This is pretty cool tech, but I think you need a bit of work with your video. When you start with examples, after the 1st one I'm thinking "I get it already, jesus" and already clicking through the video to find the product demo.
You torture me with 30 seconds of slow slide transitions and irrelevant videos (I know what a firefighter is, no need to show me), start talking about what you're making 30 seconds in, and finally show it to me 45 seconds in, with the end result 55 seconds in.
I know this sounds harsh, but you have got to tailor your value proposition to short attention spans. If I like it, I'll stay longer and watch more. If not, you don't want me anyway.
I'd flip most of the video around:
a) condense the first 30 seconds into 1 slide with pictures of first responders, soldiers, firemen etc
b) show them the end result and then how you toss the camera (or backwards). When this is done, you should be 10 seconds in.
c) then build upon my excitement and talk about what you want
This is all assuming I even click the video, so just having a one-sentence summary above the video also helps. (I get that there is text below, but your header is huge and so it falls below the fold and I didn't even think to scroll down until now).
I know this sounds harsh, but you're obviously not their customer. Who cares if you "like" it, or if you stay longer and watch more?
I happen to agree that the video is annoyingly slow to start but maybe their target audience isn't hyperactive Reddit distraction addicts. Maybe their research suggests buyers for emergency services like to be buttered up a bit before being pitched to. Without knowing that you're just speculating.
You know what, you're right in that I happen to fall way out of the bounds of their target, and that's not harsh at all. But I think my point still stands. Even people who like to sit through 2 hour long bullet-point presentations / butter-up sessions with synergistic turnkey solutions know, briefly, what they are being pitched before they sit down and watch.
In any case, I doubt any such research happened :)
I could see this being useful for LEOs and guys clearing caves and bunkers... In situations like those, being able to look around a corner without exposing yourself to hostile fire is a great advantage.
In the case of firefighting, it would be a lot less useful. We're not worried about poking our head around a corner. No one is shooting at us. How is this better than looking around the corner myself with a thermal imaging camera?
In many ways it's worse... Modern TICs have lots of useful features like giving you the temperature at a certain point on the screen. Using a TIC is also more complicated than simply looking at the picture. A single static image doesn't do me much good. I want to see how the heat is moving through the room, looking for signs of impending flashover, etc. The heat signature of a victim lying on the floor can be surprisingly difficult to distinguish from something like a smoldering blanket if you don't have a dynamic image to look at for a couple seconds.
The one use I do see for this is hinted at in the video (where it warns the operator of the carbon monoxide level). This _could_ be useful in HazMat situations (pack the thing with sensors for various hazardous materials). However... if you're close enough to throw the thing into a suspect HazMat condition, you're close enough that you need to be wearing the appropriate personal protective equipment... so why not use the handheld sensor you already have, instead of buying this (presumably) expensive remote sensor?
> How is this better than looking around the corner myself with a thermal imaging camera?
A rapidly moving camera should get a lot more pictures, a lot more angles and room coverage than a handheld one in a static location. Would be fascinating to hear a founder on this, how to combine all those images-- under desks, behind cabinets, under bed, etc.-- into something rapidly grasped by the viewer.
You can't be certain a single toss is going to capture all the angles you need (inside a closet, under the covers of a bed, etc). It also still gives you a static 'snapshot' of the space. You really need a dynamic view to get an idea of what the fire is doing, distinguish victims from other blobby heat signatures, etc.
The UI would be tricky as well... Consider the conditions the user is operating in... Extremely poor visibility (no hi-res display (potentially solved by project on the facepiece directly)), bulky gloves (no touch interface), heavy gear (every extra pound matters), significantly restricted movement (tough to throw the thing in the first place).
I think there's a lot of progress to be made in this field in the near future, but I'm not sure this is it... Things like helment mounted TICs, and HUDs projected directly on the SCBA facepiece seem like they would be far more useable, and easy to implement..
If you ever need to go down market/pivot: replace the cameras with a microphone, add padding to the ball, add line out to the receiver, sell it to presenters who want to take questions from an audience.
Suggestion: put all of the text in the video on the web page as text.
Right now I have no way of figuring out what it is beside (a) inferring from the name, and (b) starting another browser that's more stable when playing videos. Also, none of what the product does is indexable by search engines.
Not to mention corporate proxies that block YouTube. For many products we see on HN this may not be a big deal, but this kind of product is trying to get interest from the wry people who often have restrictive proxy settings: government and government contractors. (The video is blocked for me.)
I'm most interested in how they'll bring the price down though, since development of this product doesn't look cheap.
It looks like this would need to be priced similar to a disposable item. It's safe to assume that these ball cameras won't be retrieved even remotely as often as they're thrown -- imagine firefighters stopping on their way out of a burning building to retrieve their ball camera -- so the best way to convince potential customers to buy en masse would of course be to price them low enough that losing a bunch of the cameras won't be considered throwing money away.
I'm really curious what that price point would be in order to still turn a profit.
Well compared to the cost to train a new firefighter or cop the could cost $1000 each, all be thrown away, and make a profit if the person using the used less than say 200 in a 10 year span.
