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Blog | Bitcraze Search for: Home Blog Products Crazyflie 2.0 Crazyradio PA LED-ring deck Qi charger deck Buzzer deck BigQuad deck Micro SD vellum deck Loco Positioning system Loco Positioning deck Loco Positioning node Prototyping deck Breakout deck Z-ranger deck Flow deck Debug connector kit Battery charger Flow breakout Old products Buy Buy online   Local distributors Buyers guide Tutorials Start here Getting started with the Crazyflie 2.0 Getting started with expansion decks Getting started with the Buzzer deck Getting started with the Z-ranger deck Getting started with the Flow deck Balancing propellers Getting started with the Crazyflie 1.0 Getting started with minutiae Getting started with the Loco Positioning system Getting started with Flying using LPS Getting started with Flow breakout workbench Getting started with the STEM drone stow Support Getting help Forum   Downloads FAQ Troubleshooting External projectsMinutiaeOverview Contribute Github   Wiki   Forum   Early wangle Media Video galleryWell-nighBitcraze Team Press Product trundling Thesis Jobs Contact Feedback Credits Blog Preparations for IROS 2018   2018-09-24  |    Kristoffer Richardsson  |    Leave a scuttlebutt We are working nonflexible in the Bitcraze team to prepare and get ready for IROS 2018 in Madrid next week. As usual preparing for fairs and exhibitions make us add useful features and functionality that we might not had planned to implement but that we find useful or need.Planethough some of it might be a bit hackish, most of it will add value to the project and will hopefully be useful to the community. Notable functionality that we are working on this time:  diamond for a 3D-printable charging pad vital support for the experimental Light House deck support for the upper level commander in the python lib “app” for voluntary flying running in the Crazyflie Charging pads The plan is to fly a small crazyswarm with 6 Crazyflies using a motion capture system from Qualisys. Since we want to spend as much time as possible talking to people and minimize setup time, we were looking for a solution to automatically recharge the batteries between flights. We are planning to use Qi-charger decks for contact less charging with 3D-printed landing pads with slopes to make the Crazyflies slide into the correct charging position plane if they land a few millimetres off.  The Light House deckPlanethough the Light House deck hardware still is very much experimental we have started to add support for it in the Crazyflie firmware. Hopefully we will be worldly-wise to run our demos using either LPS or the Lighthouse to show the difference in performance. Support for the upper level commander in the python lib The upper level commander was unsalaried by Wolfgang Hoenig and James Alan Preiss (thanks!) an has been misogynist in the Crazyflie firmware for a while. In an environment with positioning support it provides upper level commands such as “take off” and “go to” as well as flying user specified trajectories and is used by Crazyswarm. We wanted to use the same functionality in our demo but running it stand vacated in the firmware. The easiest way to get witting with the functionality was to play with it from python and as a side effect we implemented the API in the python lib for anyone to use. There is moreover an example script tabbed autonomous_sequence_high_level.py in the examples directory. App for voluntary flight For ICRA last year we wrote lawmaking in the Crazyflie firmware to fly trajectories autonomously. At that point we simply fed setpoints to the PID controller to make the Crazyflie follow a preprogrammed path. Now we have increasingly tools in the Crazyflie toolbox (the upper level commander and the Mellinger controller) and by using them we have reduced the value of lawmaking needed and complexity of the solution while the performance has been improved (code on github).    Crazyflie, Electronic, Frontpage, Loco Positioning, Random stuff, Software Shipping with FedEx and updated Loco positioning node   2018-09-17  |    Marcus  |    Leave a scuttlebutt E-store Like we’ve mentioned a few times surpassing it’s not unchangingly easy shipping batteries. Due to this we’ve unfortunately had to switch off checkouts containing batteries to some countries (like Canada, Australia and India). We’ve finally found a workaround for this, so today we’ve switched from using DHL to using FedEx in our E-store. As a positive side-effect of this most customers will moreover goody from lower shipping rates on their orders. As unchangingly if there’s any issues with shipping or ordering please let us know and we’ll do our weightier to sort it out. Loco node Rev.EWithoutreceiving feedback from some customers that the micro-USB connector on the Loco nodes tapped we’ve decided to update the design. So in the coming weeks we will start phasing in the new revision (Rev.E) of the Loco node and phasing out the old one (Rev.D). Aside from the updated micro-USB connector we’ve moreover unfluctuating increasingly spare pins to the expansion connector on the board. For full details on the schematic changes have a squint at the the Rev.E schematics over on the wiki. As a side-note it’s worth mentioning that the first batch of Rev.E Loco nodes have a visionless undecorous silkscreen instead of the standard Bitcraze woebegone silkscreen, this will be updated in future batches.   