Can a Drone Fly with AA Batteries?

This is not a prank. These are not secretly lithium batteries. We’Re gon na really try to do this. So i came across this youtube channel. They had this beater car and they were trying to see like what could they put in the gas tank and get the car to run. So i was thinking okay what’s the analogy here and i thought: can a drone run on double a batteries just to see if we could do it? We just bought a couple of packs of these duracells. These are supposed to have extra life extra power, but will it be enough to fly so normally we power our drones with a lithium polymer battery that’s designed specifically for powering a drone. These are very high output batteries. They can handle higher average. sim, just a lot more battery per gram of weight, double a batteries not really the same they’re cheaper and they don’t explode unless forever in my remote control. What’S the difference between this and this and not in terms of chemistry necessarily, but in terms of like practical can you fly a drone with one of these here’s one difference. If we measure the lipo one cell of the lipo is i got that one at 3.85 volts that’s, its storage voltage it’ll go up to 4.2 volts when it’s fully fully charged and one cell. This battery is essentially like if you had one two three. Four of these guys sort of okay, so this is a four s: four s so that’s four series.

That means you’ve got four individual cells in series: each cell has a voltage and when you stack them together there you go 15, 15.3, okey. So our drone packs, when we get these they’re meant to be charged and discharged over and over. So they come at like a storage voltage and then we would charge them up to 4.2 volts per cell and for a four cell battery that’d be 16.8 volts. These store bought double a batteries they’re supposed to come fully charged. They come fully charged you’re, not supposed to recharge them and 1.7 1.7. sim, okey, so the difference is four yeah it’s about half, so a four cell double a battery would be about so now, you’ve. Basically made a four series: double a battery battery yeah we’re at about five volts that’s, it here’s the first problem. We got to solve it’s, not promising. These motors are designed to run on 17 14 15 volts. We got to get these guys up to 15 volts. There are three characteristics of the battery we got to think about. One is voltage. Number two is capacity how many milliamp hours the battery i don’t even know if they list that how much they don’t. So we could. Actually i mean, Teoricamente, we could discharge one of these slowly yeah and see how many milliamp hours it discharges that’s flight time. How long can we fly, but then the third characteristic is c rate c rate is how much current it can provide instantaneously without certain, and that has to do with the capacity right.

So let’s say this battery has a 7 dc rating and it’s a 1 300 milliamp hour capacity battery 1.3 vezes 70 sobre 100 about yeah, por isso é, Teoricamente, uma 70 c battery ratings are usually a little. I think if you pull 100 amps on this you’re, getting an explosion, so here here’s the problem. These guys are not designed for height. Although these guys are supposed to be extra power, i don’t think they mean it like. We mean it and they don’t have very high capacity, one more there’s, a fourth factor where these are different: what’s that we’re only going to get one flight anyways, because you can’t recharge it. You can listen, you can’t, you can recharge any battery it’s. Just should you. We won’t be recharging these because, when we’re done with them, i think they will expose this problem. It’S going to explode, there’s two ways: we can approach this. We can approach this scientifically, like we could test the capacity and the c rate right, or we could just bench, build a freaking battery and try and fly a drone with it all in favor. I want to just build the battery, build the battery yeah. O que acontece? We’Ve got a scale here to give us an idea of what we can expect. Let’S see what a 1300 milliamp hour lipo weighs that’s about 138 grams let’s see what happens when we put 10 double a batteries about 240 gramas. You know what we’ll just remove the gopro think about all the weight.

We’Ll say, Isto é, true, think about look at that we’re going to take the gopro off there. We go there’s 120 grams right there. So now, estamos, basically weight parody we’ll, see how these guys compare to this lipo Music. Will it even arm? I guarantee you when we plug it in it’ll, go doo da doo. Okey, i guarantee you it’ll power up. Will it even arm and spin the motors? I think it’ll for sure spin the motors for sure i’m worried it might when you give it full throttle just reset. You know the voltage might just sag. If the voltage sags to the point where the whole quad just shuts down, then the batteries won’t explode. That’S is an upside, we got ta, say seven, seventeen point two volts: it will stay in your closet for years and years and years and still have a charge. Este, no that’s, true that’s it. I wan na bring this thing in. Let me get this. ó. Meu deus, what oh damn it: oh oops, okey, rookie, mistake, Johnson, Música, so plugging in double a batteries in three two one. Oh my gosh Music. I do not. I have video. Why did the motors do that? Why did they go because it had to connect? Primeiro, okey, okey, okey, okey, we’ve got arm and will the motor spin i’m nervous? ó, Ah, Meu deus. Oh my gosh hold on i’m putting a tail in so what happened was i gave it throttle and then all of a sudden it just died.

