Category: How we work

Hi, fellow Crayzflie’ers! I am Wolfgang Hönig and I am a visiting researcher at Bitcraze until early April. I am excited to be part of the team and will be working on making the Crazyflie (and its ecosystem) even more accessible, more robust, and versatile for other researchers and users.

Wolfgang in California.

I started working with the Crazyflie (1) back in 2014 as preparation for grad school. It was the only affordable, small, and open-source robot that I could find and helped me a lot to gain practical knowledge for controls, state estimation, and realtime systems. Now, 7 years later, it is still an exceptional product for the same reasons. During my PhD at the ACT Lab at the University of Southern California, I developed crazyflie_cpp, crazyflie_ros and, together with James A. Preiss, the Crazyswarm. The Crazyswarm in particular has helped me (& many other researchers) to validate robotics research (I worked mostly on multi-robot motion planning). After my PhD, I joined ARCL at Caltech as a postdoctoral researcher, where we used the Crazyflies for research in novel techniques that combine machine learning, motion planning, and controls (see GLAS and Neural-Swarm). Starting May 2021, I’ll be leading my own research group at TU Berlin.

At Bitcraze, I am looking forward to a close collaboration with the team. So far, we are planning to improve the low-level communication over the radio (joint work with Arnaud) and data collection and improvements to the state estimator by using the unique flight arena that has a motion capture, Lighthouse, and Loco Positioning system (joint work with Kimberly). If you are a researcher and have any other ideas, feel free to reach out via email or a comment!

With the raging pandemic in the world, 2021 will most likely not be an ordinary year. Not that any year in the Bitcraze universe has been boring and without excitement so far, but it is unusually hard to make predictions about 2021. Any how, we will try to outline what we see in the crystal ball for the coming year.

Products

What products are cooking in the Bitcraze pot and what tasty new gadgets can we look forward to this year?

Lighthouse

We did hope that we would be able to release the first official version of the Lighthouse system in 2020, but unfortunately we did not make it. It has turned out to be more complex than anticipated but we do think we are fairly close now and that it will be finished soonish, including support for lighthouse V2.

Once the official version has been achieved, we are planning to assemble an full lighthouse bundle, which includes everything you need to start flying in the lighthouse positioning system. This will also include the Basestations V2 as developed by Valve corporation, so stay tuned!

New platforms and improvements

We released the AI-deck last year in early release, but the AIdeck will be soon upgraded with the latest version of the GAP8 chip. For most users this will not change much but for those that really push the deep learning to the edge will be quite happy with this improvement. More over, we are planning to by standard equipped the gray-scale camera instead of the RGB Bayer filter version, due to feedback of the community. We are still planning to offer the color camera on the side as a separate product for those that do value the color information for their application.

Also we noticed the released of several upgraded versions of sensors for the decks that we already are offering today. Pixart and ST have released a new TOF and motion sensor so we will start experimenting with those soon which hopefully lead to a new Multiranger or Flowdeck. Also we are aware of the new DWM3000 chip which would be a nice upgrade to the LPS system, so we will start exploring that as well, however we are not sure if we will be able to release the new version of LPS in 2021 already.

One of the field that we have wanted to improve for a while but have not gotten to so far is the communication with the Crazyflie. The Crazyradio is using a quite old chip and the communication protocol has hardly been touched in years. There now exists a much more powerful nRF52 radio chip with USB port so it can give us the opportunity to make a new Crazyradio and, at the same time, rework the communication protocols to make them more reliable, easier to use and to expand.

People and Collaborations

Last year we have started several collaborations with show drone orientated business, which we are definitely moving forward with in 2021. For shows stability and performance is very important so with the feedback of those that work with that on a regular basis will be crucial for the further development and reliability of our products.

Moreover we would like to continue our close collaboration with researchers at institutes and universities, to help them out with achieving their goals and contribute their work to our opensource firmware and software. Here we want to encourage the community to make their contributions easy to use by others, therefore increasing the reproducibility of the implementations, which is a crucial aspect of research. Also we are planning to have more of our online tutorial like the one we had in November.

