Been reading the Juno-X thread with people complaining that Roland does not innovate anything anymore (and by innovation they usually mean doing analog reproductions of their 70s/80s gear). Juno-X is fine, not for me but I can see many use cases for it.
At the same time Roland truly innovates elsewhere. I haven’t been this excited about a new product for a while. The Aerocaster is a four camera video streaming system that uses ordinary smartphones wirelessly as the cameras and an iPad as the hub/brains for the whole operation.
I have had this idea of a streaming show from my bookshop for a while and have been googling action cameras and different possibilities for doing it. For the price of one GoPro I can get this Roland system and because everybody already has quite an amazing camera in their pocket you don’t have to buy any. It doubles as an audio interface for a computer when you’re not doing streaming.
I’m pretty sure this thing is gonna sell s**tloads and get a trillion copycats.
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In a hardware package this is new but there have been solutions on iOS very similar to this for quite a while already, you would just have to add an audiointerface if you want more than camera sound (which basically is what the Roland does compared to the software solutions with added tactile controls of the video switching).
This one is not for sale anymore but has been around for several years:
This one is new for me and has a free version and more features for a subscription (unfortunately):
But these solutions are iOS only it seems, don’t know if there’s something similar for Android phones.
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My use case is streaming live music so the audio side is essential. Phone microphones just won’t do except maybe for an added ambience/crowd noise. With the Aerocaster I can take good quality sound from the house mixer. The iPad -based systems are probably fine for talk shows and such but the Aerocaster system basically solves all my problems and for cheap too.
That’s why I mentioned the audio interface 
But the new Roland is indeed a good solution and an atractive product especially if you’re using phones as cameras. In this case definitely better than the ATEM switchers which I currently have.
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I finally managed to snatch my shop one of these this morning. Couldn’t be happier. Haven’t even unboxed it yet as it’s been a busy morning.
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Interested to hear your thoughts on it for your intended purpose in time
