 What is the minimum number of props that you can fly a multi rotor with well we usually fly four that's a quad four that's a quadcopter multi implies more than one so I mean David did the tricopter three right and you had to have one right yeah right at last I've had a bicoctor before I'm famous David Vindistall bicofter that was two motors on a servo yeah okay what if I told you there was a I want to call it a multi rotor but it only has one prop it's a mono rotor a mono a mono copter single prop how did that even work good question monocopter monocopter it's a drone very careful do not do not try to rotate these by hand I did that off camera I broke it oh sad had to make a repair because Drew broke it like within the first 10 seconds of holding his hands oh it's got veins yeah veins veins this project was a failure so far I tried this multiple times I tried a couple of different things I tried changing a bunch of things and this is kind of like version 1.6 at this point it's a lot of times what I do with my projects and I just kind of like throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks and sometimes I'll do that sometimes I'll put a lot of scientific thought into what I'm doing and sometimes I don't you know I thought I was putting a lot of scientific thought into this design but I didn't do any kind of calculations all the theoretical bits are there right so I mean I could see how it would work but you didn't like I didn't calculate weight I didn't calculate the size of the prop versus the size of the fins this was basically just the best guess yeah I just basically stuck it in 3d space printed it out and tried it and it failed it's fine Drew there's my elevator and our rudder just like an airplane I haven't tried to fly like an airplane yet seems like it's probably got the wrong balance point which I haven't actually checked balance or anything but the software should fix all that hopefully come back to me no y'all the other way what are you doing it looks like it looks like you're hovering a plane type of it is in auto stabilization okay I could switch it but it keeps yawing randomly and I'm trying to bring it back to me but the wind is blowing it away I'm gonna land it because I'm losing it I've been at this a while yeah I've been trying to make this work for a long time this was my first prototype and it was extremely heavy and I try to yeah but it was yes it was very heavy and it still is very heavy and it actually had enough thrust to counteract its weight which was awesome but it always wanted to spin out of circles it just wanted to rotate out of control and I thought maybe that I needed to increase the size of the flaps maybe they weren't enough to compensate for the yaw movement of the propeller so then I made this guy which is basically an airplane because the propeller has counter torque when the propeller spins yeah it generates counter torque that has to be counteracted you're directing the thrust down through this duct which is like theoretically gonna make it more efficient but she just didn't have enough surface area here and interest would spin right at least that's what I thought so that was the first design failure so then I moved on to this I said let me try way more durable make it extremely lightweight okay out of foam board like that so I was like you know what let's make a 3d airplane that's essentially what it is it's just really big parts missing here yeah I still I robbed the electronics for for version 4 the motor was up here right it was yes I feel like you just built an airplane I basically did yeah this is just a 3d airplane I didn't build it well it was my fault and I just wanted to try to see if I could get the software to work so then I came to this guy you've abandoned the duct I really wanted to put this inside of a rocket this one didn't fly either it would hover it would it would hover in place but then it would spiral out of control so in a typical drone you've got four points of thrust and you're able to tilt the drone by adding more thrust to one side and that's how you can get forward momentum as you would like tilt it forward yeah fly forward and you get rotation through the rotational inertia of spinning up the two props that spin the same direction which would result in the drone spinning the opposite direction of those two props with this all this is done with veins veins it's really cool so one propeller gives it thrust and these servos turn these veins to give it the ability to rotate the air yeah this is a just as cool proof of concept but I do think that built out there could be some advantages it could be smaller technically it could be if you could shrink this down you could probably essentially have the smallest drone yeah and only one propeller yeah if you could get more thrust out of it you could build out like a shroud for this whole thing and you would have this this fly like a ball drone that would fly with no risk of you know put a grill up top so you can't get into the propeller not going to get through the veins in the bottom yeah you'd have like a very safe flying ball fully enclosed propeller yeah possibly longer flat time too because only one motor you could build like a little 85 millimeter 95 millimeter in approximately this footprint but then you've got little tiny two two and a half inch props that are not very efficient right now I guessing this isn't actually going to be very efficient but in theory when you go to a larger prop you get more efficiency so instead of having a bunch of small props you can have one big prop right and get longer flight time I truly don't know what to expect with this this is purely a really cool proof of concept that Sean put together all I've done so far is made it hover this has been a labor of love and hate I have made four different prototypes of this and had four failures and it turns out that I finally just had to eat my pride and go and borrow somebody else's project this isn't my design I have to give credit the person who put it up on Thingiverse not only did they help me get a design that I knew was already working to work but their PID settings and beta flight turn all the filters off turn all the stuff out that we want in our quad racing drones just put it on the bare minimum just basic PID controller and it flies we're gonna break it right and the gravity oh I know we're gonna break it and this is plastic so it probably isn't gonna take much but I just wanted to have something working I've been sitting so much time on it let's just see if this thing actually flies I'm just excited to see it fly let's put this thing up who's gonna fly first who's gonna have the most gentle touch soft landing it's okay it just it just spun out sure that was seems alive still that was um what was it like to fly did it like was just shaky it was really shaky on the yaw axis it was and I wasn't sure how hard I could push the sticks before it would fall no no like a turn drink it won't even get the chance to break it cuz as soon as he touches the sticks it'll just fall over I'll be gentle I'm gonna try to do a gap I'm not saying you can't use y'all at all I'm just saying I think I think that's what happened is when I tried to yaw it a little bit too much it fell out of the air and it's straight pretty much and then once you try I mean I did turn a little but not like the sharp turn you tried to do at the end I don't feel like it was that sharp I mean yeah what did it break the veins broken a little bit it might still fly oh like it needs less authority why do you think that the current design that we flew today doesn't spiral out of control the main thing that I changed was I said you know what let me just go to somebody else's design that I know actually works I've seen this fly I've seen other people do it I'm not the first person to do this so somebody has to have a working design and finding documentation on this isn't easy so I found the one guy that I actually found enough documentation where I think I could get through the project from beginning to end and he used beta flight which is surprisingly all these designs up until this point we're using ardupilot there's so much history with ardupilot they've been around for so long I figured they know what they're doing and I tried to use that software and I don't know if they've just abandoned the monocopter software or if I'm just doing something wrong I don't know what I'm doing but for some reason I couldn't get it to work with the monocopter setup in ardupilot so I just went to beta flight use this other guy's PID controller do you think this is the problems you were having we're not actually problems with your designs but with your flight control I mean in theory you could go back to this guy and put maybe it would work yeah yeah yeah that excites me in a way that a monocopter has never excited me before I'm gonna let you get up first okay oh my god wow your flight is way more aggressive now it's so shaky let's get some nice smooth working on the tree yeah there you go that's awesome just doing it very small it's doing it it just makes one sound the whole time it's crazy it's not like that's why that's really interesting it's a mono sound yeah mono chronic monocopter it's like the controls feel dull like there's nothing in the center but then if you give it a little too much it's like you almost can't bring it back so it's like a fine balance of just being you have to be patient for and then I don't know what just did it just like I literally just went a little bit pitch back and it just like completely wigged out hopefully it's okay this thing there's no pushing it it has been such a journey to get here and it's so finicky I just want to experience it I'm just using very I see purple on the ground I still ended up being the one break it's not I was really committed to not being the guy this time cameraman okay okay well that didn't last long manual mode yeah like full manual yeah okay yeah let's let's try now we're in angle mode let's try see this works I'm just gonna give it all the gas oh yeah that's definitely safe decision it's far away you're ready to run all right here we go spinning all the gas okay maybe the fins aren't big enough