A Drone built just for aerial video? Kickstarter says “Shut up and take my money”

A Drone built just for aerial video? Kickstarter says “Shut up and take my money”
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This week, a Kickstarter campaign by the name of HEXO+ launched, with what I thought was “yet another Aerial Drone” campaign; however, this aerial drone has one key difference which has helped it bring in $200K+ in the first 24 hours. The difference is that this drone is build for the sole purpose of creating awesome aerial shots, which have become the rage in the past 12 months.

Whether shots of Dolphins surfing waves shot from just above the wave, or shots of New York from above the high-rises, or even a music video of Phoenix in the Chateau de Versailles (above), Aerial drone shots have become quite popular for their “a different angle than you’re used to” perspective. Built by Grenoble-based Squadrone System, the drone has received ambassadorship from pro surfers, skaters, motocross professionals & more.

I particularly like the smartphone control – set the angle you want to shoot from, and the drone will follow the person throughout the shot. The demo video looks pretty awesome, following motocross riders over jumps with decent framing; one bummer is that the product isn’t expected to ship until May 2015, though it’s clear that this is a tech product build by extreme sports fans for extreme sports fans, with a little help from some smart engineers.

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This isn’t the first time the Grenbole puts out smart connected hardware – iSketchnote raised a great round of funding for their Slate, which is currently up for pre-order. Crowdfunding has made it so that awesome innovations like this don’t have to raise a ton of money to get off the ground – a subject we’ll be covering at the Connected Conference later this week with Lima co-founder Severin Marcombes and Indiegogo’s hardware lead, Kate Drane.