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Show HN: Droners.io – Get anything filmed by a drone

65 points by daveumr 11y ago

GeorgeOrr 11y ago
Many drones are flown by using the first person point of view. I wonder if you could hire a person to fly the drone and then stream to you the first person view? Of course I'd want to have the glasses on to get the real effect, but with the VR goggles coming out that may work.
- lucb1e 11y ago
  No goggles usually, the pilot might but spectators typically get a screen, or so I heard from someone who knows about this stuff for factory inspection work.
daveumr 11y ago
Hi George, Dave here at Droners.io. I've seen a lot of pilots actually offer that as a service to their clients. Have you seen any of the FPV races from a pilots POV (i.e. on Youtube)? Its pretty insane, feels like your in the middle of a Star Wars movie. VR goggles would really push it to another level :)
- 8ig8 11y ago
  I don't understand the AirBnb angle? Is that meaning it is a marketplace? Buyers and sellers?
  - daveumr 11y ago
    Thats correct. Clients can search for a pilot and accept a bid from them. After the work is complete, the pilot creates an invoice, and the client pays them through the marketplace.
    - 8ig8 11y ago
      It sounds like something useful, but the AirBnb mention seems like a stretch. Based on your description, it could also be the 'Uber' for drones, if you get my drift.
  - minikomi 11y ago
    Agreed. It reads like they're offering accommodation for drone pilots. Only rooms with a skylight perhaps?
  - saiko-chriskun 11y ago
    Yeah the airbnb angle is confusing, quit the name-dropping.
mofickyvicky 11y ago
Wow. It's a whole new world isn't it. This is "deeply interesting"
latenightcoding 11y ago
"Airbnb for drone pilots" yeah that is not misleading at all
- bigiain 11y ago
  I was half expecting "have random DJI Phantom owners come and sleep on your couch!" Another part of wonders if they're attempting to demonstrate an "old school" attitude or a sense of age or history by using "AirBnB for … " instead of the current every-new-startup-tagline of "Uber for … " (Now I'm thinking of pitching some fictitious random startup idea with the elevator pitch of "We're Pets.com for $dumb_thing!" and with all our API doc examples and sample code written in Perl4 or ColdFusion - to try and give the undeserved impression we've been around for 20 years, or at least since before the first dotcom bust...)
philipjoubert 11y ago
The AirBnb angle is completely misleading. It seems for a marketplace like this to momentum you need talented drone pilots as quickly as possible. Currently the quality of the sample footage is terrible e.g. 2 out of the 4 videos look like they have had no color correction done and the drone is very jerky.
- daveumr 11y ago
  We've currently on-boarded almost 400 pilots in the last 10 days. The FAA has also began issuing 333 exemptions at a faster rate. To date there is now ~1100 exempt pilots that able to commercially operate a UAV, earlier in the year there were only around 100. Regarding video quality, there is a wide range of pilots, giving clients a wide range of services for the price.
DanBlake 11y ago
This is getting to be a competitive market ( http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/29/dronebase/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/29/dronebase/ ) However my understanding is that it might be illegal to do this at all without FAA approval on a case-by-case basis since its for profit. You can just google "drone realtor" to see the many issues they have faced in the market of using drones to take shots of homes for sale.
- daveumr 11y ago
  That is correct Dan, it is illegal to commercially operate a UAV without obtaining the FAA's 333 exemption (https://www.faa.gov/uas/legislative_programs/section_333/ https://www.faa.gov/uas/legislative_programs/section_333/). As I mentioned in another comment, there are now 1100 pilots who have obtained the exemption.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - Zombieball 11y ago
    Could you comment towards or provide insight about what deckar01 said above: > Section 333 is from 2012, but the FAA failed to sue a commercial UAV operator in 2014. If this is the case then you wouldn't need this FAA 333 exemption would you?
- deckar01 11y ago
  Drones are currently classified by the FAA as "model aircraft" and the FAA has tried and failed to sue a person for flying one commercially [1]. The FAA thought they regulated commercial "model aircraft" in 2007, but it was thrown out in court in 2014. Until the FAA can pass it's newly proposed rules, commercial operation of drones is unregulated (aside from standard safety regulations). [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-06/drone-pilot-s-fine-dropped-by-judge-finding-against-faa http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-06/drone-pilo...
  - daveumr 11y ago
randomaxes 11y ago
Sounds alot like Skycatch's Workmode that already has tons of pilots and clients on it. It'll be interesting to see how Droners intends to compete with a company that already has a strong network effect going in its favor.
- daveumr 11y ago
  SkyCatch is geared more towards B2B, particularly architecture/construction/scanning, there is still quite a market in the other areas. Regarding pilot base, we've on-boarded almost 400 pilots in the last 10 days.
randomaxes 11y ago
Sounds alot like Skycatch's Workmode that already has tons of pilots and clients on it. It'll be interesting to see how Droners intends to compete with a company that already has a strong network effect going in its favor.
8ig8 11y ago
In case anyone else was wondering, here's the pricing... > 11. DRONERS.IO SERVICE FEE > Pilot will pay Droners.io a transaction-based fee for Droners.io’s services and technology provided through the Site and otherwise (the “Service Fee”). For each Job Agreement, the Service Fee shall be equal to 10% of the total price that Pilot bills to the User with whom Pilot enters into the Job Agreement, excluding taxes and shipping or delivery costs. Pilot shall include in taxes only sales, use, or similar transaction-specific taxes that Pilot is required to collect and pay by virtue of the Job. Pilot shall include in shipping or delivery costs only Pilot’s actual out-of-pocket costs for shipping and delivery. > The Droners.io Service Fee shall not exceed one thousand dollars ($1,000) per Job. Source: https://droners.io/terms-of-service-pilot https://droners.io/terms-of-service-pilot
1stop 11y ago
So my drone charges in another drone owners living room. Right?
megalodon 11y ago