We also will be working with closely together with one of our very active community members, Wolfgang Hönig! He has done a lot of great work for the Crazyswarm project from his time at University of Southern California (USC) and has spend the last few years at Caltech. He will be working together with us for a couple of months in the spring so we will be very happy to have him. Moreover, we will also have 2 master students from LTH working with us on the topic hardware simulation in the spring. We are making sure that we can all work together in the current situation, either sparsely at the office or fully online.

In 2021, we will also keep our eyes open for new potential Bitcrazers! We believe that everybody can add her/his own unique addition to the team and therefore it is important for us to keep growing and get new/fresh ideas or approaches to our problem. Usually we would meet new people at conferences but we will try new virtual ways to get to know our community and hopefully will meet somebody that can enhance our crazy group.

Working from home

Due to the pandemic we are currently mainly working from home and from the looks of it, this will continue a while. Even though we think we have managed to find a way to work remotely that is fairly efficient, it is still not at the same level as meeting in real-life, so there is always room for improvement. Further more the lack of access to electronics lab, flight lab and other facilities when working from home, does not speed work up. We will try to do our best though under the current circumstances and are looking forward to an awesome 2021!

2020 was not an ordinary year, and through its different roller coaster motions, we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished. As 2021 grows nearer, it’s time to look back at this year and appreciate our accomplishments.

Community

The Crazyflie is still gaining a lot of interests in universities, and we’re always happy to discover what awesome things our users are doing with our products. One of our proudest moment was that a paper published in Science magazine used a Crazyflie in their research framework!

We actually made a montage of the different research videos where the Crazyflie, and we feel blessed to be part of those amazing feats. We were also quite surprised to see how the Crazyflie is implemented in different fields. Here is the video if you want to know more:

We’ve had stellar blogposts from guests this year, that you can read if you missed:

Of course, “community” this year means something different. We were sorry to not participate in the conventions and fairs where we usually meet a lot of interesting people, and had to find ways to do things differently. We now have a Discord server where people can join and discuss all things Bitcraze related!

Hardware

In the beginning of the year, we started right by releasing the Active Marker deck. Thanks to our collaboration with Qualisys, this new motion capture sensor can estimate the full body pose of the Crazyflie without unique marker positions or known starting positions.

A great deal of work was dedicated to the release of the AI deck in early access. Thanks to our newest deck, super-edge-computing is now possible on your Crazyflie !

Software

We improved our app API. We have seen it used more and more. Being able to add code to the Crazyflie without having to fork the code has proven to be quite useful and popular.

At the beginning of the year we finally managed to decode and use the Lighthouse V2 signals in order to get the Crazyflie to fly autonomously using lighthouse V2 basestations. Our focus for the end of year was to improve the Lighthouse V2, and thanks to some hard work, we managed to improve the calibration compensation for the newest version of Valve’s base station.

The client got a new facelift, as well as the python lib, and we released no less than 4 different new releases.

Documentation

We tried as much as we can to improve our documentation, and working from home proved how much it is needed. Kimberly wrote some step-by-step guides that help you discover more hands-on how to use our python library and the motion commander.

We also tried a new way to connect with you, while improving our existing tutorials, by having an online tutorial. It proved quite successful and it was a great way to talk about all the possibilities (and difficulties!) of a swarm.

The way we work

The biggest change was, as many of you, to learn to work from home. We managed quite well, learning to adapt our process. We now are experts in flying at home, and even though our flying arena is deserted, our kitchens are now more alive than ever.

I came in the company too, offloading the administration work, and we welcomed for some time our intern.

It’s that time of the year again ! As the days get darker and darker here in Sweden, we’re happy to getting some time off to share some warmth with our families.

And to kick off the holiday season, we prepared a little treat for you ! We enjoyed making a Christmas video that tested how we could use the Crazyflie at home. Since we’re not at the office anymore, we decided to fly in our homes and this video shows the different ways to do so. First, take a look at what we’ve done:

Now let’s dig into the different techniques we used.

