The Lily Camera

[Ronnie]

I stand corrected. After taking a closer look at the P4 I have to say it is all that and a bag of chips. In addition to the obstacle avoidance and follow me features they have increased the trnamistter range to almost 20,ooo feet and its max speed is 45 mph. Now that they and other companies offer crash insurance it will make flying it over water a lot easier for many people. I've cancelled my air dog order but not my Lily order since I like the phantom or airdog the Lily is water resistant and floats. Still I won't be surprised if the Lily is late by 3 to 6 months.

 

[Ronnie]

Update, Lily is going out of business before shipping any production units.
Bummer, I placed my order in May 2015, got a shipping schedule for December in October 2016 and just got the attached message tonight.

A little salt in the wound, I could have purchased a mavic pro for $750 through my job before Xmas but passed expecting the lily to come in.

 

[Big Shasta]

Update, Lily is going out of business before shipping any production units.
Bummer, I placed my order in May 2015, got a shipping schedule for December in October 2016 and just got the attached message tonight.
View attachment 49899
A little salt in the wound, I could have purchased a mavic pro for $750 through my job before Xmas but passed expecting the lily to come in.

That sucks. Do you get all your money back or just a partial refund depending on how much they have left? Is losing all your money a risk of kickstarter?

 

[subysti]

Why didn't they offer up another Kickstarter buy? I was going to pre order but there wasn't any left. I think they could have raised a lot more money with pre orders. Sounds like something else went wrong if they couldn't get any funding support.

 

[Chris K]

Dam man. we have been waiting over 2 years for this dang thing. that a heck of a crappy investment. guess time to request a refund before the massses find out.

 

[biffdotorg]

That is a bummer for sure. We all speculated on what their true intent was. I still stick by the theory that they were trying to produce some features that the other didn't have in hopes of being acquired. The others just had more working capital to bring it to market more quickly.

But look at GoPro now, they may have rushed just a bit. Is Karma even on the market right now, I know they were pulled for safety reasons. I hope they get that worked out. DJI needs some competition. But the Mavic is just too cool.

 

[Volffas]

Karma still isn't for sale. And as far as I know there hasn't been a kickstarter about a new drone that has gone all the way through.

I guess that just goes to show how incredibly difficult it is to make a quality quadcopter. DJI is WAY ahead of the competition at this point.

Hopefully everyone will get their money back, but I wouldn't be counting on it if I had invested.

 

[Mainah]

Perhaps I am lucky but I have received my "reward" (product) for every Kickstarter project that I have backed. Now most have had delays and one did not deliver nearly as promised (the Bragi Dash headphones were a real let down). Even with a mostly positive experience I have learned that there is little that I can't wait for. While I still read what is in the pipeline every couple of months I no longer "back" any of the projects. I find that I am better off waiting until the product and competitors hit the market and reading the reviews. When it comes to quad copters I do believe that AIRDOG was successful on Kickstarter. I did not back that one as I thought their goals were lofty ... ha. I also agree with @Volffas in that DJI is way ahead of the game. I also think Go Pro will also catch up in the follow me space with lots of money to throw at R&D in order to stay relevant in the FPV and action sports camera space.

Making a rf controlled gyroscopic stabilized quadcopter is relatively easy. Making a mass production quality product that is smart enough to autonomously follow a subject that is moving without colliding into other objects, with decent battery life and ease of use for the end user is many orders more difficult.

 

[Ronnie]

The story that @djetok posted covers a lot.
In summary along with additional info:
Lily Started with $14m in venture capital
Took in another $34m in pre-orders
Not crowd or Kickstarter funded
HQ in SF, hired a lot of employees with mfg and robotics experience
Put out regular updates and conducted a beta program with 100 or so users
Noted on Social media near Xmas that they were on track to Start shipping in days
Dropped a bomb of an email on all customers who pre-ordered last night (Jan. 11)

Am I and others who pre-ordered going to get a full refund? Who knows but I doubt it. If they had $34m to refund its pre-order customers I don't see why they couldn't they just produce the Lilys and ship them instead. I just took a look at my order confirmation, I paid $568.31 ($499 for the copter the rest for tax and shipping) but would feel fortunate if I get just half back.

