Having completed an electronics apprenticeship in the early 70s, this is brilliant! For those of us that have forgotten more than we learnt and those who have never seen this stuff before, I cannot think of a better way of learning the basics. Please continue with this stuff. There are those who will whinge and wonder where the part twos are, but I ain't one of them.
Hi Bruce, we had some very average science teachers at our school in the late 50s (giving my age away here) I do remember Volts times amps equals watts we were fed that parrot fashion. I never really understood that it was meaningless until would you believe it 55yrs later when a man called Bruce Simpson explained it all in perfect English,Thank you the fog has finally cleared.
I've probably just advanced to a intermediate rc pilot in last few weeks and a lot of my knowledge and understanding of the whole rc flying world has come from you and your videos So thanks a lot and keep the videos coming Regards Ben
Awesome, you should definitely keep doing this series of basic stuff, to better understand the more complex system this basic knowledge must be clear. Simply love it.
It may be simple for every one else, but i was wandering how prop size and pitch will effect my planes and how every thing works regarding watts and amps, volts. Love your vids i learn a hell of a lot from them. My understanding and knowledge has grown. Thank you.
I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your video explanations. I've been flying rc aircraft for 20 years now and could never understand the electronic pairing (edf unit+esc+batt) until I saw your videos. I've been looking a lot for a simple yet complete explanation and you made it happen with 5 stars :) Thanks a lot man. Carlos - Colombia - South america
Thanks for sharing your knowledge Bruce. I have been flying for about 14 years and electric only now for about 8 years and I still learn a lot from your videos. Many thanks.
You're a fascinating teacher, I wish my teachers back at school made it as interesting and educational as you have done in this video! Thank you for explaining! :D
Bruce, thanks for the additional explanation. I for one would love to see you get into more of the knitty gritty of the theory behind the practical applications. Concepts like back-EMF, and how it applies to our electric motors, would be fascinating to learn more about. Thanks again for your videos. They are among the best on the tube.
I am a Nitro fun for many years now I always wanted to try myself with Electrics but I was a little bit afraid everything sounded difficult to me this video real helped thanks
great series! Keep it up, you explainer videos are the best I have seen. You keep it simple and easy to understand, and it all is extremely useful and practical info.
Good idea to gho over this because I have recently been just considering the increse in RPM. Though I have of course determined that the motor in question will tolerate a 4S, one must then consider the extra draw on the battery. A pragmatic dissertation on this matter Bruce. Thanks
Great presentation on the basics! This is on of the fun aspects of electric flying that lets you tinker a little more with power systems.I love the fact that experimenting with electric powered planes is quite versatile too.
This is wonderful! Not too dumbed down for me. Math has never been my strong point but I can understand this. I’m going to look for more on the practical use as you discussed at the end. Thanks for your work/videos.
Great video Bruce! So greatfull you care to take the time to produce these informative videos. Looking forward to the next in this series. I am relatively new to electric powered aircraft, and got lucky when I installed a larger motor, esc, and 4s, 5000 pack in a plane and did not "blow things up" Thanks to you I am learning how things work, and will help me decide on what equipment to purchase for a large 14lb formula1 sundowner, that I wish to push as fast as the airframe can handle! Looking at all the listings of motors & specs is confusing between manufacturers, but you are providing some good knowledge to help engineer and select appropriate items. Thank you very much! Pete
Love it. This is some useful information for anyone having to manage power systems. Perhaps I am old school, but P is for power (in watts) , I is for current (in amps) and E is for voltage. I always remembered P=IE. Keep up the education, for all of us. This is definitely Need To Know stuff.
Great video. Really appreciate the time spent on tutorials. Like you said a lot of people know but for me its a new learning experience which I can use for my new hobby.