  • Tobias decided to fly the Bolt manually. His first choice was to land in the Christmas sock, but that was too hard, thereof the hard landing in top of the tree. We were not sure who would survive: the tree or the Bolt!
  • Kimberly installed two base stations V2’s and after setting up, determined some way points by holding the Crazyflie in her hand. Then she generated a trajectory with the uav_trajectories project (like in the hyper demo). Then she used the cflib to upload this trajectory and make the crazyflie fly all the way to the basket. Her two cats could have looked more impressed, though!
  • Using trials and errors, Barbara used the Flowdeck, the motion commander, and a broken measuring tape to calibrate the Crazyflie’s path next to the tree.
  • Arnaud realized that, with all the autonomous work, we hardly fly the Crazyflie manually anymore. So he flew the Crazyflie manually. It required a bit more training that expected, but Crazyflie is really a fun (and safe!) quad to fly.
  • Marcus used two Lighthouse V2 base stations together with the Lighthouse deck and LED-ring deck. For the flying, he used the high level commander. The original plan was to fly around his gingerbread house, but unfortunately it was demolished before he got the chance (by some hungry elves surely!)
  • Kristoffer made his own tree ornament with the drone, which turned out to be a nice addition to a Christmas tree !

It was a fun way to use our own product, and to show off our decorated houses.

I hope you enjoy watching this video as much as we enjoyed making it.

We are staying open during the Holiday season but on a limited capacity: we still ship your orders, and will keep an eye on our emails and the forum, but things will get a bit slower here.

We wish you happy holidays and safe moments together with your loved ones.

The Holiday season is already in full gear here, with Christmas lights everywhere, and even though it’s not going to be an usual celebration for many of us, we’re trying to find ways to make it memorable.

Our first thought for preparing the year to come (other than hoping for less dire circumstances worldwide) is to find out how we can better your experience.

Since this summer, we’ve been wondering how to improve ourselves. We have made some great headways in stabilizing what we offer. Whether with our documentation (new step-by-step guides and online tutorials), our hardware (our new propellers work perfectly) or our software (a new client and app API), we tried to improve what we already have.

We pride ourselves in knowing our defaults, but we strive to correct them as much as we can. However, we’re aware that we’re not perfect, and have some blind spots. Be that as it may, improving ourselves means also knowing where there’s room for improvement! And that’s where you are needed.

We’d like to know your thoughts and feedback, and the best way to learn from you is to ask you questions. So we created a quick survey: it takes only 3 minutes to answer and would help us a lot. In fact, it will help us shape 2021, or at least the beginning of it, as we want to stabilize our portfolio and our documentation. The goal of the survey is to pinpoint the areas that need improvements and to gain general knowledge on our customers.

Click here if you want to help and answer the survey!

A Christmas party !

And, before we start 2021 with your feedback, we’d like to hear from you in real time! We’re indeed planning a Bitcraze Christmas gathering, on:

  • Day: Tuesday December 15th
  • Time: 17:00 Central European Time (Malmö, Sweden).

It would be nice to join us with some (virtual) mulled wine, to talk about the Crazyflie, or share some Christmas spirit together . We promise we won’t sing any Christmas carols, but maybe we can show some nice videos!

So join us on the Discord server where we will provide further information and open up a video&voice channel/Mozilla hubs room on the day itself.

It’s been more than 6 months now that I’ve joined Bitcraze and we are currently looking for more passionate people to join our team. So what is it like to work at Bitcraze? Here is my story.

First weeks

My first day of work was actually during one of our quarterly meetings, which means it was during a conference, in a good hotel with a nice spa and dinner, well needed after many hours of retrospective, brainstorming and planning. It was the perfect way to enter the Bitcraze world, and get to know my colleagues: it included serious talks, but also massages and board games. Did I get used to the good life? Well, I discovered that it was not all champagnes and jaccuzi: my first actual day at the office, I cut my finger pretty badly, spreading blood all over the kitchen. That’s fine, now everyone knows I’m not to be trusted with a knife! And I have a nice “Bitcraze” scar to show.

