Lilly Drones Goes BK

[PonoBill]

Lilly is ending operations and refunding at least part of the crowdfunding bucks. Also 3DR, one of the pioneers of drone controllers and autonomous flight, has ceased selling components and drones and is focused on the software side of commercial mapping.

Start of a shakeout for sure. It's a lot harder to make these things safe and reliable than people expected. I wondered how that would work as more drone manufacturers started to concentrate on the non-hiobbyist, technically limited, general public. Answer: Not well.

DFI has probably slammed a lot of doors by raising the bar with the Phantom 4, Mavic and Inspire 2. Especially the Phantom 4. Any high-performance drone manufacturer looking at the Phantom 4 or Mavic is probably in the same boat as a DIY-focused eCar conversion company looking at a Tesla.

[surfcowboy]

I agree. With my little experiments lately it's clear that the DJI is covering the bases of the hobbyists and up in complexity.

The $399 breeze that does about what Lilly promised must have hurt. Even if it's not amazing, it's hard to compete.

Think about what we're going to see when the next gen is half the size of a mavic with full auto flight.

I'm goofing off in my living room with a $25 3" wide miracle that has built in gyro trying to figure out what the government must be flying.

It's a bummer to see a small company fail but yes, it seems it's sort of harder in some areas and easier in others. As in a lot of businesses, it's hard in the middle.

[Admin]

The plot thinkens:

https://www.dpreview.com/news/4578968133/lily-robotics-sued-over-claims-of-false-advertising

[PonoBill]

What a ridiculous lawsuit. Crowdfunding is to produce a product. How far along the prototype is before the campaign is an open question, not one to be resolved by some dickhead ambitious lawyer looking for limelight. I never assume the representation in the video could do any of the things portrayed, but rather that the ultimate aim was to do those things. All the lawsuit will do is reduce the amount of money refunded.

It's kind of surprising they didn't simply contract with an existing company to design and build the thing. There was nothing in the video that couldn't have been done with existing tech. A good team could have built it with a hacked Pixhawk.