Yesterday we had 'Like Airbnb, but for algorithms?' (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10044783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10044783) and now this. I see no reason for this namedropping but clickbait. It's getting kind of silly.
- d--b 11y ago
  It's because "rent-a-drone-pilot" doesn't sound like a 1bn dollar company.
BrainInAJar 11y ago
When they ask "what was the peak of the sharing economy bubble", this will be the pets.com of our generation. What a stupid, unnecessary, frivolous idea.
- jakejake 11y ago
  I would actually use this service since I'm an amateur filmmaker. I probably would have just posted an ad on one of the film forums or craigslist, though. It's not solving a really huge problem for me.
- mryan 11y ago
  You don't see any value in a marketplace that matches drone pilots with those needing drone pilots? Drones aren't just toys any more. There are good business cases for using video shot from a drone.
jakejake 11y ago
One thing I might suggest is that the payment is made in advance and kept in an escrow. Allowing people to hire a drone operator and then trusting them to pay after the footage is delivered seems like a lot of risk for the operator. It's not normally expected with photography that you get the full deliverables before paying. The pre-pay business model is pretty standard for hire-a-freelancer services too, so I don't think it would detract from the service.
- daveumr 11y ago
  Thats something I'm considering implementing in the very near future, giving the pilot the ability to select from several payment terms (1/3 upfront, 1/2 up front, 100% upfront).
rebootthesystem 11y ago
<steam valve open> Well, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Lots of people are using multi-copters armed with the amazing skills provided by ignorance and a total lack of consideration for fellow human beings, property, dogs, cats and small animals. Despite a lame attempt at humor, the problem is very serious when viewed with the eyes of someone with over thirty years of experience designing, flying and, yes, crashing, all manner of model aircraft, from high performance 200 mile-per-hour carbon fiber gliders to lazy electric powered thermalling machines to high performance helicopters that can decapitate you if you are not paying attention. Not one person in the several model aircraft clubs I've been a member of or have flown in would ever think of doing some of the crap people do with these drones. Why? Because we know they are unreliable and dangerous toys. I own highly modified RC helicopters costing upwards of $8,000 and have built and flown amazing ducted fan jets that cost many times that amount. And they are ALL toys. They are built with hobby-grade parts and can fail catastrophically on the "anytime-anywhere" plan. The mass marketed multi's are even worst. They don't use the best, most expensive and most reliable battle-tested components. Something that retails for $500 is likely to have $50 to $75 in parts, whereas a high-quality aircraft built by a true model aircraft enthusiast might have propellers that cost that much. To be clear, spending $3,000 to $5,000 on these fancy looking multi's doesn't make them any safer. They are flying bricks. With a plane you can glide and hope to have a controlled crash away from people (believe me, I've crashed many over the years). With a helicopter you have auto-rotation that, when coupled with training, allows the pilot to execute a safe descent and landing. Training, that the other key element. Learning to build, fly and operate model aircraft requires time, dedication, tutoring and many hours training. It it also marked by starting-off with simple and nimble models and progressively moving up to faster, more expensive and more capable models as your skills evolve and improve. None of that exists in drone-land. And, because of this, someone goes out and buys a $1,000 rig and thinks nothing of flying it over a crowd, someone's home, over kids at the park, near full-scale aircraft, near firefighters, etc. They have no clue. They don't care. Or both. To be sure, the industry has done a great job of pushing these toys to increasing levels of capabilities and to a level where knowing how to build, maintain and fly them seems irrelevant. Point and click. And, at the same time, they've also done a great job of nurturing a disaster in the making. With the morons out there buying these things en-masse it is only a matter of time until one gets sucked into a passenger aircraft in flight and a major disaster unfolds. You guessed it! I'm not happy at all about this. Because of what I see coming: These morons (and I am including the companies who are behaving irresponsibly in that statement) are going to destroy a wonderful hobby some of us have enjoyed our entire lives. Eventually something really ugly will happen. And that will lead to the government coming down hard on all things that have to do with RC flight. The fact that some of us (lots of us!) have been flying "drones" for decades without ever making news --due to operating the aircraft responsibly, with consideration and within designated areas-- won't matter, we are are going to be thrown into the same bag as the idiots who cased the problem. <steam valve closed> Constructive note: Hey, droners.io folks, you might want to edit "Principle Broker" on your home page and change it to "Principal Broker". Not the same thing.
god_bless_texas 11y ago
It sure seems like there are alot of drone imagery marketplaces coming up. Exactly how much business is there for all of them to survive? I think this pricing model will be the nail in the coffin for Dronebase, though. You can't set pricing as the exchange. You've got to make a commission off whatever the buyer and seller agree is "the price".
- daveumr 11y ago
  Droners.io is currently a one man shop. I'm hoping I can continue to run it lean, and offer a great service without taking too much money from the people working for it (the pilots). The current fee is 10%, and that is capped at $1,000 max per job. I've seen other sites take a flat 20%, no cap.
  - god_bless_texas 11y ago
    why the cap?
    - daveumr 11y ago
      I know money makes the world go round, but it just doesn't feel right to me to take thousands of dollars for a referral fee. I use to work at CustomMade.com and we implemented the cap also for our makers. CustomMade made it possible for artisans to make a living doing what they love, perhaps Droners.io will do the same for UAV pilots. I don't know what will happen as it scales up, but for now at least, the cap seems fair and feels right too.