There are other better copters out there but not with the same features that the lily was supposed to have (e.g. Water resistant, buoyant, primarily self flying follow me based v. Requiring a lot of manual user control). The max camera resolution (1080) is now considered obsolete but it would have been fine with me and I'd bet a lot of others.

The air dog was crowd funded and has had some success. I cancelled my pre-order and got full refund ($1,200 ish) before the production units shipped, after nearly a two year wait, when the phantom 4 (my current quad copter) was released. Now the it sells on Amazon for $1,600 and people are claiming that post sales support does not exist. After these two experiences I will never pre-order or purchase a crowd funded product again.

 

[BigN8]

I would be willing to bet that all you get back is tax and shipping. That sucks dude. Sorry.

 

[motorboater]

This was my first backing of any new product preorder and I'll likely never do it again either. Hopefully we get all our money back. I did get an email Friday asking for alternate refund choice (Paypal or check) stating they were unable to credit the same card I used for the purchase. This makes sense as I've since canceled that account, so there must have been an attempt to refund me.

I was really looking forward to this product. I'll have to find an alternative now as I really do want something similar. It was obvious that they werent going to ever ship these as a Lily product when the delays kept coming. I figured at best they'd be acquired and we'd have our orders credited to some new product from a different owner.

They are going to be hit with a lawsuit for at least $300m ($2500/order) due to possible fraudulent claims. Internal emails show that the marketing videos were knowingly produced using GoPro and DJI products and not disclosed as such. Even their "product updates" they'd post on their progress started sounding a little suspicious to me and demonstrated that there was likely fraudulent claims made early on.

Seems to me that the founders, being young and lacking any business acumen, probably got some bad advice and made some bad choices, perhaps unknowingly.

 

[Mainah]

I find the lawsuit interesting. As I understand it ...When you give money to someone for a "reward" such as with kickstarter you are not purchasing a product and there are no garuntees. Pre-orders are a whole different ball of wax though.

 

[BigN8]

I found this kind of laughable seeing how that last try by Lily bombed so bad.

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...tional-auto-follow-drone-with-4k?ref=category

 

[Ronnie]

I could careless about the refund, I wanted the product. Definitely feel misled, especially after all the product updates and expected shipping schedule. They went so far as to confirm my shipping address.

 

[Big Shasta]

I found this kind of laughable seeing how that last try by Lily bombed so bad.

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...tional-auto-follow-drone-with-4k?ref=category

So basically its a dji mavic....Good luck with that.

Interesting that they have 3 staff members for marketing but whos ever heard of them?

 

[biffdotorg]

So basically its a dji mavic....Good luck with that.

Interesting that they have 3 staff members for marketing but whos ever heard of them?

I ordered one of those Firefly cameras. Crazy Chinese knock off! Overheats to beat hell but took good video. The whole thought process was it was the exact same dimension of my GoPro Hero 3+ Black that took a crap. It worked, but I ended up buying a GoPro Hero 4 Black instead for my drone.

 

[Ronnie]

This (i.e., a partial refund in re the lily flying camera) showed up in the mail this past weekend. I almost tossed it as junk mail, glad i did not but truth be told i assumed a while back that i was not going to get a penny back on this pre-purchase. Lesson learned if Crowd funding or anything like it is involved count me all out. That is, if its not already in production i am not interested.

 

[txav8r]

It is great that you got back almost all of your money @Ronnie . I am with you, I'm not helping to perpetuate the development of products or services at my own expense, there would have to be a promise of ROI and stated risk, for me to consider it an investment...and I am not too risk tolerant, so chances are I would be on the sidelines. I am glad to see this was a pretty reputable company regardless, even if they are closing the doors. It is hard to believe they had 98% of the money collected to give back. I think congratulations are in order here!

 

[Chris K]

Got our refund deposited directly to paypal as well. Was so nice to see and perfect time of the year

 

[motorboater]

Got my check also. Only out $15 for "processing". Meanwhile, loving my Mavic Pro!