that emphasize you, the user. It has great potential for things like parties or tourist activities and captures impressive aerial photos without user intervention.
Snap advertises itself as a camera company, but its other photo-centric products, such as glasses, have had limited success. For me, the Pixy drone is more promising, as it could help users to get more interesting content than with a regular phone or camera. I’ve been in the French countryside for a week, so let’s see if it’s as versatile as I’m hoping for.
Hardware and Configuration
Practical Pixy drone: a flying robot photographer for Snapchat users
At just 101 grams, the Pixy is small enough to be tossed into a bag or worn around the neck with the protective matter that comes with a strap. It’s pretty cute – I’ve even heard oohs and ahas from friends and passers-by-although it sounds a bit fragile. However, it has proven to be surprisingly resistant to falls and accidents and has emerged from several such incidents without scratches.
All four propellers are in a protective hood, so you can not buzz branches or fingers. At the top there is a start catch and a mode dial, below it is the battery compartment and powering indicators. You will also notice a camera on the bottom, but it is designed solely to recognize your hand and not to take photos or videos. A USB-C port on the back allows you to power the drone and transfer folders to your phone or PC.
The main camera strikes 2.7 K video at 30 fps and 12 megapixel images. Pictures are taken in 16:9 landscape format, which is a bit strange, considering that the strikes are vertical. However, with a cropping tool in the app, you can convert your strikes to portrait mode.
The first thing to do is to synchronize it with your account via Bluetooth by putting it into sleep mode and then holding down the Start catch. From there, Snapchat detects the pixy and syncs everything over Wi-Fi. In my tests, the process was seamless on both an iPhone 12 and a Samsung Galaxy S10.
Then set the dial to one of four flight modes: hover, reveal, track and orbit. They are quite self-explanatory, hovering keeps the drone in place and allows you to perform all the actions in front of it. Reveal starts tight on your face and moves up 10 to 30 feet to reveal the background. Follow the tracks around you (it works best if he can see your face) and Orbit makes a circle of 360 approximately at head level and at a distance in the middle 10 and 30 feet.
Each of them can be changed in the app with different flight times, distances and more. If you often use a flight mode like Reveal with a specific setting, you can save it to the favorites wheel using the app for easy access.
In use
Once the flight model is selected, just hold the Pixy up so that his camera can see your face and press the start catch. It takes off and performs the selected maneuver, storing videos and / or photos on the 16 GB of fixed internal memory. Depending on the mode and settings, this is enough for about 100 videos and 1,000 photos.
All flight patterns worked well, but as mentioned earlier, the tracking mode works best when it can see your face. It does not recognize specific people, but it seemed to hang stubbornly on the same face, even if there were several people in one photo.
When it’s done, just hold your hand underneath and it lands right on where the bottom camera comes into play. It worked quite reliably, but sometimes I had to move my hand a little to catch it or prevent it from falling.
Then, when you go to the “Reminders” section of the Snapchat app, you will be informed that you have Pixy clips ready to import. You can also copy them to your PC via USB-C, but first you need to adjust a Snapchat setting in the Pixy section (“Import via USB”).
Once you have clips, you can start editing. If you want to post on Snap, you can use the auto crop feature to convert to vertical video while centering your subjects. You can then crop the video, add music and use special Pixy AR lenses like “Flame Aura”, “Multiples” (they are three) and record an old-fashioned VHS tape effect. It also comes with two speed ramp special effects, Jump Cut and Hyper speed.
Compromise
So far, everything is fine, but there are a number of things that it can not. For starters, there is no obstacle detection sensor, so the Pixy crashes directly on it if something is in the way. Leaves and branches did not always stop him, but walls, branches and human bodies certainly stopped him. Fortunately, as already mentioned, the pixy is quite tough.
Since it can not go very far or very high (maximum 30 feet), the lack of obstacle detection should not be a problem for most people. However, in order to avoid problems, you should test each maneuver in a large open space to get a feel for the distance traveled.
Another important limitation is the flight time. Snap told me that the Pixy can fly for four to five minutes on one power, or in the middle five and ten flights. You can buy additional batteries for 20 each, and purchase a portable power with two batteries for 50. If you think that you need this extra flight time (you will), the most suitable is the Pixy Flight pack, which adds the powerr and two extra batteries for another 20 extra batteries.
It also lacks a gimbal and relies solely on electronic stabilization, so you can get shaky images when flying in high winds. Speaking of which, the Pixy’s light weight means you can’t really fly it outside in gusty conditions.
The image and video quality is not awesome, but it gets the job done. When I showed it to a professional photographer friend, he was pleasantly surprised. The exposure was good and it adapted well to switch from shade to sun. It worked well indoors, provided you had a decent aset up of light.