65 points by daveumr 11y ago

Many drones are flown by using the first person point of view. I wonder if you could hire a person to fly the drone and then stream to you the first person view? Of course I'd want to have the glasses on to get the real effect, but with the VR goggles coming out that may work.

lucb1e 11y ago
No goggles usually, the pilot might but spectators typically get a screen, or so I heard from someone who knows about this stuff for factory inspection work.

daveumr 11y ago

Hi George, Dave here at Droners.io. I've seen a lot of pilots actually offer that as a service to their clients. Have you seen any of the FPV races from a pilots POV (i.e. on Youtube)? Its pretty insane, feels like your in the middle of a Star Wars movie. VR goggles would really push it to another level :)

8ig8 11y ago
I don't understand the AirBnb angle? Is that meaning it is a marketplace? Buyers and sellers?
- daveumr 11y ago
  Thats correct. Clients can search for a pilot and accept a bid from them. After the work is complete, the pilot creates an invoice, and the client pays them through the marketplace.
  - 8ig8 11y ago
    It sounds like something useful, but the AirBnb mention seems like a stretch. Based on your description, it could also be the 'Uber' for drones, if you get my drift.
- minikomi 11y ago
  Agreed. It reads like they're offering accommodation for drone pilots. Only rooms with a skylight perhaps?
- saiko-chriskun 11y ago
  Yeah the airbnb angle is confusing, quit the name-dropping.

mofickyvicky 11y ago

Wow. It's a whole new world isn't it. This is "deeply interesting"

latenightcoding 11y ago

"Airbnb for drone pilots" yeah that is not misleading at all

bigiain 11y ago
I was half expecting "have random DJI Phantom owners come and sleep on your couch!" Another part of wonders if they're attempting to demonstrate an "old school" attitude or a sense of age or history by using "AirBnB for … " instead of the current every-new-startup-tagline of "Uber for … " (Now I'm thinking of pitching some fictitious random startup idea with the elevator pitch of "We're Pets.com for $dumb_thing!" and with all our API doc examples and sample code written in Perl4 or ColdFusion - to try and give the undeserved impression we've been around for 20 years, or at least since before the first dotcom bust...)

