ET OnlineAt the age of 23, Amardeep Singh took the entrepreneurial plunge early in his life when his startup ideaForge became India's first drone company to provide unmanned aerial vehicles for security and surveillance.
"Around 2009, I was travelling across India for demonstrations while fueling my other passion in Photography and video making. I was happily capturing for years thinking that I will make some good videos out of them and share with my friends and family. To my utter surprise, I made 1 video in 3 years. I never had time to sit and edit. I figured I wasn't alone with this issue. This is probably where I started thinking about some solution for this. This is when my good friend Rahul Vats joined me to start NexGear," says NexGear, cofounder, Amardeep Singh.
Singh and Vats came up with the idea of an intelligent action camera that could one easily strap, shoot, edit and share videos. "Frodo starts where current action cameras hold-back. Adventures are all about breaking free. But, today's cameras either bind you to an editing table or to multiple bulky devices and accessories. So we wanted to tackle both issues by re-designing the action camera and integrating intelligence in it," says Singh, 30.
Frodo has been designed to address issues with current action cameras, biggest being off-loading content and then editing videos. Frodo automatically edits hours of raw footage into short shareable stories.
Singh says Frodo is different than others in the market mainly on two aspects. First is the Intelligent Auto-Editing aspect of the camera. "Capturing has always been the easy part with action cameras, but what happens after capturing is the real part which makes the difference between the video dying on a hard disc and being shared out. Offloading footage and editing has been a major hassle. Frodo does it for you by automatically, syncing your footage to phone and then giving you 1-2 min summaries from hours of footage, thereby making it shareable. More adventure. Less Editing," says Singh.
Frodo has built-in 6-axis motion sensors and the evolutionary algorithm uses this motion data, optical flow data, audio signal and face detection to create 4 styles of video summaries to choose - action cut, slow cut, people story, 15-sec Instagram cut.
The second feature that makes the camera different is that most action cameras have been 'wear-enabled' using mounts and accessories. "Frodo is probably the only camera which is inherently wearable on your wrist ready to capture even the most fleeting moments with a quick 0.7 second Boot-To-Shoot time. And no, you don't have to shoot all your footage from your wrist. Its extendable strap allows you to strap it on your head, arm, bike and virtually an adventure gear. We are trying to minimize on the mounts and accessories typically associated with most action cameras and make it readily available at all times for all adventures, small and big," says Singh.
It was unveiled to the world earlier this year at CES 2016, Las Vegas and has received a lot of support and encouragement from the tech community. It has been listed as one of the Top 5 Hardware Startups in India by Qualcomm, as well as the first adventure camera from the Indian shores.
"We are initially targeting people who are into adventures and who want to capture their experiences and share with the world. The US is going to be a big market since it already has a huge base. The Indian market is also growing very rapidly in this space and is surely our target," says Singh.
Frodo's design also makes it easy to carry everywhere and can be attached to a battery pack for long shoots. The boot-to-shoot time of 0.7 seconds is also about 4 times faster than current adventure cameras like GoPro. Also, Frodo's combination of hardware and software allows you to share your adventure video on the go and as easily as sharing a photo. Weighing about 110 grams, apart from having Gyro- based Video Stabilization, Frodo can also tell time.
Watch Frodo in action:
"We started off by building a proof of concept. Later we got angel funding from Powai Lake Ventures, GrowX Ventures, friends and family. We are looking for further funding to bring Frodo into the market. We have also recently launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo," says Singh. Through Indiegogo, NexGear plans to raise about $50,000, of which about 52 % has already been raised since the launch of the campaign on April 4.
Rahul Vats, cofounder says, "Frodo is ready. The intelligence is ready. But, we need support to bring Frodo into production. We have done our best in creating the perfect adventure camera, but need one final push to make it available to the world. We are hoping the Indiegogo funding campaign will do just that."
Indiegogo backers can pre-order Frodo at a special early bird price of $149 (16GB Frodo) with an estimated delivery time of November, 2016. Frodo has a recording time of 1.5 hours at 1080 HD and is currently available in two options - 16GB & 32GB (with future plans to launch a 64GB version). Graava is another similar product that is available in the US, but is over $100 costlier and gets lapped up by consumers as soon as it goes on sale.
