What you see here is the future of basketball and in case you haven’t already notice, this seemingly normal ‘basketball’ is also a drone. OK. We are just kidding when we say it is the future of basketball. It is NOT, but it could very well be. Imagine a game of basketball played like Quidditch in Harry Potter’s world, with this flying basketball, Zcadoo Folding Basketball RC Drone, as the Golden Snitch. Ermmm. What about the flying broomsticks? Well, TBH, we haven’t thought about that yet. Baby step, my friend, baby step. For now, players will have jump to grab this basketball snitch. OK. I am kidding again. You don’t do that. You just fly this thing like any other toy drones.
It is controlled by a dedicated controller, but it can also be controlled by an app and it has a built-in 2MP HD camera to take stills and record videos, and transmits real-time image to your smartphone. I bet Hogwarts’ Golden Snitch can’t do that, can it? Interestingly, this toy drone can also be manipulated using an optional gesture controller. Unfortunately though, it can’t be used as a regular basketball. I guess our technology is still not there yet. But hey, at least it flies up to 100 feet (30 meters) far on 2.4 GHz radio (or just 50 feet, or 15 meters, when connected through WiFi). Another caveat is, it is only good for 6 minutes of flight per 150 minutes charge. Hmmm… I am quite sure a game of Quidditch takes a lot longer than that. Oh, well…
Other notables include SD card for image storage, automatic take-off and landing, altitude hold function, low battery automatic landing plus audio alert, “headless mode”, 2 flight speeds, 6-axis gyro, 4-channel control, 360 degrees flip and rotate, choice of automatic or manual trimming, user-controllable internal light, voice command capable, and finally, it has an one-touch transformation from a basketball to a drone. There’s another caveat actually and that is, it isn’t a full-size basketball. At just 3.9 inches (9.9 centimeters) in diameter, it is way smaller than a regulation basketball which is about 30 inches. It will be nice if it is a full-size basketball, though.
You can find the Zcadoo Folding Basketball RC Drone on Amazon going for $49.50 a pop.
Images: Zcadoo.
Source: Technabob.
