The YoloBox Pro is a pretty cool device, but it could be even better!
In this video, I'm going to go over all of the features that I wish the YoloBox had.
To start with, I want to talk about things I wish the current generation of the YoloBox Pro had in its software.
Now remember, this is an Android device at the end of the day, so there are a lot of things that they could add in software without replacing the hardware.
Now, when I first started writing this wish list, there was one feature in there that they now have already shipped in a firmware update, and that is the audio mixer.
It used to be the case that you could only have audio from one input selected at a time, and that was pretty limiting because basically it means you could never have, for example,
background music playing over your dialog.
But now in the latest firmware update, you can in fact enable multiple sources of audio, and there's a full audio mixer built in now.
So that's already fantastic, and I'm glad they just checked that one off right off the bat.
But let's keep going.
If you've been watching my live streams, you'll know that I often take advantage of a browser source to bring in graphics on top of my stream.
That's how I show the chat messages on the screen, as well as the map at the beginning of my live streams and other graphics are brought in over the web source as well.
Now it is very cool that on the YoloBox itself, you do have some ability to create graphics built in.
You can show chats if you're live streaming from the device to YouTube.
You can also create lower thirds, but I often want to go a little bit further and have more customization that is not available in the device.
And for that, what I would really love to be able to do is use a web page overlay in the YoloBox.
There's a lot of software out there that is usually created for use in OBS that actually produces a web page that is expected to be overlaid in OBS.
What I would love to be able to do is bring those into the YoloBox, because that would just open this up to a huge amount of different customizations that you can do with all
sorts of different web based graphics packages.
For me, I would be able to bring in the chat through my chrome extension.
I'll be able to use H2R graphics to do more customization in the lower thirds.
There's also software like Singular.Live or all the things that are created to use with LightStream Studio that you could also bring into the YoloBox that way.
So I would love to see a web based graphic source added to the YoloBox.
I would imagine you would just type in a URL and it would just slap it over the screen, support transparency, and you'd be able to do whatever you want an externally that would
show in the YoloBox.
I do think this is possible in the current hardware, because again, this is an Android device, so there's already a browser on the device, just a matter of sort of combining the
two. The next big feature I would love to see is better support for external automation.
What do I mean by that? Well, right now on the YoloBox, you have to do everything by using the on-screen controls.
You can connect a keyboard and mouse, and the keyboard is really useful if you want to type in captions faster.
I don't really think the mouse is super useful because it just shows a cursor on the screen and you might as well just tap it by hand.
But what I'm talking about is more fancier stuff that you can do more actual automation with.
I use Companion extensively for my live streams.
I have it rigged up in the studio to be able to run several actions across multiple different devices do very carefully timed things like cutting between one camera
for 15 seconds while video plays and then switching back.
I even have it hooked up to the lights in my studio so I can turn on and off different light sources with buttons on my Stream Deck.
I would love to be able to integrate the YoloBox into that same workflow.
Right now I can't really do that because I have to use the YoloBox by touching the buttons on the screen.
How do I think this should work?
Well, the easiest way that YoloBox could support this is rather than building support for the stream deck itself, If they just supported OSC, which is a sort of general
purpose command language for moving messages over the network, then other people could write software in other different systems like, for example, Companion that could send
those messages to the YoloBox.
So YoloBox would just need to create an OSC command for everything that the YoloBox can do itself.
Basically, just imagine any button that exists in the YoloBox interface would have a corresponding OSC command so that you could sort of press that button virtually from other
software. That would really let me integrate it into my studio here and use it with all of the other devices in one big production.
So those two features, I feel like are pretty realistic ask of YoloBox.
Another thing I would like to see that I think is totally within the realm of possibility is actually integrating Speedify itself.
Now I did do a video about how to install Speedify on the YoloBox.
Basically, because it's an Android device, you can install the Speedify Android package into the device.
It's not a super great experience.
It does work, but there's a couple of little weird things about it after you do it that way.
But Speedify does have an SDK, which means it's actually possible for YoloBox to integrate Speedify directly into the product.
So I would imagine, for example, seeing a new tab on the YoloBox kind of like you get the graphics tab and the chat tab and it would just be a Speedify tab.
And then that would have the whole Speedify interface built into the YoloBox directly.
And then you wouldn't need to do any sort of hacks of sideloading the apps or switching out of the YoloBox app in order to get into Speedify.
Again, I think this is within the realm of possibility because Speedify has an official SDK, and the YoloBox app is an Android app that could integrate that SDK.
Now the last feature that I want to talk about, which is maybe more of a stretch, is the ability to use external wireless cameras, specifically iOS and Android devices.
The reason I say this is because I really liked using the SlingStudio device for a long time.
It's definitely getting a little bit old and I haven't been using it lately, but the ability to use iPhones as wireless cameras was super, super useful.
Basically, it means that you can very easily get a wide angle shot of a room or use a handheld camera for those roving shots without having to
rig up lots of extra stuff.
Now I use the Hollyland transmitters all the time in order to get wireless cameras, but that's another device to power with a battery,
it's another cable to bring with your camera, and it's just more bulk on a camera.
