After the first HoverAir X1 video did well, I took it back out to the garden for round two — leaning on its hands-free modes (orbit, follow, and a rise-and-reveal) to show you around: the sweet corn, the climbing beans, the tomatoes filling out.
Short version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3Z9jkCTEVo
Does it record sound? Yes — but through your phone
The top question last time was whether the X1 records audio. It does — but the sound is captured by your phone during recording, not by a mic on the drone. I found that out the honest way: I left my phone across the garden while the drone orbited me, so what it picked up is faint (there’s a sample in the video). The fix is simple — keep the phone close, or pair headphones or a mic to it.
It flew into the hedge
It didn’t all go smoothly. At one point the drone flew straight into the hedge and dropped like a stone into the plants. I walked over, picked it up, and it was completely fine — flew again straight after. Tougher than it looks, and worth showing rather than hiding: this is an experiment, not an advert.
On ND filters (a heads-up)
If you go looking to make drone footage more cinematic, you’ll be told to add an ND filter — a dark filter over the lens that lets the camera use a more natural, film-like shutter in bright light. Worth knowing: HoverAir only sells an ND set for the X1 Pro and ProMax, not the base X1 I’m flying.
How this was made
Experiment 12 in an open series documenting the process. I recorded the narration in one take; it was auto-transcribed and cut to line up with the footage, with on-screen callout labels naming each plant as the drone looks at it, a product card, an AI-generated music bed, and a full automated QA pass — checking the audio for glitches and every frame for anything identifying — before publishing. There’s even a clip of the editing session in there. Edited with Google Gemini, Whisper, ElevenLabs, Pillow and ffmpeg, orchestrated through Claude Code.
Rover Planet — fuel your curiosity.