The video cut out so it just kind of like reset on the voltage sagged out the voltage sag down, and i don’t think the regulator could keep up so it reset the video unit, and i mean they spooled up though okay hang on, Eu tenho. Eu tenho uma idéia: i want to know how many amps you’re pulling. If this thing will do it: okey, one amp, two amps three, six amps, okey; surprisingly, but that and that’s six amps on top of whatever the resting, so seven amps and we’re at 16 volts. So we’ve we dropped it basically, a whole volt that’s, não muito ruim. We need a bigger battery. We do need a bigger. I think this actually has viability. What if we gave it more voltage? What if we made it like equivalent to a 5 cell, i mean at the end of the day i don’t think the voltage i mean if we go serial or parallel at the end of the day, what we need is watts. I don’t think. I think if you go higher voltage on high kv, the motors become less efficient. Let’S just make more packs in parallel. Let’S make two more of these packs. We have enough batteries to make two more of these packs Music. All right here we go plugging in in three two one, ah yeah all right predictions. I think the exact same thing is gon na happen i mean we have. We got ta have twice as many amps now in the quad three two one, oh boy, Está bem.

I’M gon na try and take off in three two one: oh oh it lifted, but then the same thing. Oh so that still didn’t work. We got a lot closer. We have the original battery we’re just going to use this parallel, connector we’re, making it plug it. In really quick, we have to have three in parallel, the problem here’s. The problem actually i’m kind of curious to try this so we’ll just set it up like this and see if you can even get this to lift so you won’t be lifting those interesting. We won’t be adding weight, we will be adding power. ó, i think it’s definitely going to lift it almost got in the air hold on hold on. Let me see if i can control the throttle to bring it into a hover, so it definitely isn’t gon na lift off with the third back attached, so boys and girls. This is why we use lithium polymer and not uh, regular alkaline store bought batteries. How can we make the video a winner, Embora? How can we make a quad fly with double a batteries? Music hi? My name is sam pancratz, Eu sou, a junior in aerospace engineering here at the university of tennessee in knoxville i’ve, been flying rc for about six years and i have successfully flown a mini quad on double a batteries. A few months ago i talked to drew, and he said that if you can fly a quad on double a batteries, we’ll film, a video about it i was like well, i think i have the tools.

I think i have the knowledge base to make that happen. So what i think the rotor riot guys got wrong before is that they didn’t use proper nickel metal hydride batteries. The batteries that i use were spot welded, so you don’t damage the chemistry they are properly cycled and pretty well built. I think another problem was that they only tried five inch propellers. If you go to the six inch, you can hover at a lower current draw, which is really important to flying with terrible chemistry. What i really wanted to do was be to be able to take off hover, do a roll or a flip, catch it and then land. So then i built this six inch that has nothing extra on it: there’s no top plate, há, no fpv equipment, é. Just motors a receiver flight controller, esc and frame – and then i built a parallel connector because i tried with one battery and that didn’t work, so i tried with another battery and that actually worked. That was a full throttle, punch, Sim, Música. It worked, i can’t believe it flew for so long, it’s ridiculous. It could fly longer. So this is this is not feasible. This is a terrible idea, but it can kind of work all right so i’m, here with sean and alex and we’re gon na fly. What sam has put together for us, so this actually started about two years ago we had this stupid idea to try and fly a drone with double a batteries and thanks to sam.

So following his recommendations, sean has put together something here. So this is a six inch. zangão 2450 kv motors normally for a 17 volt battery with six inch props that’d be over propped, and you run the risk of burning out the motors we, i don’t think we’re gon na burn out the motors. I think we’re still gon na be struggling to fly. This thing don’t know why it’s not working. I saw the video of it flying with sam um i’m. Just over charging him. Now i got ta unplug it it’s sizzling let’s, go let’s, go let’s, go let’s, go it’s, sizzling get let’s, go let’s, go Music, Ah! Is it seriously a loose problem? It was starting to make some noises on the charger. Bem, i got ta be quick to boom. I understand you might need to be cooked up boom boom. This might i actually think this will catch on fire. Make sure you give it a pop before you like, we’ll, just roll it Music. ó, my off it’s got no power Music. Oh it rolled and i saw it and i still had video – Eu acho. Meu Deus, it is so hot yeah, it’s toasty. I think i can do it so i’m gon na get altitude and then i’m gon na lower throttle not chop throttle.