Author: Marcus

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Summer time

  2013-06-24  |     |    7 Comments

So finally it’s getting warm and sunny outside (even in Sweden…) and it’s time to go out side and enjoy it while it’s lasts! This doesn’t only include flying the Crazyflie but also spending some time with our families and going on vacation. We have tried to plan everything so at least one of us is available to answer questions that might come up, accept pull-requests etc, but still it might take a bit more time than usual. And of course there will still be the Monday post!

If you happen to have some spare time during the summer and want a challenge, then have a look at the Crazyflie box… Have a great summer everyone!

Bitcraze VM 0.3

  2013-06-10  |     |    2 Comments

There’s an updated version of the Bitcraze virtual machine out. The VM has all the pre-requisites for using the Crazyflie/Crazyradio and also the full development environment for our projects. Here’s a list of the improvements from version 0.2:

  • Upgraded version to of Xubuntu to 13.04
  • Improved README and instructions inside VM
  • Updated to the latest version of repositories
  • Added script for updating all the project repositories
  • Added pre-configured JTAG debugging for Eclipse using BusBlaster
  • Added KiCad and the Crazyradio design files

More information on the Bitcraze VM can be found here and it can be downloaded from this link. If you don’t want to download our virtual machine but instead make your own then have a look at this guide on the wiki.  It details how to get Xubuntu running in VirtualBox with all the pre-requisites for the development environment.

We have finished cleaning up the Crazyradio design files and they are now added to a Bitbucket repo. The project includes a cache file with all the components from our library that we have used. Once we are finished with cleaning up the component library it will also be uploaded.

Lot’s of things happening

  2013-06-03  |     |    1 Comment

It’s been yet another week with lot’s of ideas, contributions and discussions. Here’s some of the things we’ve seen the last week:

And of course thanks to everyone that keeps updating the wiki and helping out in the forums!

Next batch in production

  2013-05-27  |     |    8 Comments

It’s been another busy week at Bitcraze. Unfortunately we are lagging a bit behind on pull-requests and such, but we are doing our best to catch up. Also development taking place in the forum has accelerated and we will try to summarize some of it next week.

The planning for the next batch is finished and it’s now going into production. Expected to be ready in the end of June. For this batch we have modified the motor-mounts to add some space at the bottom and also increased the size of the “stopper” at the bottom of the mount to keep the motor from popping out.

From now, as been requested, we will also start offer the parts of the kit separately: The Crazyflie 6/10-DOF, the Crazyradio and the antenna. Aside from this we will still be offering the previous kits and all the spare parts.

A new source version of the Crazyflie PC client has been uploaded to the Bitbucket page. Since this new version mostly fixes critical bugs related to mac, there’s no new version for the Windows installer.

For the next version of the windows installer we are looking at packaging and installing Crazyradio driver with the client. We are also looking at making Ubuntu packages accessible in a PPA as well as Fedora/OpenSuse packages. This would simplify the Client installation on Linux. ArchLinux already have a package in AUR  courtesy of Gergely Imreh.

Another week of fixes and contributions

  2013-05-13  |     |    2 Comments

It’s been another week with lots of stuff going on. Shortly after the Crazyflies were delivered things really started to accelerate. Now there’s lots of cool stuff going on and we are trying to keep up :-) Here’s a few things from the last week.

  • People have started looking at the pressure sensor that is mounted on the 10-DOF version. phiamo is working on a hover-mode using the pressure sensor. There’s more information and code in this post.
  • Contributions to the Mac OSX install instructions have been made and they are now usable.
  • Another frame has been designed by bscott and is uploaded on Thingiverse. No doubt, next on the Bitcraze shopping list is a 3D printer.
  • The USB3 issue on the Crazyradio has been fixed so there’s a new version of the firmware. If you don’t have any problems with this then don’t update, because there’s a slim chance of bricking the radio (see the wiki page). The firmware is available here and instruction on how to update it are here.
  • A nasty bug on Mac OSX has been reported. When loosing connection to the input-device the output will become 100% thrust and it will not stop until the radio looses connection. This issue has been fixed in the latest version from the repository.

The Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter kit 10-DOF is out of stock again but there’s still some 6-DOF units left. We are currently planning the next batch but until then there will be a few more units (~50) that will drop into the Bazaar.

In order to have a better overview of which problems that have been solved and which still needs attention in the Support forums we are setting up some guidelines, which will be done during the week. So if you are hanging around in these forums or you want to get some support, then please have a look at the instructions.

If you live in the south of Sweden and you are interested in the Crazyflie drop by Javaforum next Tuesday (21/5) where we will be presenting.

 

First units received

  2013-04-29  |     |    43 Comments

Finally after more than 2 years of work on the kit, the first Crazyflie Nano Quadcopters are arriving at customers! It’s been a long journey with lots of ups and downs, and we are really happy that we managed to reach the goal (and on time).

For anyone who missed the pre-order, more kits will be available at Seeedstudio from the 6th of May. In addition to the products that are already there we will also make the motor-mounts available as spare parts. The 6-DOF and 10-DOF kits will be the same as for the pre-order (include the Crazyradio dongle) but the price for the 10-DOF kit will be updated to $179. Why the new price? Adding the two sensors turned out to be a bit more pricey then we thought.

Now to the technical stuff, here are some of the updates since last week:

  • Updated assembly with the new motor-mounts
  • Binary distribution page containing a brand new Windows installer for the Crazyflie Client (no need to install dependencies anymore) and also the latest firmware build for the Crazyflie.
  • A lot of smaller bug-fixes in the client and improved performance of the Crazyflie. So make sure to update to the latest firmware/client when you get you Crazyflie.
  • The Wiki is being updated (as always) and we are doing our best to catch up. We haven’t had time to set up the registration for the wiki, but if you feel like doing some editing drop us an email and we will set you up with an account.

Since this is the first time the Crazyflie and Crazyflie PC client are distributed there are bound to be bugs that we haven’t caught yet. So if you find any bugs it would be great if you wanted to drop by our Bitbucket page and report issues. And if you feel the urge to write some code, then have a look at how to contribute. There will probably be some bug reports and if not there’s always the wishlist.

We are always eager to get some feedback from our users so drop by our forum and let us know what you think about our projects or to pitch some crazy project ideas.

We finally got to measure the weight more precisely, just under 19g

Crazyflie weight with new motor mounts

Crazyflie weight with new motor mounts

A big thanks to Seeedstudio for making this possible. And to all of you, we really hope you enjoy your new Crazyflies :-)

 

In Shenzhen at Seeedstudio

  2013-04-15  |     |    3 Comments

So, like we wrote last Monday, we are visiting Seeedstudio in Shenzhen, China. It’s been a great visit and we have gotten a chance to see both the Seeedstudio offices, the production and a bit of Shenzhen. And of course we also got a chance to do some shopping at the local markets. If you ever happen to find yourself in Shenzhen make sure to drop by the SEG Electronics Market, it’s a great place for electronics enthusiasts such as us!

Since we had some problems getting vacation all at once from our employers we decided to travel separately and overlapping each other a bit. Tobias left first and then me and Arnaud a couple of days later. After roughly 22 hours of travel we landed in Hong Kong and took the bus/train to Lo Wu to the Chinese boarder. Since I went traveling the week before and I couldn’t send my passport for the visa application we took the chance that we could apply for one at the boarder (after reading about it online). Turn out that it’s very easy to get a visa for the Shenzhen area (not all of China) at the boarder at Lo Wu. Took about 5 minutes and cost between ~130 yen. Just note that it’s not all nationalities that this applies to and the rules seem to change every once and a while.

Meanwhile Tobias spent his time visiting Seeedtudio and got to see the production. All the PCB assemblies was already done but the testing was running full speed. We use a simplified bed of nails test-jig that does the programming and tests voltages, current, battery charging, motor drivers etc. It is working very well and every Crazyflie plus Crazyradio takes about 2 minutes to program and test.

