Make a Watch That Turns Into a Spy Drone W Live Video Incredibles Spider-Man Gadget for Cheap

And we're back with yet another drone video. So it's going through your comments as usual and I came across this one. Build the watch that turns into a little spy drone. Alright, maybe I will. I've actually seen this comment pop up a couple times before. I just never really got around to it. But I think today's the day. Real quick though, if you could just jump down to the comments and drop a little idea for what I should build in the next video. Because that's kind of how this works. Like if you want to see it, I'll build it. And of course drop a like and subscribe if you do end up liking it. So in my last video I built probably one of the biggest drones in the world. Turned it into the Green Goblin Hovercraft. Flew around on it for a bit. It had airsoft blaster, turrets, lasers, lights. Definitely one of the most OP things I've ever made. Highly recommend checking that out if you haven't already. For some reason not a lot of you watched it. But completely unbiased opinion, it's worth the watch. But I have done a lot of hoverboard stuff recently so I guess it's time to go to the other end of the spectrum and build one of the smallest drones we've ever seen. One that's hopefully small enough to fit in a watch. You know I feel like I've seen this somewhere. Maybe in the Incredibles when Syndrome sent that little mini drone thing down to scan for Mr. Incredible to see if he was still alive. Or maybe the mini spider-man like chest drone. They're not perfect examples but if this goes well I do want to make that spider-man chest drone thing. I think that'd be really cool. Anyways here's the criteria for this project. First this drone's got to be small, obviously. Like it's got to be able to fit on my wrist in a way that's not like super obvious. Second we got to be able to control it fairly easily. Would be very cool if it could fly itself like those DJI drones but I'm not sure if we're gonna be able to automate it like that just yet. And also what good is a spy watch drone if it doesn't have a camera on it? So that's a must. Like ideally the camera will be able to livestream video directly back to our phone or something. An extra bonus if we can get decent flight time. And the longer the range the better but I mean I'll take what I can get. So I hopped online and started doing some research. Let me just say drone technology is incredible now. It's come so far in the last couple years. Like I remember I got one of the very first live video drones that ever came out back in the day like 2011-2012. It was called the AR drone version 1.0 by Parrot and I thought it was the coolest thing. I mean to be fair this was before drones were mainstreamed, way before DJI or anything like that. So you can imagine like little 13 year old me just being so hyped. I'm still hyped what am I talking about? Anyways the stuff you can get now absolutely blows that out of the water. For those of you who don't know how to make a drone multi copter here's what you need. You need motors, you need ESCs to control the motors, a flight computer that has all like the accelerometers, gyroscopes, barometers, GPS if you're lucky, and of course a battery to power everything. If you put all that on a frame, add some propellers, RC transmitter, and a receiver you're good to go. And all this stuff ranges in size from the stuff I use for my hoverboard all the way down to these tiny little ESCs and motors and flight controllers. There's just a few centimeters in size. And you can also get this stuff for just a couple dollars which is actually incredible. Also I'm sure all of you have heard of this but you can get it even cheaper if you use the free plug-in Honey, who were kind enough to sponsor this video. Literally all you do click the link below, hit add to browser, and you're good. It takes like less than a minute to do. So Honey searches and applies coupon codes from all over the web so you automatically get discounts. So I did a search for mini camera drones and look at that. It's got some deals for us. Like look how small these things are. So I got myself a bunch of different types of drone parts, motors, ESCs, kits, pre-assembled drones, basically anything that looks super small, looked like it might be able to fly, I got. I'll drop a parts link down below for anyone who's interested in checking this stuff out. Right next to that link for Honey because they saved us some money on this one. So once again shout out to them. So after a bit of experimenting, you know playing around, mixing and matching parts to best fit what we need, I ended up with three potential drone candidates I could work for our spy watch. Then I set up a little flight course to test each of these drones to see which one would work best. First up we've got the red one. Let's call it the Cardinal. It's about two and a half inches in size and features an HD 720p camera that can also live stream right to my phone. So what I'm going to try to do is fly this from my hand, maybe do a spin out in the middle and land it over on that helicopter over there. That's ambitious, Doug. I know. Come on baby, come on baby. Dude, that is absurd. I told you, I told you it had it in it. Alright, you know, not horrible. The trim was a little messed up and there wasn't a super obvious way to fix it. So I'm gonna give it a 5 out of 10 for the handling. The video quality is pretty impressive though for a drone that's literally smaller than a credit card. Like it's rivaling my MacBook's webcam honestly. Also there wasn't any lagging or dropped frame so I'm giving this 9 out of 10. And finally for the size, I gotta give it a 6 out of 10. Only because of the prop orientation. Like it was a cool idea to put the props on the bottom but if we're gonna try and put that in a watch, I'm realizing it's gonna be harder to have the widest part of the drone like on the bottom of the watch. Alright, up next we got this little guy. I'm gonna call it a spider drone because it folds up even smaller than it already is. Like when it folds up, its total footprint is just over an inch which is well within the