Crazyflie with digital sensors ready for prototyping

The last week we have been working hard on finishing the Crazyflie with the digital sensors, MPU-6050, HMC5883L and MS5611-01BA03. We are not so sure that the magnetometer,  HMC5883L, will work that well due to the strongly magnetized motors just a few centimeters from the sensor. That will be one of the upcoming tasks to find out.

Within 3-4 weeks we will receive what will hopefully be the final prototype version which later can be used for the first batch of Crazyflies. Until then we have plenty of work with software both on the PC side and the firmware. Now it is pretty late, the clock just passed 00:00 and writing at this hour is hard. We will post some video to compensate for this short post later this week :-)

15 comments on “Crazyflie with digital sensors ready for prototyping

    • With our selected 170mAh LiPo battery it will hover for about 7 minutes and do some normal flying for about 6 min. With a bigger battery we can prolong that time to about 10 min but with reduced agility due to weight increase.

      The battery will charge in about 20 min from a micro-USB port. It is also possible to mod it with a battery connector to hot-swap batteries. That would add some precious weight though.

  • Hi,

    I have been following your project since the begining,however this is my first post. I think the job you have done is really amazing!!

    Like the other comments, I would also love to have one when its done. And I´m waiting for the avaibility date and price.

    I was wondering if you are planing at some point to add a small camera, maybe CMOS o something like that to make indoor FPV???

    Good Luck!!

    • Thanks for your warm words NicoMX!

      We have plans for making a small FPV addon module and if we don’t manage, we hope somebody else will. The radio link should be good enough to stream a low resolution video. We have measured it to be 200-400 kbit/s of payload data. The problem now is the range which might have to be better.

  • Great you guys are putting in so much time and effort to get a great product, shame some of the other manufacturers out there rushing to get products out don’t do the same, eagerly anticipated Mark

    • Thanks, we really want the foundation we have built to be solid platform for further development by all the interested DIY:ers. We are really testing it a lot and evaluating different paths so we can make good design decisions. But it is hard not to rush things since many want the Crazyflie now.

  • Great work! I’v read the whole project including the posts in the old Daedalus Project, and I’am excited about what you have done! Hope the digital sensors will work and the first patch will come soon!
    BTW, i am curious about the motor transister which drive the motors. Are they MOSFETS or Darlington transisters that make a H-bridge.From the picture i can’t see clearly. Or they are other ICs that i’m not familiar with. Could you give some more ditails about that? THX!!

  • The transistors are N-mosfets and they are simple pull-down. No H-bridge as the motors only need to run in one direction.

    What other IC’s are you referring to?

    • oh,i see. I thought it is some sort of ICs which is used specially for driving motors. I’m not quite familiar with hardware, cause i’m studying software engineering in collage. Anyway ,thanks for the reply and i’am looking forward to your new post tomorrow morning.
      And about the indoor FPV staff, i have a suggestion that you can try SDIO interface WIFI module or the new Bluetooth low engergy.
      GOOD DAY!

    • Not yet but we are working on it. If you read the older blog posts you will find more information about you topic.

    • The motors and propellers originally came from Silverlit X-Twin RC planes. Now we will (have to) buy big quantities directly from factory for the kits.

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