Visiting at Seeedstudio was great! We have been mailing and talking on Skype for the last 18 months with lots of people there and it was great to finally meet them in real life. Of course we got a guided tour around their offices which seems like a great place to work, lots of electronics everywhere :-) We also got a chance to catch up on the progress for the production. There’s lots of practical problems to solve when we scale up from only doing prototypes to full production, such as test-rigs for the Crazyflie.

After doing some research online we decided to head for the SEG Electronic Market to check it out and do some shopping. Inside it’s like a bazaar filled with small corridors and little booths selling all kinds of stuff. And this continues for 9 floors! On the first two floors you will find mechanics, electronic components, measurement equipment, leds, cabling… The list just goes on, they even had a small pick and place machine for prototype batches. Continuing upwards it becomes more and more computer hardware like graphics cards, mother boards, memory and hard-drives. These floors also have stuff like routers, cameras and tablets. Going even higher up everything is put together and you can buy laptops and computers. Its really amazing the diversity of things you can find, we even saw some cashier machines. Walking from the bottom floor upwards we really got the feeling that as you get higher things get more and more assembled. And everything is very cheap, for example we bought 300 pogo-pins in different variations for 100 yen (~16 USD), but expect the quality to be there after.

So what did we end up buying? Well, lots of stuff! We bought a lot of prototype stuff that we will use for the Crazyflie like cables, antennas, screws and batteries. And we also found a really nice USB microscope with a stand that does 500x magnification :-)

We uploaded some photos to our Picasa album for Seeed/Shenzhen.

Seeedstudio reception

 

Visiting Seeedstudio

  2013-04-08  |     |    2 Comments

This week and the next we will be visiting Seeedstudio for the first time so tonight we have been finalizing the travel plans! That might sound easy but it’s been a bit like solving a puzzle since we have to take vacation from our day jobs to go, and each one of us has slightly different vacations.

The purpose of the visit is to get a chance to finally meet everyone that we have been talking/mailing with during the last 18 months and also helping out during the final testing stage. And of course it will be really great to visit Shenzhen and fill our luggage with electronics for our trip back :-)

As for the production it’s still progressing according to schedule, we will post actual photos of the boards as soon as we see them :-D.

Map Copenhagen airport to Seeedstudio

Production start-up

  2013-02-25  |     |    5 Comments

Like we wrote last week we are busy with a lot of administrative stuff (box design, component sourcing, answering emails etc). But we managed to do a few commits to the crazyflie-pc-client during the week. We have also started preparing a virtual machine appliance that contains everything needed for development and flying. The idea is to make it easier for anyone that doesn’t want to bother about the pre-requisites. If you download Virtual Box or VMware Player, import the virtual machine appliance and pass the Crazyradio/USB game-controller into the virtual machine then you are ready to fly and do development.

If you missed the pre-order, don’t worry. The Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter Kit will be back in stock shortly after the last pre-orders has shipped. But we plan to split the special pre-order bundles so they will become three separate products: Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter Kit (6- and 10-DOF), Crazyradio USB dongle and the 2.4 GHz antenna.

End of the pre-order

  2013-02-18  |     |    14 Comments

So after three very busy weeks the pre-order will close today. We are really overwhelmed by the attention that the project hs gotten and number of Crazyflie kits that we have sold. We are also very excited about already getting feedback in the forum and by mail about new mods and features. If you have technical questions or suggestions post them over in the forum so we can answer them there and everyone can see the responses.

Currently we are finalizing the sourcing and test-plans for the production which will start very soon. We are also (as always) working on updating the wiki and answering questions in the forum. We added two new pages to the wiki: One about the Crazyflie Pyhthon API and one about how to contribute to our projects.

The upcoming weeks we will be busy with a lot of administrative stuff so don’t be worried if you don’t see any commits in the repos or new hacks, we haven’t stopped the development :-)