criteria to fit in a watch. It's also got an HD webcam that live streams to any iOS or Android device. Plus the fact that it can unfold to get a bigger surface area means it should be more stable in flight. Let's try it out though. So I'm giving this a straight 9 out of 10 for the handling. Super easy to control. Like if a DJI drone was a 10, this is just a step below it. Like I was doing spins and I was able to land on the helipad. First try. For the size obviously it crushes it too. I'm giving an 8 out of 10 only because I'm not sure if I'm gonna want to have to unfold and refold every time I want to use this thing. Might not be able to like fit through the same cracks as the other drones too. I don't know. As for video quality, yeah this is where we lose this one. Didn't work great. It had at least a 10 second lag and it would often just cut out completely. Like the first drone is probably pretty flyable just looking at the camera but this one, impossible. Which is a shame that I couldn't get this camera module to work better with this configuration. Yeah oh well. I still got high hope for this last one though. I'm gonna call it the Spirefly. Like firefly but just remove the spot. Never mind. It's actually slightly smaller than the last one and it doesn't even unfold. Like that's just the size. Like I've seen drones maybe slightly smaller but none with a full HD webcam that live streams to your phone. That's crazy. Alright let's try it out though. Decent recording too. Like the live stream on this is pretty good. Alright so this thing has decent handling. Maybe just slightly worse than the other one but still a solid 8 out of 10 for sure. I was able to do some spins and still land on the helipad without too much trouble. The size, obviously 9 out of 10. Definitely small enough to fit in a watch of some kind. Lastly the streaming also 9 out of 10. No drop frames and again very high quality given the tiny size of this thing. So I think we have our winner. Ding ding ding. Now we just got to turn it into a watch. So I'm thinking we make like a watch type device. Kind of like a helipad that this thing can land on and fit inside. Then we're ready. We can just pop it out and be on our way. So I did some 3d modeling on Solidworks. Did take a couple tries but finally I got a design that fits. It is definitely a fat watch but at first glance you're probably not going to notice. Also 3d printed a new shell for the drone that blends in with the watch a little bit more. But I ended up just making a cover that goes on top that looks like a watch face. So now it's even harder to tell there's a drone inside. Also want to make this look more like a real watch. Like it's made of metal or something. So I first tried some vinyl wrap. Didn't love it. So I went with some thin sheet metal instead. Just wrapped around the outside. Did a little bit more decorating. Added some straps and now we're done. But we also need to build a better controller because the ones they sell are just way too big. So I designed a better more sleeker housing that's really easy to fit in your pocket. And also you don't even need the controller to fly this. Like it's got an app so you can live stream and fly it directly from your smartphone. But it's definitely easier with the controller. So good to have. I was also seeing comments saying the drone should be controlled by a watch too. So I got my smart watch and put the app on it. So now this watch is all we need to fly and record video. Unfortunately though it's super hard to fly because the watch is just so tiny and the buttons are so small. Still a cool idea though. Like maybe instead of flying it we could just drop it somewhere and still have a bug with live video feed right to your watch. So now we have a working spy watch drone complete with a controller too. Watch goes on the wrist, controller fits in your pocket, and you're good to go. To use it, pop out the drone from the watch, flip it on, and connect your phone to the drone's Wi-Fi to get the live video. Then just flip on the controller and let it rip. So to see how well this thing really works, let's do some tests. But before I do that here's some projects that you guys made and sent to me on my Instagram. Awesome stuff guys. Keep sending me those videos. I love seeing what you're doing. Keep getting creative. I love to see it. Alright let's go test this thing. First up we got the controllability. We did briefly test it before but now let's set up like an actual obstacle course and see what this thing can do. Alright so here's the obstacle course. We're gonna fly it from this side of the house through the house. It's gonna come out here, through this, through that one, through all of these eight little hoops. They get progressively smaller as we go. Let's see if we can make it. Get there! Get there! Yes dude, that's huge. Alright now let's run a quick battery test just to see how long this thing can stay in the air for. See how long this lasts. Alright so we've got a couple minutes. You know not bad considering it's you know this small. So next test. Now let's test the range test. Let's just fly it as far as we can and as high as we can. See how long it works before the video cuts out. No idea what's gonna happen. We got the other drone in the sky. I'm gonna record it on the screen. Let's get it. So this thing got pretty high and far actually. I would say about a hundred feet up and about 300 feet of distance. The only limiting factor it seemed was the strong winds at higher altitudes. Just because it's so tiny it gets blown around a bit. Like you can actually fly this thing using just a live video which is pretty cool. However the picture quality isn't gonna be anything special. Like my DJI drone just isn't even comparable. But to be fair this is probably one-tenth the weight and a tenth the price too. Like we were flying this around our roof and property because we didn't want to actually spy on anyone. But it clearly has the capabilities of being a pretty useful spy drone. So there it is guys. Hopefully you like this one. Remember comment what you want to see next and thanks for watching. We'll catch you in the next one.