Great video! I am reasonably familiar with basic electricity and these laws but it was a good refreshment to get this into the context of props and batteries in relation to power. Looking forward to the next video in this series! :) Cheers
Super simple. Thanx to you Bruce. Should've had u as my science teacher back in high school. Maybee I would have passed then. Great job. Love your channel
Bruce, Thanks for the video. I don't think you can start too basic now you've laid the foundation I am looking forward to further videos in the series. I struggle to get my head round the specs of motors so something on that subject I would find useful. Richard
The "resistance drop" with a bigger prop makes mathematical sense, but not physical sense. In a physical sense, it would be more accurate to say that with a larger prop the motor produces more power, and therefore consumes more current. The motor resistance does not actually drop. However, the way you presented it is practically useful. You are a master at explaining things in a way that cuts the crap and tells us what we need to know to get stuff done!
The "effective resistance" drops when you load up the motor - hence it draws more current. I could have gone into the details of how back-EMF reduces the current flow etc but for all practical intents and purposes, it can be thought of as a simple reduction in resistance -- since the effect (an increased current flow) is the same.
really very good, it has been years that i took this class on electronics/electricity. keep doing this as a series please, great review. but when i was in school, we used the letter E as the voltage in the triangle. our teacher before learning this stuff was called Erny , so Erny Is Real, in the triangle. please do explain this stuff, change the prop on a constant same motor changes the current, wow, keep this up, i shall save the series, i do hope this is all correct though.
Great job! It's been a while since I thought about the basics, so this was a great refresher and I am sure those who didn't know before really have learned something from this. I would love to see you do one of these on capacitance, the mystery "C"... no one seems to know what C is and it would be a great way to share with them about it.
I learned more from you in three videos than I did from my high school's science program... Some of that is my fault, though! haha. However, these videos are great. I would like to understand how electronics use DC current from the battery to the motor, and AC current when charging. My guess as to why the motor offers less resistance when in-use is because the spinning part of the motor increases the current in the circuit.
A nice practical example of motor resistance is a vacuum cleaner. Hold your hand on the end of the tube and the RPM goes up. Why? The motor doesn't need to pump air through the system anymore (the resistance goes down) so it runs more efficiently.
Great video as I am from the 50's also and the instruction much better then my science teacher way back then. I would like to suggest you show some samples of actual motors to ESC to batteries to props. Hands onvisual would be great for the acute novice.
Great...i did this at school and forgot a couple of months later and that was twenty years ago. Could there be a similar video for nitro basics? I am trying to put a nitro plane together for the first time and it's mindboggling. What size prop? What size tank? Which fuel? Filling the tank? 2 line or 3 line? Fuel consumption? Safety? Starting and stopping? Do I need a filter? Rich or lean? Muffler means more power? That sort of thing.
Good vid Bruce, I'm looking forward to the next one. I think I've got my head round the electrical side of things, but if you have a rough guide to working out what prop RPM,dia and pitch results in what watt draw, you'd be my hero :D
Great stuff. I always believe if you don't know the basics your just guessing. Keep em coming even though I've know this stuff for years it always good to refresh the grey matter
Is there a follow up video to this one? I would really like to know more about this; specifically how to match batteries, esc's, motors, and props. Can you recommend any resources that explains this using actual technical specs?
Great Video. A bit over my head, so I am looking forward to seeing the practical side of it with an actual battery/Motor/ESC demonstration to put all this into a physical comprehension my brain will relate to! :)
I believe your instructs very good explain as your expert electricon. Android you tube has closed caption but won't provide often. I use pc or smart tv did working. Overall excellence
Very, very good! Only point I just cannot grasp: Why does the resistance go down when mounting a bigger prop? Can someone explain what is behind this? Thanks for this exellent vid!
Still clear as mud as when I studied for a ham licence! But glad you're doing it as I'll try again to get a grasp on it..... I don't understand why they don't put a "W" in the triangle instead of the "I" That gets me confused. Of course, that's easy to do to me!! LOL
Very handy, thanks! Still very confused with all the basics, I've got a quadcopter with 4 20A motors (30A ESCs), yet when I run it up the whole thing seems to only draw 16A total. I had assumed the total draw would be 80A (and spent money on batteries that could handle this), but obviously I was way out!