Frontpage, Loco Positioning, Random stuff Demo for iROS2018: The lighthouse deck   2018-09-10  |    Arnaud  |    1ScuttlebuttAs mentioned in an older post, this year we are going to walkout at iROS 2018 in Madrid. Every time we go to fairs and exhibition, it is the occasion for us to work increasingly on integration to put together the latest minutiae into a demo we can show at the event. One of the latest minutiae we will show at iROS is the lighthouse deck. Work on the lighthouse deck have unfurled during the summer and we are now at a stage where things are starting to work quite well with Lighthouse V1 wiring stations. We are quite impressed by the performance: we have measured a positioning noise whoop 1mm. We are flying the Crazyflie using Crazyswarm which allows us to fly smooth trajectory using the high-level controller: The goal for iROS is to stabilize and push the lawmaking in the main Crazyflie firmware repos. We will have a couple of Crazyflie setup with the Lighthouse deck and that we will be worldly-wise to demonstrate. In the future we are moreover thinking of making a unstipulated purpose tag that could be used with other robots. One of the unconfined wholesomeness of the lighthouse tracking technology is that the position and orientation is misogynist in the receiver, in the robot. This ways that, like the LPS, the robots are voluntary and do not require an zippy data connection with a computer in order to locate themselves. There is still a lot of challenges and work to be washed-up on the deck. For once, this is currently using HTC Vive lighthouse wiring station V1, Valve has release the wiring station V2 that allows to imbricate much increasingly space for each wiring station and to use increasingly than 2 wiring stations in the same system, we plan to implement support for it. We will moreover need to work on multi-sensor localization and setup procedure. Currently the Crazyflie calculates its orientation using only one lighthouse receiver and requires to be in uncontrived light of sight of both lighthouse, it is possible using increasingly receiver to get a position and orientation with only one wiring station in sight which will increase the system reliablility. As for the system setup we are still using SteamVR to obtain the lighthouse positions using at least one Vive controller, the goal is sooner to be worldly-wise to setup a system with the Crazyflie alone, without needing to install SteamVR. All that will most likely be discussed in increasingly details in future post. If you are peekaboo iROS 2018 finger self-ruling to come and meet us at diner #91.   Crazyflie, Electronic, Frontpage, Video Making TDoA 3 increasingly wieldy   2018-09-03  |    Kristoffer Richardsson  |    Leave a scuttlebutt We started the work on TDoA 3 in May and it has been functional for a few months, but it is a bit cumbersome to make it work since it requires compiling firmware with special flags and running scripts to configure anchors. To rectify this and make it increasingly wieldy we are now working on integrating it just like the other positioning modes; TWR and TDoA2.  Changes The anchors once contained most of the required functionality. We have widow support to transpiration to the TDoA3 mode via LPP, that is using the Crazyflie as a underpass between the vendee and the anchors, transmitting data to the anchors via UWB. In the Crazyflie TDoA 3 has been widow as a third mode. This ways that it is now wheels detected when the Crayzflie is switched on and it can be selected from a vendee – no need for compile flags any more! We have moreover widow a new mapping to the memory sub system to transfer vise information for a dynamic number of anchors to a client. This ways that instead of stuff misogynist to the vendee as a long list of log variables and parameters, most of the TDoA3 information and configurations are misogynist in a memory map using the same protocol we use to wangle real memory like the configuration EEPROM or the deck memories. This way we have much increasingly self-rule to pinpoint and transfer the data-structure to and from the Crazyflie. The python client/lib is the piece of software that requires most changes. The UI (and implementation) was designed to handle 8 anchors, but with TDoA3 it must support a dynamic and larger number. The new memory mapping has of undertow to be implemented in the lib as well. The vise position configuration part of the LPS tab will be separated into a dialog box to get increasingly space for the controls. We moreover have some ideas