We’re seeing more and more drone projects that are being designed for the vanity of human beings, which these days has a more tech touch to it and has become a household world by itself --- Selfie. But sometimes these selfie drones can be put to work for other purposes, such as in airsoft where their small and compact sizes can be used to scout ahead whether indoors or outdoors.

But carrying a drone is another added problem with the load that an airsoft player will be carrying. If there is away to carry it without the bulk, then we’re all for it.

A project on Kickstarter has attracted our attention as it can meet our airsoft needs, and it might just become a reality as it has already been fully funded with more days to go before its crowdfunding campaign ends.

Called Selfly it is a phone case that doubles as flying camera drone! Most of us carry smartphones nowadays and we put them in phone cases to protect them. Now if that phone case can also be used as a flying camera drone to take selfies of us at different angles and heights, then it can also be used for airsoft as an intelligence gathering or recon tool. Since it’s a phone case, it can be safely tucked away in a pouch or pocket in our loadout together with the phone.

Once deployed as a flying camera drone, it is controlled using the smartphone connected via Wifi. It can take hi-res photos at 8 megapixels (though we could have preferred it to be at least 12mp) and takes videos at 1080p HD at 30 frames per second. However, the quality of the video being transmitted to your smartphone will be of lower resolution, which for now, can be understandable.

To control it, there are two methods. The first one is “Fly By Stick” which you can use stick controls on your smartphone or use the gravity sensors of the phone. The second methods is called “Fly By Picture” by manipulating the picture on the screen and the Selfly will work accordingly as claimed by the Selfly team. They plan to make it an open source thing so other developers can build on it and share their improvements.

When done flying it, you can fold it back into a 9mm thin phone case. Compatible phones when it gets released are the iPhone 6/6 Plus, iPhone 7,/7 Plus, Galaxy S6/S6 Edge, Galaxy 7/7 Edge and Nexus 6.

As for the flying time, it is just 5 minutes, but that’s how many micro drones last these days. The battery is built-in and you cannot swap it so have a powerbank handy to charge it via Micro USB.

Convinced that you can use it for some tactical purposes in airsoft games? Well, if you’re not, then you can still settle with its portability and being a more flexible camera drone to take selfies of yourself and your team mates.

The Selfly crowdfunding project on Kickstarter has already smashed its funding goals with less than two weeks to go, having raised over half a million U.S. dollars from an original funding goal of US$125,000.00.  If interested in owning one, you can pledge at least US$99 to get one Selfly Camera Kit. You can choose phone model and colour (it will be black and white for now) and they are expecting to release this by June 2017.