The next generation – Crazyflie 2.0

2014-06-23 | Marcus | 42 Comments

It’s been more than a year now since the Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter was released and it’s been a great journey! It’s been great to see users all over the world assembling their Crazyflies and doing all kinds of things with them. The list of cool things that have been done is long! During this time we have gotten feedback on what we can improve. We have also had time to reflect on what we think we could do better. So since some time now we have been discussing what we should change if we had the chance to make a second version of the Crazyflie. We think the time has come for an upgrade, so during the last 6 months we have been trying to sort out what we can do (and what is just too crazy..) and we have finally landed on a design that we hope you will like.

So it’s finally time to announce our new Crazyflie, the Crazyflie 2.0! Honestly we tried coming up with a cool name, but 2.0 just felt so geeky we couldn’t resist :-) During the upcoming months we will write lots of post detailing the features and design of the new version, but here’s a quick overview. First some of the things that we have seen users requesting:

No more soldering: The new design features connectors for the motors so you will not need to do any soldering.
More robust shape: We redesigned the PCB shape to withstand more punishment by changing the + shape to an X shape and also making the “wings” thicker.
Bluetooth Low Energy: Lots of users would like to fly the Crazyflie directly from their phone. To accomplish this we decided on adding Bluetooth Low Energy support while keeping compatibility with the current Crazyradio.
More payload: Lot’s of users would like to lift more payload than the current Crazyflie can handle. To accomplish this we have upgraded the motors from 6 mm to 7 mm, which increases the payload with about 2-4 times. It also makes it a lot more aggressive and fun to fly ;-)

Aside from user requests, we also have a couple of things that we wanted to improve and would give users much more possibilities to experiment and explore flying robotics:

Improved expansion-port: We have removed the old 2×10 header and instead added an expansion interface that has better mechanical stability and is easier to use. The interface is two 1×10 2.0 mm pitch connectors, spaced 22.0 mm apart. To maximize the flexibility users are able to stack boards on top of each other, both on the bottom and on the top. This will of course affect aerodynamics and flight time, but gives users lots of exciting possibilities.
Improved radio range: To be able to do more experiments using the Crazyflies outside we wanted to improve the range of the radio. This has been done by adding a radio power amplifier to the Crazyflie and also to the Crazyradio.
Dual-MCU architecture: Dedicated MCU for power-management/radio-communication and updated main MCU for control and application.

When moving to the new platform we don’t want to have two different firmwares for the new and current Crazyflie. Therefore we are doing major changes to the firmware in order to support multi-platform. Our goal is to keep full compatibility with the current Crazyflie as far as the hardware will permit, so any improvements done on the new Crazyflie will also be available on the current Crazyflie. We are still hashing out the details of what this will look like, but we are looking at abstracting all hardware-related code from the core platform.

Much of the design is in place for the Crazyflie 2.0, but there still some things we don’t know yet. Here’s a list of things we will haven’t decided on or tested, that we think you might be interested in:

Flight time: We still haven’t decided exactly on the battery so we have no measurements for this yet, but we are aiming for something similar to the current Crazyflie.
Weight: The size of the bounding box of platform will be the same (i.e. length and height) but the board is packed with more things, the PCB is a tiny bit larger, the motors are heavier and the motor mounts are different. Due to these things not being finalized we don’t have a final weight yet.
Radio performance: We are still tweaking and measuring the radio performance, so we don’t have any exact measurements that we can share.
Release date: We are always careful when promising specific dates, since we know it’s hard to keep them. At this point we could still hit some major roadblocks, but so far things are going according to plan. That being said, our aim is doing a pre-order of the new version at some time during the late fall.

We think that all of this sounds great (of course :-) ), but we are very eager to hear what you think about it. Does the Crazyflie 2.0 sound interesting? Is there something you would like to add or remove? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think!