The 30A rating of your ESC and the 20A rating of your motors are "maximums" and don't signify what they will actually draw in normal operation. The amount of current the motors will draw depends on the voltage (ie: cell-count of your batteries), the size of props you're using (which effectively changes the motor resistance) and the action of your ESC (the amount of throttle). This will be come clear when I hook all this stuff up on the bench and demonstrate the interactions between the various elements of this puzzle.
***** I look forward to the follow up, I've gone back through most of your archive in the last month or so while parts for my quad were arriving, everything has been super helpful so far. Thanks a lot! I figured that the props would be related to the power draw because when I was testing the board I did this with props off and got a total draw of about 2A. I've ordered some 8" props as the 12" I have on at the moment are just plain scary. Unfortunately I think 8" props will make the thing fly faster and its already twitchy as heck. Still some things to figure out, but your videos help a lot. :)
This is a great video and what I have been looking for. Electricity/Power is the most confusing and complicated part of UAV building for me. Have you made a video that deals directly with batteries ESCs and Motors? I would love to see that one.
Prior to going into flying RC's, the only thing I knew about electricity was that you connect + to - (i.e. putting batteries into a flashlight). Thank goodness that got cleared up before I got a soldering iron XD
Bruce, perhaps you could set up a motor, ESC, and battery with a watt/amp meter and change the prop and battery and show us what happens. oh and give the specs of motor to show limitations of what you can and can't do. good video, thanks mike
Another question that bothers me: For multirotors, all N-Fet opto escs are supposed to be the best choice. But why. And what is an N-FET. Thanks for your tutorials.
Bruce I would like you to explain how putting a bigger prop on a motor "physically" increases the current flow. I understand the principles involved but I would like to see it demonstrated how increasing the load effects the motor current. It must be more than just an decrease in wire resistance because of increased wire temperature, but what?
Having completed an electronics apprenticeship in the early 70s, this is brilliant! For those of us that have forgotten more than we learnt and those who have never seen this stuff before, I cannot think of a better way of learning the basics. Please continue with this stuff. There are those who will whinge and wonder where the part twos are, but I ain't one of them.
As a ham radio operator for years…your teaching the needed basics is well done. A very nice job.
I honestly spent 8 hours going through your channel, and i'm still not done. I'm learning so much! Thank you.
Hi Bruce, we had some very average science teachers at our school in the late 50s (giving my age away here) I do remember Volts times amps equals watts we were fed that parrot fashion. I never really understood that it was meaningless until would you believe it 55yrs later when a man called Bruce Simpson explained it all in perfect English,Thank you the fog has finally cleared.
I've probably just advanced to a intermediate rc pilot in last few weeks and a lot of my knowledge and understanding of the whole rc flying world has come from you and your videos
So thanks a lot and keep the videos coming
Regards Ben
Awesome, you should definitely keep doing this series of basic stuff, to better understand the more complex system this basic knowledge must be clear. Simply love it.
It may be simple for every one else, but i was wandering how prop size and pitch will effect my planes and how every thing works regarding watts and amps, volts. Love your vids i learn a hell of a lot from them. My understanding and knowledge has grown. Thank you.
I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your video explanations. I've been flying rc aircraft for 20 years now and could never understand the electronic pairing (edf unit+esc+batt) until I saw your videos. I've been looking a lot for a simple yet complete explanation and you made it happen with 5 stars :) Thanks a lot man. Carlos - Colombia - South america
Thanks for sharing your knowledge Bruce. I have been flying for about 14 years and electric only now for about 8 years and I still learn a lot from your videos. Many thanks.
'Electric' has always been a type of black magic to me. These vids a just as magic. Well done Bruce. 👍👍👍
I wish you were my Tech teacher, way better at explaining than all my teachers. Great tutorial, was fun to re-learn this again :)
I enjoyed the explanation Mark! I've been working in electronics all my life. Good job, it's fun to see the basics explained once in a while.
Really beneficial and easy to understand training,
Big thanks Bruce.
You're a fascinating teacher, I wish my teachers back at school made it as interesting and educational as you have done in this video! Thank you for explaining! :D
GREAT video, Bruce. Incredibly easy to follow, and fantastic explanation of the concepts. Very, very well done.
