FluxLab Netwerk

Someone built a drone umbrella that hovers above your head and follows you in the rain.

No hands. No remote control. Fully autonomous.

The Flying Umbrella 2.0 was built by the YouTube channel I Build Stuff after nearly a year of development. The first prototype was a disaster - it required constant manual corrections and was barely flyable. Version 2.0 is a completely different machine.

The key was the tracking system. A time-of-flight camera mounted beneath the umbrella fires light pulses and measures how quickly they bounce back, building a real-time 3D map of whatever is below. A Raspberry Pi processes that data and continuously feeds position corrections to the flight controller, keeping the umbrella locked overhead as the person moves.

GPS was tried and abandoned - too imprecise for close-range tracking. The depth camera solved what GPS couldn't.

The whole thing folds into a backpack via carbon fiber nylon arms. You deploy it, it locks rigid, takes off, finds you, and stays above you.

It is not a consumer product. The development involved a damaged Raspberry Pi, unreliable camera connections, multiple complete restarts, and eventually a second person joining to stabilize the tracking code.

But it works. A flying umbrella that follows you in the rain is no longer a joke.

Binnen een paar uur gaat onze zesde Landelijke Zeepkistenrace Munte van start. Komt dat zien! Welkom in Munte vanaf de middag.

Zesde Landelijke Zeepkistenrace Munte | zondag 7 juni 2026 Zesde Landelijke Zeepkistenrace Muntezondag 7 juni 2026http://ww...