Using the AI deck for CRTP over WiFi (via CPX)

Before the summer vacations, I had the opportunity to spend some time working on AI deck improvements (blog post). One of the goals I set was to get CRTP over WiFi working, and try to fix issues along the way. The idea was to put together a small example where you could fly the Crazyflie using the keyboard and see the streamed image along the way. This would require both CRTP to the Crazyflie (logging and commands) as well as CPX to the GAP8 for the images. Just before heading off to vacation I managed to get the demo working, this post is about the results and som of the things that changed.

Link drivers

When using the Crazyflie Python library you connect to a Crazyflie using a URI. The first part of the URI (i.e radio or usb) selects what link driver to use for the connection. For example radio://0/80/2M/E7E7E7E7E7 selects the radio link driver, USB dongle 0 and communication at 2Mbit on channel E7E7E7E7E7.

While working on this demo there were two major things changed in the link drivers. The first one was the implementation of the serial link (serial://) which is now using CPX for CRTP to the Crazyflie. The usecase for this link driver is to connect a Raspberry Pi via a serial port to the Crazyflie on a larger platform.

The second change was to add a new link driver for connecting to the Crazyflie via TCP. Using this link driver it’s possible to connect to the Crazyflie via the network. It’s also possible to get the underlying protocol, the CPX object, for using CPX directly. This is used for communicating with for example the GAP8 to get images.

In the new TCP link driver the URI starts with tcp:// and has either an IP or a host name, followed by the port. Here’s two examples:

• tcp://aideck-AABBCCDD.local:5000
• tcp://196.168.0.100:5000

Comparison with the Crazyradio PA

So can WiFi be used now instead of the Crazyradio PA? Well, it depends. Using WiFi will give you larger throughput but you will trade this for latency. In our tests the latency is both larger and very random. In the demo I fly with the Flow V2 deck, which means latency isn’t that much of an issue. But if you were to fly without positioning and just use a joystick, this would not work out.

The Demo!

Below is a video of some flying at our office, to try it out yourself have a look at the example code here. Although the demo was mostly intended for improving CPX, we’ve made use of it at the office to collect training data for the AI deck.

Improvements

Unfortunately I was a bit short on time and the changes for mDNS discovery never made it it. Because of this there’s no way to “scan” or discover AI decks, so to connect you will need to know the IP or the host name. For now you can retrieve that by connecting to your AI-deck equipped Crazyflie with the CFclient and look at the console tab.

A part from that there’s more improvements to be made, with a better structure for using CPX (more like the CRTP stack with functions) in the library and more examples. There’s also still a few bugs to iron out, for example there’s still the improved FPS and WiFi throughput issues.

IMAV 2022

Next week from 13th to 16th of September Barbara, Kristoffer and Kimberly will be present at the international Micro Aerial Vehicle Conference and Competition (IMAV) hosted by the MAVlab of the TU Delft in the Netherlands. One of the competitions is called the nano quadcopter challenge, where teams will program a Crazyflie + AI deck combo to navigate through an obstacle field, so we are excited to see what solutions will come out of that. If any of you happens to be at the conference/competition, drop by our table to say hello!