for improvements in vise position configuration (saving to file and sanity checking of configurations for instance) that will be easier to implement in the future as well. Feedback The suburbanite for this work is of undertow to make the TDoA 3 technology misogynist to anyone that wants to try it out. It is important to remember that it still is experimental and that we have mainly tested it in single room setups with a few anchors. Our hope is that increasingly users will use it in various settings and that we will get feedback and contributions to iron out any remaining problems. We currently lack easy wangle to larger spaces which makes it nonflexible for us to verify the functionality in a system with many anchors. The lawmaking in the firmware for the anchors and the Crazyflie is mostly ready while there still remains some work in the lib/client, hopefully it can be single-minded and pushed during the week (see issue bitcraze/crazyflie-clients-python#349). If you want to try it out when the vendee is fixed, remember to upgrade the vise firmware (including git sub modules), the Crazyflie firmware (including git sub modules), the python lib and the python client. Since this is still work in progress APIs and protocols may transpiration until the first official release.   Crazyflie, Frontpage, Loco Positioning, Random stuff, Software Log and param protocol V2   2018-08-27  |    Arnaud  |    Leave a scuttlebutt Log and param are the two Crazyflie subsystems that have wilt the cadre ways of liaison with the Crazyflie. The Log is a subsystem that contains functionality to transfer values of variables in the Crazyflie to a client. The vendee can setup log blocks, which are a list of variables, and start logging this log woodcut at a unrepealable rate. The Crazyflie will then send radio packets at the requested rate with the current values of the variables, thus enabling the vendee to read waffly variables in the Crazyflie in near realtime. It is very useful for monitoring the state of the Crazyflie and remoter more, any log variable can be graphed in the python client. Param is a subsystem that contains functionality to get and set the values of variables in the Crazyflie. This is substantially the opposite of Log, it allows the vendee to read or write variables that are read-only in the firmware. Both subsystems are based on a Table Of Content (the TOC): at connection time the vendee pulls the list of log/param variables. This ways that there is no hard-dependency between vendee and firmware and that we can develop new functionalities in the Crazyflie, subtracting log and param variables to wangle it without modifying the client. The Log and Param subsystems have served the Crazyflie polity very well, permitting for quick minutiae of experimental and new functionalities. There has been a limitation that has wilt increasingly and increasingly painful lately though; we were limited to 255 variables due to the protocol using only one byte to encode the variable ID. This issue has now been stock-still in the Crazyflie firmware and in the Crazyflie ROS suburbanite by a pull request from Wolfgang at USC. We have recently moreover implemented the required changes in the Python lib to make it misogynist in the python vendee (and any other python script using the lib). In the process, some bugs unfortunately found their way into the code, but they have quickly been stock-still by a pull request from simonjwright. Thanks to every one involved! So now Crazyflie supports up to 65535 log and 65535 param variables. This time we should be good for the foreseeable future! ;-).   Crazyflie, Frontpage, Random stuff, Software Raspberry Pi Zero power deck   2018-08-20  |    tobias  |    Leave a scuttlebuttOverlysince the Raspberry-pi zero was released we wanted to find-out what it would take to fly one with the Crazyflie 2.0. One firsthand issue is the size and weight of the R-Pi-Zero. It is just a bit to big and heavy to make it work without modifying the Crazyflie 2.0.Moreoverit requires 5V power which is something the Crazyflie 2.0 doesn’t provide if USB isn’t connected. Actually the R-Pi-Zero works well lanugo to ~3.6V but this is still too upper to reliably run directly from a single LiPo cell. So to uncork with we created a Raspberry Pi Zero power deck. It is reusing the same step-up/step-down (STBB1) as used on the LED-ring to make things simple and the output is set to 3.8V. Other than that the UART and the I2C interfaced has been unfluctuating so that the raspberry pi zero could tenancy the Crazyflie. The raspberry pi zero would then be soldered to the deck with 0.1″ header pins. The result can be seen unelevated and the power part works well. We chose to solder the deck header pins to the deck, instead of using the sexuality deck connectors, to make it increasingly sturdy.Flipsidething we did was fitting a Pi-camera using a 3D printed mounting subclass we designed. We think this is one of the interesting use cases, to run computer vision or