You can check out and contribute to Frodo's Indiegogo campaign here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/frodo-the-most-intelligent-adventure-camera
"Around 2009, I was travelling across India for demonstrations while fueling my other passion in Photography and video making. I was happily capturing for years thinking that I will make some good videos out of them and share with my friends and family. To my utter surprise, I made 1 video in 3 years. I never had time to sit and edit. I figured I wasn't alone with this issue. This is probably where I started thinking about some solution for this. This is when my good friend Rahul Vats joined me to start NexGear," says NexGear, cofounder, Amardeep Singh.
Singh and Vats came up with the idea of an intelligent action camera that could one easily strap, shoot, edit and share videos. "Frodo starts where current action cameras hold-back. Adventures are all about breaking free. But, today's cameras either bind you to an editing table or to multiple bulky devices and accessories. So we wanted to tackle both issues by re-designing the action camera and integrating intelligence in it," says Singh, 30.
Frodo has been designed to address issues with current action cameras, biggest being off-loading content and then editing videos. Frodo automatically edits hours of raw footage into short shareable stories.
Singh says Frodo is different than others in the market mainly on two aspects. First is the Intelligent Auto-Editing aspect of the camera. "Capturing has always been the easy part with action cameras, but what happens after capturing is the real part which makes the difference between the video dying on a hard disc and being shared out. Offloading footage and editing has been a major hassle. Frodo does it for you by automatically, syncing your footage to phone and then giving you 1-2 min summaries from hours of footage, thereby making it shareable. More adventure. Less Editing," says Singh.
Frodo has built-in 6-axis motion sensors and the evolutionary algorithm uses this motion data, optical flow data, audio signal and face detection to create 4 styles of video summaries to choose - action cut, slow cut, people story, 15-sec Instagram cut.
The second feature that makes the camera different is that most action cameras have been 'wear-enabled' using mounts and accessories. "Frodo is probably the only camera which is inherently wearable on your wrist ready to capture even the most fleeting moments with a quick 0.7 second Boot-To-Shoot time. And no, you don't have to shoot all your footage from your wrist. Its extendable strap allows you to strap it on your head, arm, bike and virtually an adventure gear. We are trying to minimize on the mounts and accessories typically associated with most action cameras and make it readily available at all times for all adventures, small and big," says Singh.
It was unveiled to the world earlier this year at CES 2016, Las Vegas and has received a lot of support and encouragement from the tech community. It has been listed as one of the Top 5 Hardware Startups in India by Qualcomm, as well as the first adventure camera from the Indian shores.
"We are initially targeting people who are into adventures and who want to capture their experiences and share with the world. The US is going to be a big market since it already has a huge base. The Indian market is also growing very rapidly in this space and is surely our target," says Singh.
Frodo's design also makes it easy to carry everywhere and can be attached to a battery pack for long shoots. The boot-to-shoot time of 0.7 seconds is also about 4 times faster than current adventure cameras like GoPro. Also, Frodo's combination of hardware and software allows you to share your adventure video on the go and as easily as sharing a photo. Weighing about 110 grams, apart from having Gyro- based Video Stabilization, Frodo can also tell time.
Watch Frodo in action:
"We started off by building a proof of concept. Later we got angel funding from Powai Lake Ventures, GrowX Ventures, friends and family. We are looking for further funding to bring Frodo into the market. We have also recently launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo," says Singh. Through Indiegogo, NexGear plans to raise about $50,000, of which about 52 % has already been raised since the launch of the campaign on April 4.
Rahul Vats, cofounder says, "Frodo is ready. The intelligence is ready. But, we need support to bring Frodo into production. We have done our best in creating the perfect adventure camera, but need one final push to make it available to the world. We are hoping the Indiegogo funding campaign will do just that."
Indiegogo backers can pre-order Frodo at a special early bird price of $149 (16GB Frodo) with an estimated delivery time of November, 2016. Frodo has a recording time of 1.5 hours at 1080 HD and is currently available in two options - 16GB & 32GB (with future plans to launch a 64GB version). Graava is another similar product that is available in the US, but is over $100 costlier and gets lapped up by consumers as soon as it goes on sale.
You can check out and contribute to Frodo's Indiegogo campaign here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/frodo-the-most-intelligent-adventure-camera
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