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  • I saw this video on Twitter with over five million views and then again on YouTube with nearly 1 million views

  • Basically, this guy modified his cellphone case with propellers to take selfies

  • Which is awesome my only issue with it is that it's not only fake, but it's a scam which I'll explain in a minute

  • but as for being fake

  • The first clue is that these are three volts seven millimeter micro brush motors like you see here if you attach one to a beam

  • Like this and turn it on at full throttle you'll see the most weight that it can lift is six quarters or about thirty grams.

  • The cell phone in the video with all the flying gear attached would weigh about 300 grams

  • and since drones are typically designed to hover at 70% max thrust you would need at least

  • 15 of these motors to do what he did, but you know, this just doesn't look as catchy

  • In fact, we recreated the exact setup

  • he used in the video and turn the motors to full throttle and this is what happened here.

  • Here it is in slow mo and as you can see there's hardly any difference than if you don't turn the propellers on at all

  • so I'm gonna show you how this scam artist somehow manages to break the laws of physics four more times in this three-minute video and

  • then because obeying laws of physics isn't optional

  • we're gonna call a fellow youtuber Captain Disillusion to see if he can help us spot any signs of a special effects. And then

  • with my buddy Peter Sripol i'm going to show you what it would take to

  • Actually build a flying selfie phone case and then i'll put all the details on a new set. I built using wix.com.

  • But, before I do any of that

  • let me first explain why this is a scam and not just a harmless fake video for meaningless internet points. With this many views and

  • An astounding 80% like ratio, which means most people probably didn't realize it was fake

  • It's a statistical certainty that some young aspiring engineer

  • actually tried to build this themselves

  • worse than their parents phone dropping like a rock and breaking

  • this might have been his or her first experience at making something. But, how you might ask would they know what components to use well?

  • here in the description amazing maker was kind enough to put links Amazon affiliate links

  • you can tell by the URLs.

  • So he is making money off the crushed dreams of aspiring engineers without enough experience yet to this is total BS and aspiring engineers

  • are my people, and you don't mess with my people.

  • Let's do this

  • the second gratuitous violation of physics comes in this scene the force of gravity always points down but helicopter spinning blades create a force perpendicular

  • to the blades themselves

  • so if you want to hover you need to be level so the forces will cancel out and you won't move if you tilt forward

  • and then break the thrust force into its x and y components

  • you suddenly have an unbalanced force that will move you in that direction in essence

  • that's how helicopters move forward by tipping forward in other words

  • It's physically impossible to hover in an orientation like this

  • The forward thrust component is unbalanced and it would have to move the phone forward

  • The third major issue is the Arduino compatible circuit board

  • he chose. It's the same board here and it's supposed to be the brains for the drone

  • yet, this specific model of board doesn't come with any sort of gyroscope or accelerometer.

  • Here's why that matters if you've ever tried,

  • balancing something on your hand like this you and your body we're creating what's referred to as a closed-loop feedback control system.

  • So if it starts to tip over my eyes relay that to my brain and my hand says hey

  • I'm no longer fuelling the weight just up and down

  • it's also pushing my hand this way and so my brain takes all that information and

  • responds by telling my hand to move this way at a specific speed in order to compensate.

  • So, to keep this thing balanced there's this continuous loop of quickly gathering information and then making real-time adjustments and closed feedback

  • loops are used all over in engineering from the simple case of a thermostat that

  • continuously checks the air and turns on at a certain temperature to

  • dart boards that update their position 200 times a second to get a bull's-eye every time

  • to machines that are abused and most certainly for anything that flies and needs to stay in the air the fact that his board is

  • missing a gyroscope and an accelerometer

  • means there's no way for it to tell if it's starting to rotate or to fall in any direction

  • It's the equivalent of trying to balance the board wearing a blindfold and an oven mitt

  • you have no idea what adjustments to make to keep things balanced. Which is the perfect lead-in to the fourth major physics

  • Flaw notice how he attaches these motors and rigidly fixes them to the phone double-stick tape

  • this means if you start to tip forward

  • you have no way to self-correct the phone

  • orientation and it would just turn into a nosedive, if you only have two propellers in this configuration

  • they both need to be able to rotate with respect to the phone in order to correct the movements in all six degrees of freedom

  • for example if it starts to tip forward

  • you could rotate them both back like this

  • to correct for that. Or if the wind is trying to spin the phone this way they could assume this configuration to

  • counter that to return to our balancing shovel analogy by fixing the motors directly to the case

  • you lose your ability to even make corrections

  • so not only do you have no idea where to move, but your arm is locked out for making adjustments anyways

  • which makes it literally impossible to balance.

  • Owwww.

  • My final physics issue with this video is one of acoustics

  • this guy proposes using it as a hands-free way to watch your favorite super hip music videos

  • conveniently dubbing over the audio here

  • for reference this is what an episode of the office would sound like on a phone at full volume

  • and don't forget that you would actually need 13 more motors than this so it would be at least six times louder. [Extremely Loud Whirling Sound]

  • So now that we thoroughly established a multitude of physical laws have been broken.