philipjoubert 11y ago

The AirBnb angle is completely misleading. It seems for a marketplace like this to momentum you need talented drone pilots as quickly as possible. Currently the quality of the sample footage is terrible e.g. 2 out of the 4 videos look like they have had no color correction done and the drone is very jerky.

daveumr 11y ago
We've currently on-boarded almost 400 pilots in the last 10 days. The FAA has also began issuing 333 exemptions at a faster rate. To date there is now ~1100 exempt pilots that able to commercially operate a UAV, earlier in the year there were only around 100. Regarding video quality, there is a wide range of pilots, giving clients a wide range of services for the price.

DanBlake 11y ago

This is getting to be a competitive market ( http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/29/dronebase/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/29/dronebase/ ) However my understanding is that it might be illegal to do this at all without FAA approval on a case-by-case basis since its for profit. You can just google "drone realtor" to see the many issues they have faced in the market of using drones to take shots of homes for sale.

daveumr 11y ago
That is correct Dan, it is illegal to commercially operate a UAV without obtaining the FAA's 333 exemption (https://www.faa.gov/uas/legislative_programs/section_333/ https://www.faa.gov/uas/legislative_programs/section_333/). As I mentioned in another comment, there are now 1100 pilots who have obtained the exemption.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Zombieball 11y ago
  Could you comment towards or provide insight about what deckar01 said above: > Section 333 is from 2012, but the FAA failed to sue a commercial UAV operator in 2014. If this is the case then you wouldn't need this FAA 333 exemption would you?
deckar01 11y ago
Drones are currently classified by the FAA as "model aircraft" and the FAA has tried and failed to sue a person for flying one commercially [1]. The FAA thought they regulated commercial "model aircraft" in 2007, but it was thrown out in court in 2014. Until the FAA can pass it's newly proposed rules, commercial operation of drones is unregulated (aside from standard safety regulations). [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-06/drone-pilot-s-fine-dropped-by-judge-finding-against-faa http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-06/drone-pilo...
- daveumr 11y ago

randomaxes 11y ago

Sounds alot like Skycatch's Workmode that already has tons of pilots and clients on it. It'll be interesting to see how Droners intends to compete with a company that already has a strong network effect going in its favor.

daveumr 11y ago
SkyCatch is geared more towards B2B, particularly architecture/construction/scanning, there is still quite a market in the other areas. Regarding pilot base, we've on-boarded almost 400 pilots in the last 10 days.

randomaxes 11y ago

8ig8 11y ago

In case anyone else was wondering, here's the pricing... > 11. DRONERS.IO SERVICE FEE > Pilot will pay Droners.io a transaction-based fee for Droners.io’s services and technology provided through the Site and otherwise (the “Service Fee”). For each Job Agreement, the Service Fee shall be equal to 10% of the total price that Pilot bills to the User with whom Pilot enters into the Job Agreement, excluding taxes and shipping or delivery costs. Pilot shall include in taxes only sales, use, or similar transaction-specific taxes that Pilot is required to collect and pay by virtue of the Job. Pilot shall include in shipping or delivery costs only Pilot’s actual out-of-pocket costs for shipping and delivery. > The Droners.io Service Fee shall not exceed one thousand dollars ($1,000) per Job. Source: https://droners.io/terms-of-service-pilot https://droners.io/terms-of-service-pilot

1stop 11y ago

So my drone charges in another drone owners living room. Right?

megalodon 11y ago

Yesterday we had 'Like Airbnb, but for algorithms?' (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10044783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10044783) and now this. I see no reason for this namedropping but clickbait. It's getting kind of silly.

d--b 11y ago
It's because "rent-a-drone-pilot" doesn't sound like a 1bn dollar company.

