Coming soon: the follow me camera for self-shooters

Take two product design guys in California, add a garage and an idea and you have Satarii - a start-up operation behind a mobile accessory for solo video shoots.

With your smartphone lodged in its pocket-sized docking station, you don a small tracking device and as you move about, the dock swivels on its base and follows you, keeping you centre frame in the mounted camera.

The motorized unit works over a range of eight metres and keeps you in the image frame across a 180-degree span.

The system is designed for the iPhone4 and the latest video-enabled iPod Touch, but an accessory is promised to provide a standard tripod mount so its potential is opened up to many more devices.

The product is still a long-way short of production. The inventors have been seeking funding on the IndieGoGo site and have already raised the $20,000 they were asking for. Now it clearly needs some manufacturer muscle and investor buy-in to move it out of the hobby project area.

It could well find a niche: Peter Nowak's "shameful trinity of desires" comes to mind, but I'll leave you to figure out which of three it might best serve.