Having an iPhone be able to talk directly to the YoloBox would be amazing.
The way I would expect this to work is you'd go into the YoloBox, press the button for adding a new wireless camera.
You would download a special YoloBox app onto your iPhone or Android, and then you would scan a QR code on the YoloBox to pair them.
And then it could just send the video to the YoloBox from the iPhone.
The reason I think this is a bit of a stretch goal is because it is a lot more work compared to the other things that I've talked about.
It would require that YoloBox would develop a special iOS and Android app and ship it in the App Store so you could get it onto your regular iPhones and Android devices.
There's also the question of how does it actually send the video to the YoloBox?
Ideally, it would be with the least amount of latency possible, so it would probably have to be a direct WiFi link between the two.
And I don't know if that's possible with the existing hardware, but with that feature added, it would be 100% a complete replacement for the SlingStudio at this point, because
that is the last remaining feature of the SlingStudio that I think is still really only available on the SlingStudio.
Let me know down on the comments if you think that would be a useful feature for how you've been using the YoloBox.
So those are the main features I would love to see in a future update to the YoloBox Pro.
The last thing I want to talk about is what I want out of new YoloBox hardware.
Now, the YoloBox Pro was a fantastic upgrade to the original YoloBox.
It added another HDMI port and a much better processor, so they've been able to do a lot more with it.
That's all great, but honestly, the YoloBox right now is about as big as I would want it to be ever.
I don't think it should get much bigger because any bigger than that, it's going to start looking like a very large laptop.
I do honestly prefer the size of the original YoloBox more than the Pro, but the features and the quality of the Pro do mean that that's the one I end up taking with me.
So rather than a bigger YoloBox, which I don't think is a good idea, what I would love to see is actually a smaller one.
I would love to see a YoloBox Mini, and the purpose of the YoloBox Mini would be specifically for remote contribution into a YoloBox pro.
Now there is already a feature in the YoloBox Pro, where if you have multiple of them, you can actually livestream from one to another.
So you can have a remote studio using a YoloBox.
Have that fed into a different YoloBox where you're doing the show, mixing that with a local camera or local video playback and streaming from one device from that one
device to YouTube.
That's a cool feature, but for a lot of cases, having a whole nother YoloBox Pro is way overkill on the remote end.
Often times, you really just want to get one camera remote into your main YoloBox, and that's what would the YoloBox Mini would be for.
It would have just one HDMI in, and its only purpose would be to stream video to another YoloBox.
And even better would be if you could actually have a sort of two way conversation.
Right now with most remote contribution workflows, you're going to stream from the remote studio into your main studio, and that's usually a one way link -- things like the ATEM
Streaming Bridge. That's one way.
All of the RTMP solutions I've been looking at, like streaming from a camera like GH5 mark 2, or the DJI Action 2.
Those are all one way links, which means if you want to talk to the person at the remote end, you need some other link.
Like usually a phone.
You could have a phone call or a FaceTime call in order to get the person at the studio visible to the person on the remote end.
I think YoloBox is in a really unique position, having this already be an Android device to actually support that two way link built in.
So with the YoloBox Mini, the idea would be it is the remote end.
It has one HDMI input and on that screen you would sort of dial your main YoloBox and you would get a two way link.
The person at the remote end could wear headphones to listen to whatever's happening on the main YoloBox.
They could hear the person in the studio and have a conversation, and meanwhile, they're streaming their high quality DSLR video back to the studio for connecting these two
devices. I don't think they should use the same sort of sign-in mechanism right now, because again, you want this to be usable by people at the remote end.
So some sort of way to like enter a six digit code to pair the devices would be ideal.
As you may have seen on some of the streams I've done with remote guests, the latency is very important in order to have a conversation flow naturally.
Really about half a second is the point where it starts breaking up and you start talking over each other.
So it needs to be pretty low latency.
But the good news is the feed from the studio to the remote and does not need to be high quality because that's just for monitoring.
So I think there's a lot of really cool opportunities there for YoloBox to do a new, smaller device that is really just for the remote contribution workflow, because that
would make this a very powerful system.
And I think that the YoloBox is in a very unique position to be able to actually make this happen because their device is based on Android.
For a lot of the other hardware I've looked at, there isn't really the infrastructure in place for that to happen.
But because YoloBox already runs cloud servers to manage their multi streaming capabilities, as well as the YoloBox to YoloBox Link, they're already like 80% of the way
there. They just need the little push to get over the edge to actually ship that feature.
And I do know that YoloBox watches these videos and pays attention to the comments.
So if you have any features that you would like to see in a YoloBox, please comment below and we'll see what we can do.
The more people who ask for features the better because they do listen to feedback from their customers.
And that's one of the things I really like about YoloBox is that they do listen to feedback from their customers and they're very good about shipping updates.
So that's it for this video.
Let me know in the comments. Your wish list for the YoloBox Pro or new hardware that you'd like to see in the future.
Thanks so much for watching, and I will see you in the next one.