Our series of conversations with founders and companies going through HYPE’s Spin Accelerator in Taiwan. In this conversation we spotlight DP Smart Technology.
Just about ready to be publicly launched, Taiwanese startup DP Smart Technology has developed a lightweight, portable six-lens camera called Rogy.
The position that the company hopes to take advantage of is that their cameras are small and technologically advanced which can service many verticals and applications within and out of sport.
Describe your recent experience at the HYPE Bootcamp in Taiwan?
Kevin Chiang: “Joining HYPE gives us a chance to focus in on the sports vertical and help give us a lot of connections. I’m really excited that we were selected to go into the HYPE SPIN Lab and will continue to get more chances to learn as we go to the Demo Day. By the end of the program we hope to have built a lot of great connections to help us launch our product into different channels and wider markets.”
Tell me about your main product Rogy?
KC: “Rogy is a 360-degree camera and we think it’s the most user-friendly 360-degree camera in the world. The technologies we’re using is what we call in-camera stitching, which means no post processing and the biggest advantage is we can do live-streaming without a computer.
“In the post processing if you want to do live streaming it means you need to connect to external apps or software, you need to connect to your computer to do all of the camera stitching but with our camera you don’t need to do that.”
As it’s such a consumer-friendly, high performance camera how do you see it being used in sport or sports broadcasting?
KC: “Our camera is designed to do a lot of things, for one stream sporting events. We want to record and stream those events.
“We can record and stream 4K, in 360-degrees and to have all of that content to be shared online and easily with all social media channels. For example, let’s look at a concert, so not a sporting event, it’s an easy camera to live stream performances. With some sporting activities drones are used. Drones of course fly around with a camera attached but with a 360-degree camera you don’t need to do as much flying, turning or spins.”
Describe some of the specifications.
KC: “It weights 270 grams. It has six camera lenses. The traditional problem is that cameras with six lenses are usually quite bulky. It’s the lightest six lens camera in production.
“Our cameras can stream over wi-fi or wireless streaming but we can also stream over wired networks just in case in some areas there isn’t any wi-fi or a decent reception. We can connect our camera to a wired network.
“As it’s lightweight and portable, we can work with so many different people, we can work with drone companies and they can use our cameras with their drones to take aerial vision.”
What does the next 12 months look like for the company?
KC: “We’re a young startup so we’re working on positioning our brand and next year once the product is ready we want to build partnerships. For example, with our business model, we have a B2C strategy and we also have a unique position to target B2B, we can work with many software companies to provide a package deal. Our cameras are suitable for virtual reality. We are already in talks with companies in Taiwan and we want to work different companies and bundle our hardware with their software.
“Then looking at streaming, we can take advantage of 5G’s availability in developing countries which is very useful for streaming, live-streaming and virtual reality
“Then you consider something like artificial intelligence, when you’re able to stream live to different platforms, not just social media but any open platform, with AI developers can take our streamed content and do facial or action recognition. There are huge possibilities with our camera.”
Conversations produced in collaboration with HYPE Sports Innovation.
