Mankind might not be able to fly yet, but until that day comes it seems we’re pretty happy to simulate the experience by strapping cameras to everything from falcons, to drones, to now even frisbees. Although that last one requires a cleverly designed mechanism so that the footage from a flying, spinning disc isn’t completely sickening.
The solution is the Frisbeecam, made by mounting a compact hi-def action camera to the top of a plastic disc using a sort of weathervane-like tail that always keeps the camera pointed forward. There’s still some occasional stabilising needed in post-production to make the footage watchable, but the results are pretty wonderful.
Originally revealed at last year’s Maker Faire, the new version of the Frisbeecam has been further refined with better optics and more components created with a 3D printer so that the whole thing looks very refined.
The resulting footage is even better now, and it’s incredibly mesmerising to watch. Not only that, it’s a relatively cheap and easy to way to get aerial imagery. You don’t need to know how to fly a complicated quadcopter. And more importantly, if this crashes you’re not out thousands of dollars in damages. In all likelihood, it will be instantly ready to fly again. [Facebook via Make]