It all begins with an idea, an idea of a flying robot small enough to fit in the palm of the hand and with autonomous abilities. ZANO is featured with a plethora of sensors that collects information to keep the drone safety, hold its position, and stay connected all the time with your device.
The flying robot uses WIFI to stay connected with a smartphone or a tablet. The connection is secured with an encryption key defined when the ZANO is configured for the first time. If that sounds a bit easy, you can try the next level and keep the connection with the drone through the Internet. This is a bit slow down, and it is possible only if you connect the ZANO to your own WIFI and then use an application to have full access to it.
After you have done all settings, it is time to throw the drone in the air and let’s see how this flies, takes photographs and lands on your own hand.
The OV5670 camera specifications reveal that it is capable of 1080p video at 30fps. But currently having limits in electronics, the ZANO robot can shoot video at 720p HD resolution at 30 frames per second.
The drone is supplied with power from a 400 mAh Lipo lithium polymer battery that last up to 15 minutes on a single charge. It has a range of around 30 meters (100 feet), and is capable of reaching a top speed of 40 km/h (25mph). The battery is rechargeable from a USB charged device such as your tablet, but anyone knows that this operation takes time and is annoying. Because the robot doesn’t have enough space to add an extra battery to increase the flying time, the battery can be removed and replaced with another one.
The operating system is built entirely in house due to hardware and software limitations. Fully written in Assembly language, the developers have left a door open for anyone who wants to use their SDK and build augmented reality games, use the robot in research, or use it for many other cool things.
The drone is designed to work fine with both Android and iOS devices. Using the ZANO application, you can operate the drone with your smart device and with simple gesture control. If you tilt your smartphone left or right, the drone will follow. The application is more complex and let you set the rotation and altitude, the capture mode, or set autonomous flight and automatic return to the take-off position.
Fortunately you do not need to worry to keep the drone safety if is too far from your device or is running on low battery. The drone has integrated safety systems that take the control and automatically response to keep the drone safety.
With a weight of only 55 grams (1.94 oz), the drone doesn’t have to deal too much with inertia, but it has a lot of work in the wind.
The drone is not available in stores at least until mid to late 2015. Even so, this nano drone is easy to operate and provide a reasonably good video quality. I’m a little concerned about the fragility of the airframe that can be damaged after a couple of bad landings.