This 1000 Watt Flashlight Drone Is Like Having Your Own Personal Sun
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Ridiculously bright flashlights are cool and all, but if you can make one fly you've basically got ceiling lamps anywhere. That, or a terrifying impersonator of a spaceship or police helicopter. Here's what a humble drone can do 1,000 watts of LED lighting power.
According to the YouTuber who seems to have created this piece of kit, we've got a fancy FreeFly Alta 8 octocopter (about $18,000) strapped with a bank of UG High-CRI LED lights. That stands for "Color Rendering Index" and "is a measure of how accurately a light source illuminates objects' true colors" according to Yuji, the company that made the lights you're seeing here.
The whole rig is powered by a 6S 8 amp battery that apparently lets it hover and light for about ten minutes.
Aside from the stadium-power downfacing illumination, this device's inventor explains that he just added landing gear and a servo to switch the lights on and off remotely.
He also says he picked the Alta 8 drone because it has navigation lights making it easy to spot at night, though I'm hoping for the price of a Ford Fiesta it's also a decent device all-around.
Obviously this flying flashlight has a myriad of potential uses, both good and evil. Such a device would be invaluable in search-and-rescue operations, nighttime filming and/ or hunting Big Foot. But you could also use it to scare the absolute crap out of people, pretending to be cops or alien invaders.
Here's a little more footage of the thing running, as a "behind the scenes" of the video above:
Seeing the thing in action is pretty exciting though. And frankly, beautiful. I'd like to bring one night skiing.