maybe neural networks :-). Well unfortunately this only solves the first part, powering the R-Pi-Zero from the Crazyflie 2.0. Next step will be to modify the Crazyflie 2.0 with worthier motors/props so that is can siphon it for a decent time. So story to be continued…   Crazyflie, Electronic, Frontpage, Mechanic We’re back!   2018-08-13  |    Kristoffer Richardsson  |    Leave a scuttlebutt The summer has been unusually long and warm here in Sweden, with a never ending sun splendorous on the Bitcraze team members enjoying our vacation. As usual, at least one of us has been in the office at any given time, but staffing has been sparse. We apologise for elapsed answers to emails and similar.Planethough we have been enjoying some time off, we have moreover managed to do some wipe up of tasks that have been long over due. For instance merging pull requests and fixing a few nasty bugs (for details please see github), and implementing long overdue functionalities like stuff worldly-wise to have increasingly than 255 log and param variable (when the Crazyflie firmware develoment started many years ago, we though that 255 variables ought to be unbearable for anybody). Everyone will be when in the office this week but we plan to protract the cleaning a few increasingly weeks. We hope to be worldly-wise to do some work on TDoA3, the Crazyradio, impementing Crazyswarm functionality in the python lib and increasingly often everything we normally do not have the time to do. We have some heady projects coming up this autumn: In October we are going to IROS where we will try demo a swarm in 2x2x2.5m, we moreover have quite some hardware that is now very tropical to be finalized that we should be worldly-wise to release and start shipping surpassing the winter. Stay tuned for increasingly products and blog posts!   Frontpage, Random stuff Crazyflie RZR tenancy workbench progress   2018-08-06  |    Arnaud  |    Leave a scuttlebutt We have been thinking for a while well-nigh making a Crazyflie tenancy workbench that could be used to make a worthier quadcopter using the Crazyflie firmware and deck. This idea has materialized in the Crazyflie RZR project. The Crazyflie RZR is a quadcopter controller workbench based on the Crazyflie design, as pointed if our previous blog post, it is intending to bring the strength of the CF2 but in a little bit worthier package :-). It runs the Crazyflie firmware and full-length the Crazyflie 2.0 deck port. It is capable of driving brush-less motor controller and has an uFL port for an external 2.4GHz antenna. It moreover contains the new quadcopter-optimized Bosch BMI088 IMU. We have made some progress lately on the Crazyflie RZR, we have just got the first initial sample from the manufacturer shown in the picture above. We are not sure yet when the RZR will be in the shop, but the project is definitely going forward. We will alimony posting information well-nigh the project as it develop.    Crazyflie, Electronic, Frontpage Lighthouse prototype deck minutiae   2018-07-30  |    Arnaud  |    3 Comments We once wrote in a previous blog post that we where working on a Lighthouse positioning receiver deck for the Crazyflie 2.0. In this post we will describe a bit what has been the minutiae process so far for this deck as it is an example of how to develop with the Crazyflie. Basically, our way of working often is to try to get one things working without another, this is what we have washed-up here: we start from a hack and then we replace hardware and software pieces one without the other to make sure we unchangingly have one half (hardware of software) we can relie on. The lighthouse deck started as a Fun Friday project, and as such we usually want to hack something together to see if the idea can work. So I looked virtually the web to get some information as of how to receive the lighthouse positioning signals and decode it. I found the vive-diy-position-sensor GitHub project by ashtuchkin. The project describe the schematic and contains the software for a Teensy workbench to receive a lighthouse 1.0 signal and summate the position of the receiver. I went forward and cabled the spin on a Crazyflie prototyping deck and tying a Teensy workbench to flipside prototyping deck. The idea is to install these two workbench whilom and whoop a Crazyflie: Discreet-component Lighthouse receiver Teensy to decode the lighthouse signals The signal from the lighthouse receiver goes to the Teensy, then the serial port of the Teensy is unfluctuating to the serial port of the Crazyflie. As a first tideway the Teensy was configured and we could get the position data using the Teensy USB port. When everything was working correctly I could implement a small deck suburbanite in the Crazyflie to receive the position and push it in the Kalman filter. This way I could get a Crazyflie 2.0 flying in lighthouse with minimal firmware work. The obvious next step was to get rid of the Teensy, this was washed-up by implementing the lighthouse pulse vanquishment and interpretation in the Crazyflie. Once that was done, we could make our own deck. Instead of using op-amp we used the official receiving tweedle misogynist at this time, the TS3633: First lighthouse receiving deck prototype This workbench implements up to two receiver which would indulge to get the orientation as well as the Position of Crazyflie. Due to questionable soldering only one receiver has overly worked but the prototype was useful to test the concept anyway, one of the lesson learned is that the receiving wile of the two unappetizing is not big unbearable to fly very high, with the two lighthouse wiring station near the ceiling we could only fly up to ~1.5m surpassing loosing the signal.  