The on boarding itself included some education from our process guru, Kristoffer. I was excited and very curious to discover how a self-organizing company functioned, and I learned a lot during those sessions. I discovered a new way of working. It got some getting used to, but I got to really analyze and question my working habits and reflexes, which is always healthy. I am now an adept of lean and agile processes, and love being involved in the innerworking of the company and its processes.

Daily habits

As the days went along, I took my marks. I am everyday happy to get up and go to work. I especially love Mondays, that usually involve a nice morning chat, sitting on the sofa, discussing how the weekend was or the latest Netflix documentary, before beginning our weekly meeting. I discovered that Bitcraze is all about habits and routines, that I sometimes had to adapt to my non-geeky role. Tuesday for examples is usually dedicated to coding and programming: for me, it meant that’s the day I dig into the accounting!

We also have a tradition of “fun friday” that I really enjoy. The concept is simple: Fridays are dedicated to something that we love and have fun with. It allowed me to play around with my Crazyflie and its various decks, but also to work on my photographic skills or think about a more dedicated marketing strategy. It helps that usually, Fridays end with a nice chat around a beer and some VR games.

I love that I’ve got an independence to decide how my day is going to look like. My daily tasks include a lot of different things and areas. It’s a real luxury to me to be able to choose what I feel like tackling at any point. If I don’t feel like crunching numbers, I can deal with the shipments. Maybe today I’ll order those office supplies we need, or look into our social media statistics. When I first got recruited, the word “passion” came back a lot, and it didn’t disappoint: everything we do is driven by passion. I get to do and learn a lot of different things, and rarely get bored.

Global pandemic

Unfortunately, just as I begun to be comfortable on my new everyday routine, the world was hit by a global pandemic. Our habits were completely changed as we closed the door on the office and worked from home for 3 months.

I am actually really proud of how we handled it. Sure, the process and work flow changed drastically, but we kept on going, having faith in each other and in our capability in handling it. We kept the communication channels open, and produced the AI deck while working remotely.

For me, those times were though. I still needed the everyday guidance of my colleagues, which is trickier when they’re not sitting next to you. But it also gave me the opportunity to do more by myself, which ultimately led to learn things a lot quicker, I think. The hardest, though, was when everybody got to get back to the office, and I couldn’t: I belong in a risk group for Covid. I miss the fika with my colleagues, and working remotely seem pretty lonely.

Working as a non-tech

The trickiest part for everyone when I joined Bitcraze was to fit in the more technical aspects of the company. I only have a little programming and tech background, so including me in the geek discussions without using too much jargon was not easy for the guys. I learned a lot, in a short time. I still bug them with my questions and have a long list of terms and concepts I need to read about. But that’s ok, because my “cluelessness” actually provided good insights on the work we still have to do on documentation. And the work to understanding each other better actually flowed both ways: I had also sometimes to include my colleagues in more administrative aspects that they don’t know, or don’t care about. It’s interesting to try to adapt the Bitcraze process just because I’m here: it’s not only about developing tech anymore, we have to think about a way to involve administrative tasks to our methods.

All in all, working at Bitcraze is everything I thought it will be, and more: I love spending time with my colleagues. Each morning, I feel lucky to have joined a passionate and exciting company. I didn’t think I’ll be someone that happily turns her computer on a Sunday night to check what Monday will have to offer, but that’s what I end up doing most of the weeks.

That’s why my feelings today are mixed: I’m actually leaving the office to enjoy my generous Swedish maternity leave. Being pregnant and welcoming a new life is exciting, and I’m really happy to extend my family, but not working at Bitcraze will feel weird and I know I will miss it. Nevertheless, I know the guys will do fine without me, and I’ll be back in 2021 for more exciting news!

And if you’re interested in working at Bitcraze too, you’ll find more infos here !

