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Swivl motion-tracking dock available for pre-order

Swivl motion-tracking dock available for pre-order

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swivl
swivl

The Swivl is a unique take on a smartphone dock / camera mount — it's one that can track your movement, and pan and tilt to follow you around the room for recording video. Primarily designed for iOS, the tracking is entirely done via the base and a marker that you hold, so it'll work with anything less than 6oz that you can strap into the base: smartphone, compact video camera, decapitated dolls head, or any device that uses a tripod mount. It looks like the iOS integration is controlled by buttons on both the base and the tracking marker, so if you want to use an Android phone, you're going to have to hit record before you start, and just edit that bit out later. If you watch the video below, you can get a fell for some of the potential applications, and being able to walk around the room while you video chat seems to be pretty handy.

Formerly known as the Satarii Star, the Swivl was crowdfunded through the IndieGoGo, and for $159 you can now get a reservation, with plans to ship early next year. This isn't the first time an auto-tracking camera mount has popped up, Sony tried it with the Party-shot dock, which had the advantage of facial detection, but that only worked with two Sony compact cameras while the Swivl can use just about anything.