We would need a microcontroller or other tweedle capable of acquiring the signals on the deck since the Crazyflie 2.0 deck port only has two input capable of acquiring the pulses. At this point informations well-nigh Lighthouse 2.0, the next version of Lighthouse tracking that will indulge to imbricate much worthier area, started seeming on the internet and a new receiver tweedle was release to receive the signal, the TS4231. One big difference was that Lighthouse 2.0 would transmit data in the laser carrier. The data transmitted are in the range of 1 to 10MHz dixit the TS4231 datasheet so it makes them impractical to reap with a microcontroller. This gives us a perfect opportunity to play with the iCE40 FPGA and the icestorm open-source toolchain that has just been release.  The result is a deck containing unbearable receiver to imbricate a much worthier flying space and an iCE40UP5K FPGA to reap the signals sent by the lighthouse. There is once two prototype of this design: one without SPI flash, so the Crazyflie would have to embed the FPGA configuration bitstream and program it at startup and the latest one has an SPI wink so the deck can start by itself: First FPGA-Based lighthouse deck prototype   Partially populated second FPGA-Based lighthouse deck prototype, now with SPI wink As a first tideway the FPGA will reap the Lighthouse 1 pulses and send the raw timing via a serial port to the Crazyflie. The Crazyflie can then decode and interpret the pulse. I am currently playing with the idea of maybe running a picorv32 Risc-V 32 shit CPU cadre in the deck, this will indulge to reap and interpret the pulses in the deck and send angles to the Crazyflie, this would profoundly lighten the processing load on the Crazyflie 2.0.Soonerthis FPGA should be worldly-wise to reap and decode the Lighthouse 2.0 signals. This is very much work in progress and we will write increasingly well-nigh the Lighthouse deck when we have remoter results.     Crazyflie, Electronic, Frontpage Bitcraze at iROS 2018 in Madrid   2018-07-23  |    Arnaud  |    Leave a scuttlebutt Last week we received the visit of Wolfgang from USC, he is the creator of the Crazyswarm project. It was unconfined to have him here at the office. One of the subject of discussion was to prepare a demo for iROS 2018 on October 1-5 2018 in Madrid. We will be in diner 91, if you are peekaboo iROS 2018 finger self-ruling to pass-by and say hello. We are planning a couple of demos: Crazyswarm with at least 6 Crazyflies flying in a Qualisys mocap system. Running a fully voluntary Crazyflie with the Loco Positioning System. Hopefully, some demo of voluntary flight using the lighthouse positioning. This is still not fully working but I have at least 2 full months to get something flying :-). If you would like to see us demo anything more/else tell us in the comments and we will see if we can setup something. We used Wolfgang’s visit to finalise the Qualisys support for Crazyswarm. It is now pushed and documented, this ways that if you have a Qualisys system and a couple of Crazyflies you can now fly them autonomously using the Crazyswarm framework. It moreover ways that we now have Crazyswarm up and running flawlessly at the office, it will help us testing related pull-request and supporting wide functionality like the high-level-commander in the Crazyflie python lib.   As a side note, Bitcraze is spread very thin these weeks since most of us are in vacation (I am basically alone). We usually miss one Monday post per year, it was last week and the Wolfgang visit is my excuse :-). Sorry in whop if there is any wait to wordplay mail, forum or other requests. From next week, the rest of the team will slowly start to come back.   Crazyflie, Frontpage, Loco Positioning, Random stuff paging-navigation 123…37   Subscribe Categories Crazyflie Electronic Frontpage Guest-blogger How we work Loco Positioning Mechanic Random stuff Software Video Recent Posts Preparations for IROS 2018 Shipping with FedEx and updated Loco positioning node Demo for iROS2018: The lighthouse deck Making TDoA 3 increasingly wieldy Log and param protocol V2 Footer Menu Top Home License Cookie Policy Privacy Policy Sign up for newsletter Feedback  Improve this page © 2018 Bitcraze AB With Google+ plugin by Geoff Janes