Last week at Devoxx UK

2014-06-16 | Marcus | Leave a comment

Like we mentioned a couple of weeks ago we went to Devoxx UK last week exhibiting the Crazyflie. We got a chance to do lots of fun things, like flying the FPV quad in the keynote and also over the exhibition floor. The image is a bit faded, but we had the luck of having a projector next to us that we hooked up the FPV receiver to so the video feed was projected on the wall behind our booth. Our booth was next to the NFC ring exhibition which had a nerf gun that was unlocked when wearing their NFC ring. We quickly came to the conclusion that trying to shoot the Crazyflie down with the nerf-gun was the way to go :-) It can actually take a couple of direct hits before going down!

On Thursday night we jointed the IoT hackathon hosted by IBM. We got an Arduino with lots of sensors that we were supposed to interface from Java. Unfortunately we didn’t do too well on the Java front, but we managed better with the Arduino. We decided to use on the thumb-joysticks for controlling roll/pitch and a light sensor for controlling the thrust. Our first plan was to use a microphone for controlling the trust with the sound-level, but we realized that might be a bit too tight with time. The joystick and light values are sent via the UART to the PC and picked up in the Crazyflie Python Client using a modified version of the joystick drivers. Instead of reading events from PyGame we read data from the serial port. This makes it alot easier to debug since we get feedback from the input-device directly in the UI. In the end we got it working (kind of..) so we could fly and actually won the hackaton! So now we have a box of sensors that we can play around with. Below is an image of the sensors connected to the Arduino.

Some crowdfunding campaigns

2014-06-02 | Marcus | Leave a comment

We are always looking for fun things to hack together using the Crazyflie. The last couple of weeks we contributed to two exciting open hardware campaigns on Indiegogo that we are hoping to get our hands on soon.

The VoCore

First up is the VoCore, a coin-sized SoC breakout with WiFi running Linux. Based on the RT5350, it could be used for WiFi control (with AP support) or to add extra power for doing calculations.

The second one is the 3Dpad, an open source gesture controller. We have been using the Leap Motion for flying before, and we are really eager to try the concept but with an open source project. Even tough the 3Dpad doesn’t support the same hand/finger tracking as the Leap Motion, we are hoping that we can hack together a usable controller for the Crazyflie. It uses capacitive technology that makes it possible to place it behind materials that are not transparent. Imagine placing it under the desk and flying with your hand above the desk!

Best of luck to the projects with financing and development!

Flying robots and Devoxx presentation

2014-05-26 | Marcus | Leave a comment

This week we were planning on recording some FPV videos around the office with a new transmitter that gives us better range. But after battling with our USB capture device for a while we finally gave up. We will have to try to find a better one (that hopefully works in Linux!). But until then here’s two videos. First one from BBC is about the exciting future for flying robots (thanks to phenoptix for tipping us off to this one) and the second one is the recording from our presentation at Devoxx France a couple of months ago. The presentation is in French and you can pretty quickly guess who is the native French speaker and who is not :-)

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Devoxx UK

2014-05-19 | Marcus | Leave a comment

Last year we presented the Crazyflie at Devoxx Belgium and last month we got a chance to do it again at Devoxx France (but in french). To complete our Devoxx tour we also accepted an invitation to Devoxx UK. But this time we won’t be presenting, we will only be flying :-). Normally when we speak conferences we hang out at the conference before and after the presentation. It’s a really great way to meet other geeks, discuss and have a lot of fun. So this time around we will only be hanging out in the exhibition hall. If you are going make sure to come by our table and do some flying!

Things happening in the community

2014-05-12 | Marcus | Leave a comment

It’s been a while since we summed up things happening in the community so here’s some of the things that are happening. There’s lots of more things, so if you think we are missing something, then post it in the comments below.

Ralph has been doing some work on an semi-automatic flip feature in the client. There’s more info on the forum and video below.

Last week we tested some modifications made by otto for a headfree mode (i.e yaw only rotates the platform, not the referance direction). It’s a really nice feeling just rotating without taking care of the direction you are going in :-) There’s more information and links to code on the forum.