It is apparently a recurrent theme within Bitcraze:New people come into the office, claim that the documentation is a bit of a mess, then will make it their personal mission on the company to try to fix it (because ‘how hard can it be?’) and come close to a mini depression when it turns out that it ain’t so easy at all.

And yes, I absolutely fell in into that trap too. During my PhD I did not really work on documentation like this (with the exception of papers) so I made quite ambitious plans last year as you can read in this blogpost. We managed to already cross a couple of things off: we moved wiki pages to the github and host it on our website and created datasheets for products, which should make it possible to close the wiki product pages.

However, we still haven not managed to completely close off the wiki because some pages can not really be split up or might have information on there that might not be very future proof. But there are definitely many matters to improve, so we are just writing some of our thoughts down.

Beginner – ? – Developer

One of the things that we noticed that is missing, also by comments of you guys on the forum or by mail, are the means to bring the crazyflie starters quickly to the developer phase. There are some tutorials to be found on our website, but the general feeling is that it does not elevate the general understanding of how everything works. Even the tutorials that cover the autonomous flight with a flowdeck does not go further than giving install instructions and handing over the full python script while not explaining which element does what.

Of course, there are already user manuals to be found in the github docs, however those are maybe too big of a step and take much for granted that the reader knows every ‘in between’ step. It would be much better, for any level, to have step-by-step guides on how to set thing up and what each element’s role is in the code. That would probably work much more effectively as a start for beginning developers.

So we had some tutorials in mind that can elevate first starters to come closer to the developer page:

  • CFCLIENT: How to working with the logging / parameter framework and the plotting tab
  • CFCLIENT: How to interpret the debug console output
  • CFLIB: How to connect to the Crazyflie and read out logs and parameters
  • CFLIB: How to send set points and the commander framework
  • CFLIB: How to build up the Multiranger push demo step by step
  • CF FIRMWARE: How to work with the Applayer (adding own modules or code)

If there are more tutorials that you would like to see, please let us know!

Doc closer to the code

The consensus here in general, is that we would like to have the documentation as close as possible to the doc. At least we have taken a step into the right direction by importing the docs into the Github Repos. This means that with every new feature added, the person responsible can add documentation to it directly in the same commit/pull request.

However, if the description is part of function’s or classes doc strings, it is as close as it can get! The contributor does not need to change the separate markdown file but can change the information directly. Moreover, it can also auto generate documentation for us, as you can see here from one of our try-outs with sphinx and our crazyflie-lib-python repo:

Part of the class and module overview of CFLIB with some auto doc of the high level commander.

Maybe for a beginner such documentation would not be great as a start, but for a more trained developer this could be very useful. My personal problem with most automatic generated documentation is that I find them difficult to read and find the functions that I need. However it would be possible to change the layout to make it a bit more readable since we will host it on our website. And since we mostly use C and Python in our repos, the most logical tools would be Doxygen and Sphinx. There are probably other possibilities out there, but if we would like to integrate this in our framework, we would like to go with tools that are future proof.

The whole picture

The problem with Autodoc is that it mostly shows the itty-bitty-gritty details of a library or firmware, however the users tend to get lost and can not see the whole picture. Also we are maintaining a lot of libraries and firmwares to consider (as you can see here in this list) based on which hardware they are applied for. This means that we have separate documentation pages on almost all of those.

And then comes the decision of where to place information. For instance, the CRTP (Crazy RealTime Protocol) is documented in the crazyflie firmware documentation, since there it is indeed how it is implemented, but CRTP does not only affect the crazyflie firmware. It goes from the STM32F4 to the NRF to the crazyradio through the USB on your computer through the cflib which is the backbone of the CFclient. This is an topic that users would like to have to an overview from if they would like to develop something with the CRTP.

Step-by-step guides are maybe still too detailed to explain the whole picture so maybe we should have some other way to have this overview shown. Maybe by an online lecture or a more lesson type of medium?

