“Ten years ago, this was unobtainable. You know, this stuff was military industrial stuff, tens of millions for each sensor and today it’s pennies and it’s in your pocket,” said Chris Anderson, the CEO of the drone-making firm 3D Robotics, who was until fairly recently the editor of Wired magazine.
Anderson said his business model is simple — “the beauty of hardware is that the business model could not be more head-slappingly obvious. You charge more than it costs. That’s it.”
The company posts their designs online and charge around $500 to $700 to purchase a pre-built drone from them. For Anderson, the future of drones is about looking beyond military use and the stigma attached to them.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
