New Life of a Closed Project From Mota Group

Introduction

We all remem­ber how the drone devel­op­er Lily offi­cial­ly declared bank­rupt­cy and com­plete­ly cur­tailed the project due to a banal lack of funds to start mass pro­duc­tion. We think that many then regret­ted what hap­pened, espe­cial­ly those who invest­ed in this start­up and hoped to the last that every­thing would resume.

Less than a year lat­er, the well-known Amer­i­can com­pa­ny Mota Group drew atten­tion to the closed Lily project. A major play­er in the glob­al mar­ket, found­ed in 2003, long before the exis­tence of DJI Inno­va­tions. The scope of activ­i­ty is the pro­duc­tion and sub­se­quent sale of high-tech con­sumer elec­tron­ics, includ­ing UAVs and robot­ics around the world. With a strong man­u­fac­tur­ing base, Mota Group acquired some of the assets and the Lily brand itself. Then, rely­ing on her own expe­ri­ence in the field of UAVs, she pre­sent­ed the drone in her vision. You will learn more about what the Lily Next-Gen self­ie drone has lost and what it has acquired from our review.

Peculiarities

• Futur­is­tic design
• Made from durable poly­car­bon­ate and brushed alu­minum
• Fold­able beam and rotor design
• All the same quick start prin­ci­ple
• Smartphone/compact remote con­trol with built-in dis­play
• Self-con­fig­ur­ing 13MP 4K cam­era
• Built-in mechan­i­cal gim­bal + dig­i­tal sta­bi­liza­tion
• Flight time 18 min­utes
• 2 × bat­ter­ies (Li-ion) includ­ed
• Bat­tery charg­ing time 30 min­utes
• brush­less motors
• Hor­i­zon­tal flight speed up to 40km/h
• Light­weight, only 385 grams
• Ready to fly out of the box (RTF)

About the product

As we can already see, the new devel­op­er has moved away from the old exte­ri­or and added to the drone’s com­pact­ness due to the fold­able beam design, sim­i­lar in prin­ci­ple to the Kar­ma drone. As a result, the Lily Next-Gen only slight­ly increased in size (in flight con­di­tion): 31.1 × 27.2 × 7.6cm (Lily dimen­sions: 26.1 × 26.1 × 8.18cm.). The drone is made of the same mate­ri­als as the pre­vi­ous Lily — high-qual­i­ty, durable and at the same time light­weight poly­car­bon­ate com­bined with brushed alu­minum, but now it weighs 385g, against 1.3kg Lily.

What was rejected

1. Com­plete depar­ture from ana­log con­struc­tion and design
2. No water and dust pro­tec­tion IP67
3. Miss­ing remote con­trol bracelet
4. The drone takes off exclu­sive­ly from the ground (before it could just be thrown)
5. Autonomous land­ing on the palm is exclud­ed

It’s a pity that Mota Group aban­doned such sig­nif­i­cant advan­tages of the pre­vi­ous ver­sion, because they were the hall­mark of Lily, a portable self­ie drone with an empha­sis on an active lifestyle.

Benefits details

In all oth­er respects, the Lily Next-Gen drone has only suc­ceed­ed. It is ful­ly autonomous thanks to Smart Hov­er™ tech­nol­o­gy, GPS and com­put­er vision. Every­thing is aimed at mak­ing the use of the prod­uct as sim­ple and easy as pos­si­ble.

Communication loss

If Lily Next-Gen los­es con­nec­tion with the smart­phone, it freezes. The sys­tem will first try to restore the con­nec­tion, if this fails, the drone will auto­mat­i­cal­ly switch to the return mode and go to the place of the last take­off, main­tain­ing the set alti­tude through­out the route, tak­ing into account the ter­rain.

Camera

Instead of an FHD cam­era, Lily NG is equipped with a self-adjust­ing 13MP 4K cam­era, which, accord­ing to the man­u­fac­tur­er, is sus­pend­ed using a mechan­i­cal gim­bal that works in con­junc­tion with elec­tron­ic sta­bi­liza­tion. We could­n’t find illus­tra­tions of this drone’s mechan­i­cal sus­pen­sion device, so for now we’ll just take the devel­op­er’s word for it.

External power

Drone pow­er is no longer built-in, but exter­nal. The kit comes with two lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies at once (for the Ful­ly Loaded Pack­age — 3 bat­ter­ies), pro­vid­ing, accord­ing to the spec­i­fi­ca­tion, 18 min­utes of flight each. Charg­ing dock includ­ed — Qual­comm Quick Charge 3.0 pro­vides the short­est charg­ing time — 30 min­utes.