  • Let's find out exactly how he faked it and to do that

  • I've arranged video call with the undisputed heavyweight champion of the bunking fake videos using special effects Captain disillusion

  • Be sure to get it as flush as possible against your skin to minimize folds that might make it hard to

  • chroma key out like this

  • nice and tight

  • Captain oh hi Mart Mart robber you weren't supposed to call yet. It's 2 o'clock

  • I'm actually even 5 minutes late, really.

  • Well then.

  • How can I help you

  • did you not even watch the video I sent

  • ah, yes, of course the mobile drone video

  • I've analysed that thoroughly mark and my conclusion is it's totally real

  • Seriously, yes

  • Everything except for the mobile drone part, that's fake

  • if you look very

  • closely

  • You might just be able to make out the huge

  • chattering mask on the side of the phone

  • Visible in every shot of it flying the creator must have been in a real hurry because it's so messy here

  • it cuts off the edge of the phone here the tip of his finger and here it reveals the thing

  • it's supposed to be hiding a rod. It's narrow and light-colored and probably attached with the same mounting tape

  • He used to tack on all the other gadgets

  • That's why he's able to grab and adjust the phone in this shot by the river the mask hides not just the stick

  • But the whole person holding it look closer on this site the real-time

  • Water and on this side a still frame from an empty version of the shot

  • And if we track the phone's position and rotation we can easily

  • Reverse-engineer exactly how the stick puppeteer did rotating mostly from the point where it was held

  • Wow

  • That was very impressive captain D

  • Thank you for taking the time favorite part of this whole thing is the audio

  • The tiny propellers must have made so little noise at a distance. It didn't give a proper drone vibe

  • So the hoaxers recorded the sound of the motors up close and reused the same clip in every scene

  • complete with their muttering voices in the background

  • [Whirling Noise and Muffled Voices]

  • Awesome well, thanks again.

  • But, even though impressive is the number of posts messages and tweets

  • Presumably from people with functioning eyeballs asking me if this painfully obvious edit is real over and over.

  • Okay, captain will take care. I've got to go back to my even you mark how could you do this to me?

  • How could you do?

  • He's such a joker. So let's fake and now you know

  • exactly all the reasons why but still a really interesting idea and I was curious what it would look like if you actually

  • built one of these at using less special effects and more practical engineering.

  • So, naturally I called in my buddy Peter Shree people whose qualifications

  • Include building his own electric flame from scratch and he immediately got to work.

  • Turns out if you take two brushless motors to electronic motor speed controllers a flight controller that actually has a gyroscope and an accelerometer

  • Integrated a 3d printed frame and two servos to articulate the rotors a radio

  • transmitter for remote control and a force the lipo battery and then you put them all together it actually works.

  • Kind of we had to do a bunch of test flights to calibrate that

  • Feedback control loop we talked about before

  • so if we notice the drone is either under

  • compensating or over compensating when it starts to fall in a certain way

  • we tweak the response

  • sensitivity in between flights until we get to the sweet spot and I should mention remember how the motors from the fake video could barely

  • Lift only six quarters. Well, if you properly sized them for the task at hand, they should be able to lift 150 quarters.

  • And so once we felt like we had it in pretty good shape. We took her out for the maiden test flight

  • [Music Plays]

  • They in our defense it was a little windy out there

  • but as you can see, it can be pretty wobbly at times the truth is a bike copter like this totally works

  • it just isn't a great design choice.

  • The reason pretty much all camera drones are quad copters is because they're much more stable due to a larger footprint shared between four motors

  • and by getting clever with the throttle speeds you can move in all six degrees of freedom with no moving parts

  • So there you go with solid engineering. You don't need hidden rods or masking and rotoscoping and Sir Isaac Newton can once again

  • comfortably rest in his grave. So, the moral of the story is just don't cheat and lie in scam

  • I actually considered going a little easier on Amazing Maker

  • but then I happen to scan some of his other videos like this knee brace that

  • Charges your phone and even powers this flashlight as you walk in theory

  • I'll skip the details

  • but in reality this system would also never work as shown which is why if you whine that and stabilize on his hand in the

  • pocket you see him click a hidden flash light switch.

  • [Boom]

  • If you want to build a flying selfie foam case yourself

  • you can watch the video Peter made with all the juicy details. You can find that on his channel or new website

  • I created called mark rover build instructions.com, and on that site and

  • you'll actually see build instructions for tons of different projects from my channel, which was made possible by the fine folks at wix.com

  • I wanted something simple and classy and I almost feel a little guilty

  • I can make something dysfunctional and it only took about an hour in part. Thanks to a series of questions

  • you answer when you get started

  • that means right off the bat

  • you're close to what you want,

  • but you can still customize it as much as you like from there

  • including lining it with one of the hundreds of templates they have and my website is just a simple way to communicate information

  • but you can make one for your personal brand or your

  • portfolio, or maybe a new website for your business to sell stuff, or even book appointments right there. And it's free to sign up to

  • start designing and publishing and it's honestly a lot of fun.

  • So, to flex your creative muscles for the whole world to see go to wix.com

  • Slash go slash mark rover or use the link of the video description to get started

  • Thanks for watching

I saw this video on Twitter with over five million views and then again on YouTube with nearly 1 million views

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