Thanks for the refresher course on ohms laws. I have learned most what I know about RC from watching your video's.
keep up the good work.
Very well done...helps to see quickly what you are messing with when you make changes thanks
Bruce, thanks for the additional explanation. I for one would love to see you get into more of the knitty gritty of the theory behind the practical applications. Concepts like back-EMF, and how it applies to our electric motors, would be fascinating to learn more about. Thanks again for your videos. They are among the best on the tube.
Enjoy being taught by a great teacher.
I am a Nitro fun for many years now I always wanted to try myself with Electrics but I was a little bit afraid everything sounded difficult to me this video real helped thanks
great series! Keep it up, you explainer videos are the best I have seen. You keep it simple and easy to understand, and it all is extremely useful and practical info.
Very easy to understand... Please do make more of these Electricity for dummies videos.
Good idea to gho over this because I have recently been just considering the increse in RPM. Though I have of course determined that the motor in question will tolerate a 4S, one must then consider the extra draw on the battery. A pragmatic dissertation on this matter Bruce. Thanks
Great presentation on the basics! This is on of the fun aspects of electric flying that lets you tinker a little more with power systems.I love the fact that experimenting with electric powered planes is quite versatile too.
Fantastic video, it allowed me to understand what happens when I change from 4S to 6S on my quadcopter rig.
Better teaching than my electronic professors here in the states. Thanks
This is wonderful! Not too dumbed down for me. Math has never been my strong point but I can understand this. I’m going to look for more on the practical use as you discussed at the end. Thanks for your work/videos.
Great video Bruce! So greatfull you care to take the time to produce these informative videos. Looking forward to the next in this series. I am relatively new to electric powered aircraft, and got lucky when I installed a larger motor, esc, and 4s, 5000 pack in a plane and did not "blow things up" Thanks to you I am learning how things work, and will help me decide on what equipment to purchase for a large 14lb formula1 sundowner, that I wish to push as fast as the airframe can handle! Looking at all the listings of motors & specs is confusing between manufacturers, but you are providing some good knowledge to help engineer and select appropriate items. Thank you very much! Pete
Love it. This is some useful information for anyone having to manage power systems. Perhaps I am old school, but P is for power (in watts) , I is for current (in amps) and E is for voltage. I always remembered P=IE. Keep up the education, for all of us. This is definitely Need To Know stuff.
Great video. Really appreciate the time spent on tutorials. Like you said a lot of people know but for me its a new learning experience which I can use for my new hobby.
Great video! I am reasonably familiar with basic electricity and these laws but it was a good refreshment to get this into the context of props and batteries in relation to power.
Looking forward to the next video in this series! :)
Cheers
This is exactly what I was looking for. School physics was a little while ago.. Thanks for an extremely helpful video.
Super simple. Thanx to you Bruce. Should've had u as my science teacher back in high school. Maybee I would have passed then.
Great job. Love your channel
Excellent job Bruce. I have always wanted to understand this better. You are a great teacher!
You didn't need a new shop, all you needed was a new whiteboard. lol. Nice job Bruce. Keep at it man. I always enjoy your insight.
I like your videos very much. It makes me feel good watching them. Thank you for them.
Thanks Bruce. I like a lot your way to explain and make things very simple. Be sure that i learned a lot with your videos.
I love the little refresher course.
Excellent idea of starting with the basics! Keep up the good work. Thanks
Great refresher! Thank you very easy to follow!
I like the 101 approach. Please continue.
Bruce, Thanks for the video. I don't think you can start too basic now you've laid the foundation I am looking forward to further videos in the series. I struggle to get my head round the specs of motors so something on that subject I would find useful. Richard
The "resistance drop" with a bigger prop makes mathematical sense, but not physical sense. In a physical sense, it would be more accurate to say that with a larger prop the motor produces more power, and therefore consumes more current. The motor resistance does not actually drop. However, the way you presented it is practically useful. You are a master at explaining things in a way that cuts the crap and tells us what we need to know to get stuff done!