There is a lot of sources out there (like write the doc) that have tips on how to maintain the information sources for users, but of course we need to have a documentation structure that is useful and readable for many types of users and maintainable from our side. Let us know if you want to share any insight from your own experiences!

It has been a few months of when the Covid-19 crisis started, but it feels like almost a year ago when we all decided to stay and work from home. Considering circumstances, we managed to do to handle ourselves pretty well. We set up our home labs in our kitchens and/or living-rooms and managed to do a lot of development. Even though this situation did not come easy as you can see from our experiences here, we were able to pull ourselves through it in one peace. Now we also have to consider that Covid-19 is here to stay and we need to deal with the complications until at least the vaccine is finished and distributed. Until then, we might have to think about alternatives on how we do things, including how we go to events and meet/talk to you all!

Every year we try to go to at least two conferences, with last year being a particular busy year of us going to three big events (ICRA 2019, IMAV 2019 and IROS 2019). Before going to those conferences, we usually try to crunch and make an awesome demo. This also enables us to add new features to the firmware or fix problems that we find during this crunch. Moreover, we also really like to meet our users face-to-face, so that we can hear about how you use the Crazyflie in your research or classroom!

Since going to conferences and in-person events will be difficult to do this year and maybe the next, we were thinking about events that we can possibly organize to as an alternative. We were thinking about a couple of options on which we would like your opinion on as well. For instance, we could do an remote tutorial or lecture, like we did here for EPFL. Or maybe we can organize an online seminar we were invite users to give a talk about their work (I personally took part in a VR seminar in Mozilla hubs, which was pretty awesome). We can also consider to invite users for an online meetup to talk about the direction of the Crazyflie and its firmware. Another idea that we had recently, is to organize an online Crazyflie competition, where users can control the Crazyflie remotely or upload custom firmware, so that it can fly autonomously through an obstacle field.

We set up a poll of these ideas, so we can know what you guys like best! Also please comment below if you have further ideas about this or start a thread on the forum!



It’s been more than 2 months since we decided, to preserve our health and the Swedish health care system, to work from home. Since then, the majority of the world has had to do the same, and as all of you, we had struggled to adjust to this new situation. What’s it like behind the curtain ?

The home setting

First things first: I’m not from the tech side of the company. Setting up my working environment was not difficult. I have my laptop, I plug it, and boom, I’m ready to work. I know that some of my colleagues had to get creative, setting up base stations in their summer house or in their kitchens.

My main problem setting up was dealing with comfort and distractions. Comfort means finding a good chair, and resist the temptation to just slouch on the couch – let’s be honest, maximum productivity is not achieved when the remote control is one arm’s length away.

Dealing with distractions is a whole another problem. My husband works remotely too. We’ve learned quite quickly that we can’t both work in the living room: collisions of video calls, or simply resisting the urge to chitchat together made it impossible. But the one major distraction that was impossible to ignore is 20 month-old and full of youthful energy. In Sweden, preschools are not closed, but every cold symptoms mean staying at home. It is perfectly reasonable, but we soon realized that having a toddler nearby is incompatible with working peacefully. As many parents have learned during the last couple of months, kids are a great way to lose your train of thoughts, to disrupt a video-call with inappropriate sentences or to simply disrupt any plan. As fun as it was to see how our daughter deal with the “no banging on the room’s door when mommy is working” rule, I feel incredibly lucky that we have a big enough apartment to be able to work in a separate room, and of course that she was able to have fun at the daycare while we could work from home.

A new routine

I have to say that I’m quite proud with the way we settled into this new routine. We meet each morning, setting up the goals of the day. We did that at the office too (see here), but where it lasted 10 minutes when we were all together all day, it can easily climb up to 45 minutes now. We tried to use new tools, and whether those worked or not (if you can tip on a good virtual whiteboard we’ll appreciate it!), in those two months we had time to experiment new ways of working. We tried to set up a quarterly meeting, (meaning a whole day of meeting) without a good quality webcam.. And managed it!

