Hover Camera or Dobby? Read this before you choose

A pocket drone capture amazing high-quality video, and are so well-constructed for the price that they keep everyone from simple hobbyists to those who are looking for a full-fledged movie director’s tool interested. So which one should you choose? Hover Camera or Dobby?

Design

The Dobby has a folding design and is finished in white.The Dobby pocket drone that absolutely feels like something from visionary shows such as “Futurama” or “Blade Runner”, and its propellers fold up very nicely into its tiny pill-like shape. The entire drone weighs just under half a pound, and is controlled by a smartphone app like many others out there on the market.

 

While, the Hover Camera by Zero Zero Robotics has a body made with carbon fiber that makes it lightweight and strong. This Hover Camera has a compact, small and light body is a combination of a camera and a drone. It also has four motors and propellers that are attached to the body. This is due to the design of the body that could be easy on the wallet.

Size&Wight

Hover Camera: 182 x 132 x 33mm, 238g, about the size of an iPad mini
Dobby:135mm x 67mm x 36.8mm, 199g, about the size of an iPhone 6

Obviously, the Dobby drone is smaller and more portable.

Price

At the current time the Zerotech Dobby can be found on sale for $349, which includes the drone, its battery, a charger and 4 blades; there are no prop guards or any other accessories.

The Hover Camera Passport will, on the other hand cost $599 and the package includes the drone, protective case, case strap, easy-carry bag, two rechargeable LiPo batteries, charger, an USB 3.0 cable and 4 spare propellers.

Controls

There’s no dedicated remote control. Instead you fly using your smartphone. The free Do.fun app, available for Android and iOS, is required to control the quadcopter.

The Dobby is pretty easy to fly. It automatically takes off from flat ground—don’t try from a stony driveway or a grassy lawn, however, as the rotors are too low to the ground to spin up on anything but a flat surface. Takeoff and landing are automatic, but you may have to calibrate the aircraft compass and the phone compass before your first flight. The app walks you through that process, which involves spinning the Dobby and waving your phone in a figure-eight pattern.

There are two control schemes available. Selfie mode adjusts the directions in relation to your position. It can also be set to a landscape videography mode, which flies the drone in relation to the position of its nose.

A control pad on the left side of the app adjusts altitude and spins the Dobby about its axis. To move it forward, backward, left, or right in space you hold your thumb down on the right half of the screen and tilt your phone in the direction you want it to fly.

There are a few automated flight modes. You can set it to orbit around a point in space, keeping its camera pointed at the center. It also has Target and Face Tracking, perfect for the selfie crowd—target yourself and the Dobby will follow you around. Finally there’s Return-to-Home, which brings the quadcopter back to its launch point.

As for the Hover camera, the Passport has an accompanying app that gives you a fair number of controller layout options. You can fly with two virtual joysticks if you’re familiar with traditional controls; use the simplified layout if you just need to get the camera in position; or even turn on tilt mode and steer the drone around by tilting your phone in any direction. As with most smartphone-based controls, the Passport’s manual modes do feel a bit loose and imprecise.

It does Orbit mode, in which the drone will fly in a circle around you regardless of where you move; as well as 360 Panorama mode, in which the drone will execute a 360-degree spin and then stitch together a single panoramic image.

The most impressive modes are the two that make use of the Passport’s image recognition software: Face Track and Body Track — both of which are self explanatory. To use them, you simply tap on the face or body that you’d like to follow, and the Hover Camera will do whatever it takes to keep the subject in frame. The software isn’t quite as robust or intuitive as DJI’s Active Track technology (which can track any object you select), but it’s pretty effective, and definitely one of the Passport’s best features.

Performance and Video Quality

Video is recorded at 1080p quality. It’s silent, which is fine as propeller noise is all a microphone would pick up. Stabilization is digital, and the result is wobbly, jittery video. Colors look good, but I’ve seen better detail from 1080p video before.

Stills are captured in JPG format at 13MP resolution. Image quality is on par with what you get from a midrange smartphone. But if you’re used to Snapchatting with your phone’s front camera you’ll be happy with the Dobby‘s imaging capabilities. Just don’t expect anything more.

(via Dobby)

On the other hand, the Hover Camera Passport is touted as a selfie camera, the camera itself is admittedly rather lackluster compared to what’s available on some other drones like Mavic Pro. It can shoot in 4K, 1080p, or 720p — but is limited to 30 frames per second regardless of the resolution. It also doesn’t have a gimbal, and relies on a combination of digital stabilization and a single-axis swivel to stabilize images. Effectively, this means you’ll need to shoot in 1080p if you want smooth video, since 4K video is only stabilized along one axis and will likely be shaky.

(via Hover Camera)

In terms of the image quality and stabilization, Dobby is ahead of the Hover Camera. And it comes with 100m operating range range compared to 20m of Hover Camera.

Flight time

Hover Camera: 10mins
Dobby: 9mins

Both of them are good for social media sharing, easy to carry around and shot battery time, the choice may come down to camera and price.

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