The "effective resistance" drops when you load up the motor - hence it draws more current.
I could have gone into the details of how back-EMF reduces the current flow etc but for all practical intents and purposes, it can be thought of as a simple reduction in resistance -- since the effect (an increased current flow) is the same.
really very good, it has been years that i took this class on electronics/electricity. keep doing this as a series please, great review. but when i was in school, we used the letter E as the voltage in the triangle. our teacher before learning this stuff was called Erny , so Erny Is Real, in the triangle. please do explain this stuff, change the prop on a constant same motor changes the current, wow, keep this up, i shall save the series, i do hope this is all correct though.
Great video Bruce, maybe basic to some but if your not doing this all the time it doesn't hurt to have a refresher tutorial.ATB
Brilliant and very easy to follow, thanks again
Well done! I'm a computer engineer and I'm not that good with electricity. This helped a lot.
Great video. Thanks for sharing.
Would love a follow up vid. Very straight forward.
Thanks for the basics videos, really enjoy your quick lessons as I wait for parts to come in or benefit from product reviews that you do.
Loved this kind of video. You would be a great teacher in my opinion Bruce.
Great job! It's been a while since I thought about the basics, so this was a great refresher and I am sure those who didn't know before really have learned something from this. I would love to see you do one of these on capacitance, the mystery "C"... no one seems to know what C is and it would be a great way to share with them about it.
I learned more from you in three videos than I did from my high school's science program... Some of that is my fault, though! haha. However, these videos are great. I would like to understand how electronics use DC current from the battery to the motor, and AC current when charging. My guess as to why the motor offers less resistance when in-use is because the spinning part of the motor increases the current in the circuit.
I have put 10volt on my left ear, my brain has 3 ohm resistant, 30watts of smokes comes out of my right ear ;-)
Youre really great Bruce!!
Thanks for the basics electricity video. It really helps to know this information. Do more plz.
Looking forward to the videos on battery/motor/prop relationships.
A nice practical example of motor resistance is a vacuum cleaner. Hold your hand on the end of the tube and the RPM goes up. Why? The motor doesn't need to pump air through the system anymore (the resistance goes down) so it runs more efficiently.
Great video as I am from the 50's also and the instruction much better then my science teacher way back then. I would like to suggest you show some samples of actual motors to ESC to batteries to props. Hands onvisual would be great for the acute novice.
You should do a video explaining why resistance drops on a motor when you increase load.
You mean the voltage drops, the resistance increases.
@@imemyself2820 You obviously have not watched the video closely.
Better yet, do a video on what happens to your power output when the switching frequency of the ESC gets waaaay up there.
This was great ! Thank you as I’m wanting to build my own RC airplane and this will help tremendously! Looking forward to the next class 👍👍
Great...i did this at school and forgot a couple of months later and that was twenty years ago. Could there be a similar video for nitro basics? I am trying to put a nitro plane together for the first time and it's mindboggling. What size prop? What size tank? Which fuel? Filling the tank? 2 line or 3 line? Fuel consumption? Safety? Starting and stopping? Do I need a filter? Rich or lean? Muffler means more power? That sort of thing.
Good vid Bruce, I'm looking forward to the next one. I think I've got my head round the electrical side of things, but if you have a rough guide to working out what prop RPM,dia and pitch results in what watt draw, you'd be my hero :D
Awesome job Bruce
Yep, very good. I've stumbled onto a top channel here. Thanks mate.
Good video. I liked the way how you explained it. Simple to understand :) Keep going with this kind videos.
Great stuff. I always believe if you don't know the basics your just guessing. Keep em coming even though I've know this stuff for years it always good to refresh the grey matter
nice Bruce
can you explain the mah of a battery in all this?
Very very very informative. Not at all difficult. I'm an accountant by profession.
Thank you!
I love your videos, thanks
Greetings from the north of italy!
Is there a follow up video to this one? I would really like to know more about this; specifically how to match batteries, esc's, motors, and props. Can you recommend any resources that explains this using actual technical specs?