BrainInAJar 11y ago

When they ask "what was the peak of the sharing economy bubble", this will be the pets.com of our generation. What a stupid, unnecessary, frivolous idea.

jakejake 11y ago
I would actually use this service since I'm an amateur filmmaker. I probably would have just posted an ad on one of the film forums or craigslist, though. It's not solving a really huge problem for me.
mryan 11y ago
You don't see any value in a marketplace that matches drone pilots with those needing drone pilots? Drones aren't just toys any more. There are good business cases for using video shot from a drone.

jakejake 11y ago

One thing I might suggest is that the payment is made in advance and kept in an escrow. Allowing people to hire a drone operator and then trusting them to pay after the footage is delivered seems like a lot of risk for the operator. It's not normally expected with photography that you get the full deliverables before paying. The pre-pay business model is pretty standard for hire-a-freelancer services too, so I don't think it would detract from the service.

daveumr 11y ago
Thats something I'm considering implementing in the very near future, giving the pilot the ability to select from several payment terms (1/3 upfront, 1/2 up front, 100% upfront).

rebootthesystem 11y ago

<steam valve open> Well, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Lots of people are using multi-copters armed with the amazing skills provided by ignorance and a total lack of consideration for fellow human beings, property, dogs, cats and small animals. Despite a lame attempt at humor, the problem is very serious when viewed with the eyes of someone with over thirty years of experience designing, flying and, yes, crashing, all manner of model aircraft, from high performance 200 mile-per-hour carbon fiber gliders to lazy electric powered thermalling machines to high performance helicopters that can decapitate you if you are not paying attention. Not one person in the several model aircraft clubs I've been a member of or have flown in would ever think of doing some of the crap people do with these drones. Why? Because we know they are unreliable and dangerous toys. I own highly modified RC helicopters costing upwards of $8,000 and have built and flown amazing ducted fan jets that cost many times that amount. And they are ALL toys. They are built with hobby-grade parts and can fail catastrophically on the "anytime-anywhere" plan. The mass marketed multi's are even worst. They don't use the best, most expensive and most reliable battle-tested components. Something that retails for $500 is likely to have $50 to $75 in parts, whereas a high-quality aircraft built by a true model aircraft enthusiast might have propellers that cost that much. To be clear, spending $3,000 to $5,000 on these fancy looking multi's doesn't make them any safer. They are flying bricks. With a plane you can glide and hope to have a controlled crash away from people (believe me, I've crashed many over the years). With a helicopter you have auto-rotation that, when coupled with training, allows the pilot to execute a safe descent and landing. Training, that the other key element. Learning to build, fly and operate model aircraft requires time, dedication, tutoring and many hours training. It it also marked by starting-off with simple and nimble models and progressively moving up to faster, more expensive and more capable models as your skills evolve and improve. None of that exists in drone-land. And, because of this, someone goes out and buys a $1,000 rig and thinks nothing of flying it over a crowd, someone's home, over kids at the park, near full-scale aircraft, near firefighters, etc. They have no clue. They don't care. Or both. To be sure, the industry has done a great job of pushing these toys to increasing levels of capabilities and to a level where knowing how to build, maintain and fly them seems irrelevant. Point and click. And, at the same time, they've also done a great job of nurturing a disaster in the making. With the morons out there buying these things en-masse it is only a matter of time until one gets sucked into a passenger aircraft in flight and a major disaster unfolds. You guessed it! I'm not happy at all about this. Because of what I see coming: These morons (and I am including the companies who are behaving irresponsibly in that statement) are going to destroy a wonderful hobby some of us have enjoyed our entire lives. Eventually something really ugly will happen. And that will lead to the government coming down hard on all things that have to do with RC flight. The fact that some of us (lots of us!) have been flying "drones" for decades without ever making news --due to operating the aircraft responsibly, with consideration and within designated areas-- won't matter, we are are going to be thrown into the same bag as the idiots who cased the problem. <steam valve closed> Constructive note: Hey, droners.io folks, you might want to edit "Principle Broker" on your home page and change it to "Principal Broker". Not the same thing.

god_bless_texas 11y ago

It sure seems like there are alot of drone imagery marketplaces coming up. Exactly how much business is there for all of them to survive? I think this pricing model will be the nail in the coffin for Dronebase, though. You can't set pricing as the exchange. You've got to make a commission off whatever the buyer and seller agree is "the price".

daveumr 11y ago
Droners.io is currently a one man shop. I'm hoping I can continue to run it lean, and offer a great service without taking too much money from the people working for it (the pilots). The current fee is 10%, and that is capped at $1,000 max per job. I've seen other sites take a flat 20%, no cap.
- god_bless_texas 11y ago
  why the cap?
  - daveumr 11y ago
    I know money makes the world go round, but it just doesn't feel right to me to take thousands of dollars for a referral fee. I use to work at CustomMade.com and we implemented the cap also for our makers. CustomMade made it possible for artisans to make a living doing what they love, perhaps Droners.io will do the same for UAV pilots. I don't know what will happen as it scales up, but for now at least, the cap seems fair and feels right too.