The calculus is if you Know that there are no one in a room in a fire you don't go in there and risk injury or death. One, one week stay in the hospital is about $105,000 ($15,000 a day) so they can be "expensive" and cheap at the same time. The parts will set them back maybe $35 per ball. And since they aren't mil spec they don't have to be enemy jamming resistant or able to withstand being shot.
There's no way I'm going to trust a single ball thrown into a room to give me a complete picture of where any victims might be...
In a residential setting (where the _vast_ majority of fire related injury and deaths occur, both civilian and firefighter), rooms are small enough that searching them isn't likely to be any slower than tossing the ball in and evaluating the image. Additionally, victims (especially children) like to hide (under beds, in closets, etc). I suspect this camera would have a tough time spotting them
A single static image of a room isn't going to terribly useful. Assuming you're using infrared sensors (if you're not, it's entirely useless), it can be surprisingly difficult to distinguish the heat signature of a victim from other objects in the room if you don't have a dynamic image you can look at for a few seconds.
EDIT: When I read photosynth, I was thinking of Microsoft Photosynth[1], which sketches pictures into panoramas. I should have read the parent comment a little more closely.
It shows multiple angles from one viewpoint being assembled into a panorama. That's very different from taking images from multiple viewpoints and generating a 3D model.
If these balls are reusable and/or cheap enough, throwing or shooting several of them in and making them and head unit communicate to produce 3D panoramas seems like next logical step. But I'm not sure 3D panoramas are worth it. What is the benefit of having one 3D image instead of just several 2D images of the rapidly changing scene? This technology is not meant to be used in museums.
To get a feeling for the layout and relative positioning of things. Sure it's possible to do by examining several 2D pictures, but interpreting 3D environments is far more natural, and it would allow the operator to rotate and so on to get the best angle available.
Also, since the camera is moving, one doesn't need to use multiple.
Do you have an example of a raw video or image taken with the device. I scoured the website for this but can't find one. This proves to me that it works.
What advantage does this have over a remote control helicopter + light + camera + wifi? I bet you could package that for $50. Ok, so you need to practise a bit to learn how to control it, and if it's out of sight that'll be a bit more difficult than it is usually.
I'm skeptical that a stationary ball lying on the floor (or rolling into a hole) would provide better information. Of course, it's better than not having that.
Cost, durability, ease of use, and battery of life are some things that come to mind when comparing with your solution. Furthermore, I feel that to be as useful, the helicopter would have to implement autonomous or semi-autonomous control which is not trivial.
How do you make the helicopter rotors so that they don't break the first time they hit something and also don't cut people's faces up. In many situations, have a flying helicopter in a small space can be much more dangerous than a ball on the floor.
Sure, anything RC will be more complicated to use than a ball. But it's being marketed to professionals who will have been trained to use many tools.
The cost of RC helicopters is quite staggeringly low, and they are usually possible to repair. The blades can be painful if you fly into people, but I doubt people appreciate having balls land on them either. At least with an RC you could potentially see where you were heading and stop. If the use scenario is to send these in to places too dangerous to send people, I don't see much issue.
I don't think autonomous flying is necessary, but there has been research done to show it's possible (but as you say, not trivial).
I'm still unsure if a ball is going to work well, or whether it's just going to roll under a desk.
In most of their typical police/fire/first responder scenarios the users already have enough other things to do and track that they don't want to be trying to control an RC device as well.
It's also not advisable to assume that the users would be highly trained beforehand. A major benefit of a device like this is the fact that it is a very simple unit that is easy to deploy to get a quick and easy view of the environment around a corner or at the end of a tunnel.
Additionally in fires you have a lot of air drafts from the heat, making controlling an RC device even more challenging.
In some situations the form factor of a ball would be useful. E.g. in a fire, a ball is much easier to fireproof, or in a military situation a ball is far less noticeable.
Surely even at $500/ball, it'd still be cheaper and safer to use a system that requires close to no training. From the demo video, it seems that the ball also detects carbon monoxide - I imagine detecting other chemicals would come in extremely useful as well.
At a glance, it seems like there's a lot less that could go wrong, given the number of moving parts involved with the helicopter.
This reminds me of the tiny (4mm) cameras in Vernor Vinge's The Peace War. Excerpt: "The picture jerked every few seconds, as if the camera were held by a drunkard" ...
You torture me with 30 seconds of slow slide transitions and irrelevant videos (I know what a firefighter is, no need to show me), start talking about what you're making 30 seconds in, and finally show it to me 45 seconds in, with the end result 55 seconds in.
I know this sounds harsh, but you have got to tailor your value proposition to short attention spans. If I like it, I'll stay longer and watch more. If not, you don't want me anyway.
I'd flip most of the video around: a) condense the first 30 seconds into 1 slide with pictures of first responders, soldiers, firemen etc b) show them the end result and then how you toss the camera (or backwards). When this is done, you should be 10 seconds in. c) then build upon my excitement and talk about what you want
This is all assuming I even click the video, so just having a one-sentence summary above the video also helps. (I get that there is text below, but your header is huge and so it falls below the fold and I didn't even think to scroll down until now).