complete Review of the French smart health connected bird! smart health innovation

The Bionic Bird is a smart health connected bird, which can be piloted with your smartphone via a free application. Designed with miniaturized technology to the extreme, and incredibly light, the bird moves like a real bird and provides an absolutely unique flying experience. We had the chance to meet part of the Bionic Bird team at the Paris Fair a few weeks ago, and we have never tired of this incredible bird.

Bionic Bird, touch the sky with the smart health connected bird

(embed) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyDSlafAidE (/ embed)

Mark : Bionic bird

Category : smart health connected toy

Price : About 119 euros on Amazon

Tested with : Samsung Galaxy mini S4

Bionic bird unboxing

The "bionic" bird comes in its white cardboard box, with magnetic closure, and appears as in a case. When you open the box, you have the impression that you are not only receiving a smart health connected bird, but also a beautiful object. It comes in one piece and is ready to fly (no mounting is necessary, and you just need to charge it). The box also contains a nomad egg charger, a pair of spare wings, and the charger cable. Regarding the user manual, do not look for it, it is not there! Very well developed on the application, you just need to read a few lines in the manual for getting started, and voila.

Design and Ergonomics of the Bionic bird

Upon receipt of the pack containing the Bionic bird, we notice the sleek and mastered design of the whole. The box is simple, but nice and practical to keep the bird when it’s not in flight. And the box opens with the favorite phrase of the engineer behind the toy, Mr. Edwin Van Ruymbeke: “Touch the sky“.

The bird itself is a little gem of technology, miniaturized to the extreme according to the will of its creator, and in order to preserve a life-size bird ((8cm x 2cm in diameter for the body, and a length of 17 cm). The total wingspan of the bird is 33cm. The bird is extremely light and weighs only 8.35 grams. The Bionic bird website also specifies that this lightness was at the heart of the design: “(…) Each component down to the least of the axes was the result of a weight optimization study“.

Yet the bird is made up of motors, of a drums, from two processors and of miniaturized electrical components. The materials used are liquid crystal polymer, carbon fibers and self lubricated polyacetal; or components recognized for their lightness. To finish the egg delivered in the pack is nothing less than a nomad charger of an elegant simplicity, which will allow you to recharge the bird simply … by placing it on it, and by magnetic contact!

Application "The Flying App ”

The application “The Flying App ” is available on Google play and on theApple Store and is shipping. Very intuitive and remarkably well supplied, the latter will fly your bird via Bluetooth. Start by naming your bird, and go directly to manual with making it fly. The manual that then appears on your phone contains absolutely all the information you might need: compatibility, technical characteristics, dimensions and performance, FAQS, video tutorial for the flight, or charger manual. Nothing has been left to chance, and the testers that we have been left speechless (having the habit of often dealing with summary or incomplete applications).

If you return to the health home page of the application, a tab guide You are also offered: the latter will accompany you in all stages of your first flight. A great idea when you are somewhat destabilized by the fragile and fragile aspect of the bird a priori (and although the bird was actually designed to withstand shocks and a few hundred flight cycles). You are then offered two modes: “Easy”And“Expert“. Then, each of the application commands and bird capabilities are explained to you, and all of these diagrams supported please! (When we told you that it was elegant to the tips of its wings, this bird!).

Getting started with the Bionic Bird

Flight preparation

Upon receipt of the box containing the bionic bird, the bird is ready to fly ! Indeed, the size of the box not only makes it possible to keep the entire bird in its most flat position, but the internal ergonomics of the box also makes it possible to store the bird safely. So you just have to download the Flying App on your smartphone or iPhone, quickly read the manual or guide if you feel the need, and go directly to the pilot page to click on the "Fly away“. Here you go for some 8 incredible minutes of flight!

The egg-charger charges in 1 hour 30 minutes, and the bird in just 12 min. You can charge bird and egg at the same time. Once the egg is fully charged, go for a walk in a beautiful park or any other large space: because the egg gives you a autonomy of 10 complete flights, i.e. some 75 minutes of flight. And just for that, we say hat!

The flight

And no ! No health home video of our magnificent flights. The reason ? Despite a simple handling, we had the feeling thatit took a few hours of flight time with the Bionic bird to handle it perfectly, so a video of our early days wouldn't do justice to the real technical and aesthetic prowess which was made with this smart health connected bird. So you will find attached a video showing the creator of the bird flying it himself with his phone, which will allow you to see at some point the flight of the bird approaches that of a real bird. And this is indeed the real success of this smart health smart health connected object! Because the application also allows you to choose the angles of the wings, and some stickers supplied with the pack still allow you to modify the inclination of the wings, giving you a breathtaking flying experience. A technological feat that blew us away, and which attracted our attention at the Foire de Paris a few weeks ago.

(embed) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roExxoCsEkc (/ embed)

To fly in good conditions, we recommend large spaces! The recognition range of the bird is 100 meters and its ergonomics will allow you to achieve a lot of prowess, antics and turns of all kinds. A real bird is in your hands! In addition, the product has been tested for a few hundred flight cycles, and despite its fragile appearance, its lightness is in fact an asset to allow it to resist shocks. It is simply recommended to handle it with great care outside of flights.

Once the bird has been recognized and identified by your smartphone, tap the "Fly away“, Then take off your bird by gradually increasing its speed of wing beats on your phone. Then it's very simple, the tilt parameters having been set beforehand by yourself, you will be able to direct the bird by touching the piloting interface (left-right) or by simply tilting your phone. Convinced? So ready to take off in 3, 2, 1…!

Compatibility

Compatibility with Apple devices: requires Bluetooth 4 (BLE) and iOS 7 or above; iPhone (6 Plus, 6, 5s, 5c, 5 & 4s) and iPod touch.
The use of iPAd is not recommended for obvious reasons of space, it is nevertheless compatible with – iPad (Air, Mini, 3rd & 4th gen).
Compatibility with Android: Requires Bluetooth 4 (BLE) with Android 4.3 and above.

Against competition

The dream of Edwin Van Ruymbeke is achieved with this Bionic bird 1.0. Now, the new challenge that the creator has set for himself is none other than to integrate a camera into your bird, and allow him to film what he sees during his flights. A new technical performance which will give birth to Bionic bird 2.0 this time, but which will also place the bird in a more severe competition with … drones ! Direct competition does not currently exist, the bionic bird being the only smart health connected bird of its class present on the market.

(embed) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZdSMAG90Rs (/ embed)

Conclusion

What we liked: “Touch the sky”, the dream of the creator of the Bionic bird keeps its promises and goes further, offering you a sublime flight experience and a real moment of poetry. We are surprised by the incredible design performance, which made it possible to reproduce almost perfectly the flight of a real bird. We also liked the application very much, because of its simplicity and ease of use.

What we didn't like: We admit it without blushing, the difficulty of this category was to rack our brains to find something to write here! So the only downside we notice is the aspect aesthetic of the bird which, despite its incredible technological qualities and its minimalist size, remains – up close – a little disappointing. Especially in view of the almost natural gestures that the bird can do. One point to dig for the next?

This smart health connected bird was born from a childhood dream (that of the designer) and that's what you feel when you open the pack. But a kid's dream that would have come true superbly: the technology that drives the Bionic bird and that makes it, mistakenly, make the flight of a real bird, we were sincerely impressed. We can hardly imagine the work that was done upstream to achieve this perfect measure between technology and lightness. And all we want to say to the team behind this little technological masterpiece, in a nutshell: bravo! And also that we look forward to the next one.