Battery charge control

If the user ignores low bat­tery warn­ings, the Lily NG will soft-land on its own with­in a safe cir­cle from the smart­phone paired with the drone.

Streaming

Every­thing cap­tured by the drone’s cam­era can be broad­cast in real time on social media such as YouTube, Face­book Live, etc. Through the Lily Com­pan­ion appli­ca­tion, the user will also be able to change the cam­era set­tings, edit the cap­tured pho­to / video mate­r­i­al and share it with every­one through all known social net­works in one tap.

Now in place of the bracelet remote, the drone clas­si­cal­ly tracks the smart­phone (IOS/Android) with which it has been paired via the Lily Com­pan­ion app. Flight char­ac­ter­is­tics remained unchanged.

wind resistance

Lily Next-Gen has suc­cess­ful­ly passed wind resis­tance tests with wind speeds over 9.8m/s. But, the man­u­fac­tur­er still rec­om­mends not to fly the drone when the wind speed is high­er than 6.7 m/s.

Safety

Lily Next-Gen, like all mod­ern drones, comes with a geofenc­ing sys­tem — Fly Safe­ly Post­card. The user will always be aware of No-Fly zones.

Control

The drone can be con­trolled in two ways:

1. IOS/Android smart­phone via Lily Com­pan­ion app
2. Using con­trol equip­ment paired with a smart­phone (includ­ed in the “Ful­ly Loaded Pack­age” and can be pur­chased sep­a­rate­ly).

Equipment

The man­u­fac­tur­er offers two con­fig­u­ra­tion options:

1. LILY Cam­era Drone Pro Pack­age (1 year loss/damage pro­tec­tion)
2. LILY Cam­era Drone Ful­ly Loaded Pack­age (1 year loss/damage pro­tec­tion)

Pro package

Fully Loaded Package

Appearance

Specification

Drone

Brand:

Lily

Mod­el:

next-gen

Mate­r­i­al:

Polycarbonate/Brushed alu­minum

Dimen­sions (in flight con­di­tion):

31.1×27.2×7.6cm

Sen­sors:

Accelerometer/3‑Axis Gyroscope/Magnetometer/Barometer/GPS/Geo Fenc­ing

Food:

Exter­nal lithi­um-ion (Li-ion)

Charg­ing time:

30 min­utes

Flight time:

18 min

Return home func­tion:

There is

Dis­tance con­trol func­tion:

There is

Min­i­mum prox­im­i­ty to smart­phone:

3m

FPV Removal Dis­tance When Con­trol­ling Smart­phone:

up to 30m

Max­i­mum lift­ing height when oper­at­ing a smart­phone:

15m

Dis­tance FPV removal when con­trol­ling equip­ment:

2.4km

Max speed:

40km/h

Motors:

Brush­less type

The weight:

385gr

Camera

Matrix:

13MP

Video:

4K at 30fps
FHD @ 60 fps
720p at 120 fps

FOV View­ing Angle:

94º

Cam­era res­o­lu­tion:

13MP

Image Sta­bi­liza­tion:

Inter­nal mechan­i­cal & Dig­i­tal gim­balling, Image Sta­bi­liza­tion, Fixed focus

Media type:

microSD card (16GB)

Video For­mat:

H.264 codec, mp4

Real time video trans­mis­sion dis­tance:

120m

Price

At the moment, Lily Next-Gen is avail­able for pur­chase on the offi­cial web­site of the devel­op­er (includ­ing for the World). The cus­tomer under­takes to deliv­er the drone with­in 30 days after pay­ment to any­where in the world:

1. LILY Cam­era Drone Pro Pack­age — $699
2. LILY Cam­era Drone Ful­ly Loaded Pack­age — $899

Conclusion

Lily Next-Gen is cer­tain­ly a sig­nif­i­cant prod­uct in the home UAV mar­ket. Sub­ject to the cor­re­spon­dence of every­thing declared by the man­u­fac­tur­er with real­i­ty, it is ready to cre­ate tan­gi­ble com­pe­ti­tion for the cur­rent­ly exist­ing self­ie drones and not only.

Video

Video of unbox­ing and inspec­tion of the drone Lily Cam­era Next-Gen.

Flight prepa­ra­tion video and the flight of the Lily Cam­era Next-Gen drone.