Drone Holds Your Phone for Selfies… Or Does It?

Did you know that if you attach a pair of 7mm micro-UAV motors to a cell phone case with hot glue, it will hover and allow you to take a selfie? As seen in Peter Sripol’s latest video below, this actually works… if you have an assistant hold it up with a piece of wood and conceal it later.

While certainly a scam with such small motors, this bicopter cell phone concept should be possible if the proper components are used. After the rather silly mock-up — including a googly-eyes guidance system — Sripol gets to work, creating a 3D-printed frame to hold his drone, along with much more powerful 2250 kilovolt motors turning 5 inch propellers. His system also includes a pair of servos for thrust vectoring of these motors to enhance its control capabilities. After a bit of experimentation, the new phone-drone does fly, and is even able to do some awkward aerobatics.

As impressive as it is, taking a selfie with this type of device is still not advised as the two-prop design tends to oscillate back and forth. If you want this kind of operation, you’d probably be better off going with a four-prop design, or even just buying a drone with a camera built in that’s meant for this purpose. For more background on why he would want to do something like this, check out the out the second video by Mark Rober video where he explains that the idea was based on a hoax showing this kind of craft was “really” working.