The SHERPA project have been working on swarm algorithms using a vision system and the Crazyflie.

Geof from Centeye have been working on optical flow stabilization using the Crazyflie. He has a prototype board working and there’s lots of information in the forum about this build. To see the results have a look at the video below.

Thanks to Victor the Deviation firmware for Devo-7e (custom firmware for Devo RC-controllers) now has support for the Crazyflie (needs hardware hack). If you would like to give it a try have a look at the code or grab one of the nightlies.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have been testing a new concept for a HoverBall using the Crazyflie. Imagine throwing a ball into the air that doesn’t come down (well not right away at least..). Here’s some more info and a picture.

We have also seen some nice stand alone controllers for the Crazyflie, one by MidLifeCrisis (more info here) and one by ivandevel (video below) . There’s also more info in the forum.

There also some updates on the work done by Oliver on the Kinect tracking of the Crazyflie. A demo video is shown below (it looks great!) and there’s more information on the forum.

And finally here’s a nice video we found on Youtube showing position control of the Crazyflie using a VICON system.

Crazyflie and NeoPixel ring continued

2014-05-05 | Marcus | 3 Comments

Continuing our post last week here’s a video showing the Adafruit NeoPixel ring and some of the effects that we did. The client code still needs some cleaning up, but the firmware is pushed here.

The firmware implementation includes two parameters, ring.neffect and ring.effect. The first parameter is used to know how many effects are implemented and the second one is used to set the index of the effect that should be used. For our current implementation we just loop though all the effects with either a joystick button or using the thumb together with the Leap Motion. It’s also possible to use these parameters directly from the UI as seen in this blog post.

Some of the effects we implemented are just blinking patterns, but we also wanted the ability to show feedback from the firmware using the ring. This has been enabled by adding an API in the firmware to access variables exposed though the logging framework. Using this API the firmware can access the same variables in the logging as the client. This enables all kinds of fun possibilities. In the video you can see (blurred) our implementation showing which direction the Crazyflie is tilting, but we have also been working on showing thrust (think rocket :-) ) as well as other things. We have done our best to implement a couple of effects, but there is so much more cool effects that could be done. So the firmware allows for custom effects and also for mixing multiple effects together (see this code).

Off to speak at Devoxx in Paris

2014-04-14 | Marcus | Leave a comment

This week we are heading off to Paris in France to present our project at Devoxx France. So if you are there and want to listen, then drop by the Ella Fitzgerald room at 10:40. The presentation will be in french and it will of course end with some demos :-) We will also hang around after the presentation just in case someone wants to test their flying skills. We are currently working on some nice light-effects using the Adafruit Neo Pixel ring that we will show off.

Also the Crazyflie is finally back in stock at Seeedstudio!

Logging and parameter frameworks tutorial continued

2014-04-07 | Marcus | 2 Comments

A while ago we posted a tutorial on how to modify the firmware to add logging/parameters and to plot/modify them from the client. We have done a continuation on this tutorial to show how to modify the client to integrate logging and parameters directly into the UI (like we have done on the flight tab). For the tutorial we use our virtual machine to do the development and running the code. Since we continue on the concepts and design made in the first video, it might be a good idea to see that one first.

Joining the business incubator Minc

2014-03-17 | Marcus | Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago we moved into the Malmö based business incubator Minc. It’s a great chance to get some extra help developing Bitcraze and also to get a chance to meet people from other start-ups. Below is a picture of a bunch of Crazyflies in our lab (i.e the table designated lab).

On a more technical note, here’s a video of a blimp that was hacked together with some left over party-balloons and a broken Crazyflie that we had lying around. It’s the day after the party, so there wasn’t that much lift left in the balloons (that’s why we have a bunch of them). After a few hacks to the firmware it actually works pretty well! The motors power has been redistributed and only the Yaw regulation is active, which explains that the yaw is still pretty stable, we are thinking about pushing the ‘blimp-mode’ at some point (first we will need more balloons and Helium though :) ).