As the days turned into weeks, we realized that one big problem with our new setup meant that each day looked the same. This Groundhog day feeling made us lost count on our 3-week cycle and left the weekends with a strange, unsatisfying aftertaste. After all, now that I’m all the time at home, what’s the difference between a workday and a Saturday ? Well, I haven’t figure out a good solution yet.

It’s not all bad, though. I like that my new routine includes a big, often home-cooked lunch with my husband (I’m French, so of course my first thought is towards cooking !). And after the first weeks of minor stumble, the Bitcraze team is as productive as ever, with some exciting things coming soon. I have to admit too that I got used to listening to my own music while working, or that reducing the commute has allowed for some much appreciated 30 extra minutes of sleep.

And, last but not least, with the warm days returning, I started taking my laptop near the sunlit window, allowing for a great bask in the sun – what I often need to gather up energy.

My perfect spot near the window

Away but together

Each one of us had his struggle with remote work. For me, who has just started in the company, it was an unexpected challenge. I still have a lot of things to learn, and it’s easier when I can just tap on someone’s shoulder or quietly observe what they’re doing. Instead, I had to figure out quickly how to do things on my own. It meant making some mistakes, but eventually I’m convinced I’m now more efficient than if I had more relied on my colleagues – learning things the hard way is sometimes the best way.

If you are working from home too, you’ll understand when I say that the hardest part has been to keep up the motivation. At Bitcraze, we’re a tight-knit group, and I never realized before how much I rely on social interactions to keep me going. I’m a social animal, and my coworkers are always one of the most important part of my work. Helping them, seeing how they’re doing, sharing a ‘fika’ (Swedish coffeebreak) … I had no idea it was such a big chunk of my workplace well-being.

Thankfully, we’re now a digital tight-knit group. We have daily digital fikas to keep up with each other’s progress, and even though we could be more thorough with them, it helped with the loneliness.

As I noticed my motivation went usually down after my home-cooked lunch, a new resolution came forth: after lunch, exercise ! A great way to keep in shape and to resist the temptation of a quick nap. I’ll indeed gingerly admit that, with a comfy bed so close, it’s hard to not think about closing my eyes, just for one second… Getting the body moving and the heart rate up is the best solution I’ve found to avoid this trap, with the added benefit of not gaining too much weight during this strange period.

We also started having picnics when the weather allowed it. Respecting social distancing (each on its own blanket), it is a great way to reconnect, share a meal in the sun, and appreciate the great parks of Malmö.

A Bitcraze picnic

All in all, I’ve learned a lot during these months working from home. We’ve managed to tackle the hurdles in our way and found our stride with this new routine. Improvisation, creativity and adaptation were necessary, but I’m happy to report we didn’t lose our motivation and will to create great product !

New stock

Speaking of great products, we have renewed our stocks that were beginning to thin a little. The buzzer decks, for example, are back in stock !

Considering the recent pandemic and the global situation, we at Bitcraze had to think about what will be our next step. Even though everyday life in Sweden is still going on, and all of us are in good health, we know there are a lot of you that are impacted by the CoronaVirus. We wanted to take responsibility for each other, the Swedish health care system, and the rest of our community by actively minimizing our social interactions. The best we can do right now is contributing to stop the disease and preserve our health. 

So for the time being, we all will be working from home. Shipping of orders will be a bit slower (twice every week instead of the current four times), but other than that we hope to still be available as usual. Forums posts, sales and other daily tasks will go on as usual. Hopefully you won’t see the difference! We will still work on providing you the best flying experience we can. 

With the new situation comes new challenges for the team, that we’re trying to make the best of. First of all, we will test a whole new way of working – together but apart! And we hope this will also give us the opportunity to work on some things that otherwise are a little bit left out… But you’ll have to be a little patient to discover these!

If you’re stuck at home and are getting bored, why not fly your Crazyflie and send us a video? We’ll post regularly those on our social media to fight against the current feeling of gloom and potential loneliness associated with confinement!

Our thoughts and well-wishes are with everyone affected by the situation.