Great Video. A bit over my head, so I am looking forward to seeing the practical side of it with an actual battery/Motor/ESC demonstration to put all this into a physical comprehension my brain will relate to! :)
Your videos are really useful (and good fun). They've helped me a lot. It's thumbs up and a subscription. Thanks for making them.
Thanks for this. A very helpful tutorial for us, 'the unintiated'.
Really good and helpful
Any chance you could show us this in practice I.e. With a bench setup?
Thanks Bruce, I could use a course taught by you.... making it easier to understand.
Good teaching with understanding
I believe your instructs very good explain as your expert electricon. Android you tube has closed caption but won't provide often.
I use pc or smart tv did working.
Overall excellence
Great video, please continue! And please make a video on the effects of dihedral causing roll couple
Amazing explanation Bruce!
Very, very good! Only point I just cannot grasp:
Why does the resistance go down when mounting a bigger prop?
Can someone explain what is behind this?
Thanks for this exellent vid!
Thanks a lot. Your videos are great and I've learned a lot.
Thanks Bruce.
Keep up the good work!
Still clear as mud as when I studied for a ham licence! But glad you're doing it as I'll try again to get a grasp on it..... I don't understand why they don't put a "W" in the triangle instead of the "I" That gets me confused. Of course, that's easy to do to me!! LOL
I is the symbol for current. Don't blame me -- I didn't decide that (LOL).
Great video. Love to see more
great video Bruce
Great info Bruce, ya i was wondering if i put smaller prop on how it would effect motor or ESC
I really, really like this. Thanx Bruce!
Thanks Bruce, very helpful video!!
Great lesson, keep more coming.
Very handy, thanks! Still very confused with all the basics, I've got a quadcopter with 4 20A motors (30A ESCs), yet when I run it up the whole thing seems to only draw 16A total. I had assumed the total draw would be 80A (and spent money on batteries that could handle this), but obviously I was way out!
The 30A rating of your ESC and the 20A rating of your motors are "maximums" and don't signify what they will actually draw in normal operation.
The amount of current the motors will draw depends on the voltage (ie: cell-count of your batteries), the size of props you're using (which effectively changes the motor resistance) and the action of your ESC (the amount of throttle).
This will be come clear when I hook all this stuff up on the bench and demonstrate the interactions between the various elements of this puzzle.
***** I look forward to the follow up, I've gone back through most of your archive in the last month or so while parts for my quad were arriving, everything has been super helpful so far. Thanks a lot!
I figured that the props would be related to the power draw because when I was testing the board I did this with props off and got a total draw of about 2A. I've ordered some 8" props as the 12" I have on at the moment are just plain scary. Unfortunately I think 8" props will make the thing fly faster and its already twitchy as heck. Still some things to figure out, but your videos help a lot. :)
Brilliant.. More of the same please Bruce..
This is a great video and what I have been looking for. Electricity/Power is the most confusing and complicated part of UAV building for me. Have you made a video that deals directly with batteries ESCs and Motors? I would love to see that one.
Just the vid I've been waiting for, more please.
Yes you should do more stuff on how the electronics work in rc planes.
thanks Bruce! more basics this was very helpful!!
Love your tutorial video learn a lot from you thanks!
Prior to going into flying RC's, the only thing I knew about electricity was that you connect + to - (i.e. putting batteries into a flashlight). Thank goodness that got cleared up before I got a soldering iron XD
Bruce, perhaps you could set up a motor, ESC, and battery with a watt/amp meter and change the prop and battery and show us what happens. oh and give the specs of motor to show limitations of what you can and can't do. good video, thanks mike
Very easy to understand, keep up with videos ☺
Another question that bothers me:
For multirotors, all N-Fet opto escs are supposed to be the best choice. But why. And what is an N-FET. Thanks for your tutorials.
Bruce I would like you to explain how putting a bigger prop on a motor "physically" increases the current flow. I understand the principles involved but I would like to see it demonstrated how increasing the load effects the motor current. It must be more than just an decrease in wire resistance because of increased wire temperature, but what?