We though we could use this Monday blog post to do a small state of the Crazyflie clients. What we call a Crazyflie client is a piece of software that connects a Crazyflie and allows to control it and get telemetry back from it. In this post we will concentrate on single-crazyflie client we have on our GitHub page, there exists a lot of libraries and software to control one or many Crazyflies, we will write another blog post about them.
Crazyflie PC client
The Crazyflie PC client, is what we consider the reference client. It supports connecting one Crazyflie using the Crazyradio (PA) dongle or direct USB connection to Crazyflie 2.0. It supports the full Crazyflie telemetry (ie. log), parameters (ie. params) and firmware update. It has support for all the Crazyflie 2.0 deck that can use client support. It is updated each time it is needed when new functionalities are added in the Crazyflie which makes it actively developed and maintained by the community and Bitcraze. A bluetooth link has not been prioritize so far since its multi-platform implementation is non-obvious and bluetooth will introduce some latency and lower the radio bandwidth compared to Crazyradio. However, if anyone would want bluetooth support for the Crazyflie PC client, we welcome contributions :-). The Crazyflie PC client is using the crazyflie-lib-python to communicate with the Crazyflie.
We have three mobile clients on our Github. They have various level of functionality depending on community involvement. Our philosophy is to have the mobile clients at least able to control a Crazyflie, this allows to use them to test Crazyflies without requiring to setup a computer. We will help and support anyone that is interested in adding functionalities to the mobile clients but we generally do not have time to add much functionalities by ourselves.
The Andoid crazyflie client is currently maintained by Fred from the community. It is mobile Crazyflie client with the most feature. It supports both Crazyradio and Bluetooth link. Using Crazyradio it currently supports the part of telemetry and parameter required to support a couple of deck like the led-ring and buzzer deck and supports updating the firmware. Using bluetooth there is currently no telemetry, parameter or firmware update functionality so no deck support. Development is in progress to support more decks and to bring the bluetooth link to the same functionality as the Crazyradio link. The Android client is written in Java and Fred has developed a Crazyflie Java library that is used in the Android client but that can also be used in any other Java program.
Crazyflie Android client
The iOS Crazyflie client, works on iPhone and iPad. It supports bluetooth link. It does not have any telemetry or parameter support, so no deck control support. It has firmware update support over bluetooth. It has mainly been developed by me with great contributions from the community for, among others, the port to swift. The iOS client is written in swift. The Crazyflie and Bluetooth part of the code could be a good starting point if anyone wanted to make a native mac Crazyflie client.
Crazyflie iOS client
Finally we have a prototype of a Windows UWP client developed by theseankelly. It supports Bluetooth low energy. It currently does not supports any telemetry or parameters. It is working both on Windows phone and on Windows 10 on computer, it is currently the only way to connect a Crazyflie using Bluetooth from a laptop. The windows client supports manual control of the Crazyflie using a gamepad or with gesture using HoloLens. This original set of functionality makes it both the most simple and the most advanced Crazyflie client :-).
If you are interested in developing for any of these client, of by making your own, feel free to make a ticket on the relevant github repo or open a thread in the forum. We migh not have much time to develop for the mobile clients, but we will always be glad to help and guide anyone that wants to implement software in relation with the Crazyflie. The Crazyflie clients (running in a computer or phone) and the Crazyflie firmwares (running in the Crazyflie itself) are open source and in active development, it means that is possible to modify both side, this makes it a great target to experiments and to play around with new ideas :-).
We want to use Crazyflie along with the vertical ranging expansion deck and monocular camera to complete the autonomous navigation model test of our paper. The camera selected your product ai camera expansion deck. During the installation process, it was found that the Crazyflie self-test failed to install two expansion decks at the same time. We also found in the product introduction of the ai camera expansion deck that it cannot be used with other expansion decks. Then, we would like to ask whether there is a solution, such as replacing high-power battery Deng. In addition, we want to know what way to enable the ai camera expansion deck to mount both vertical ranging and the monocular camera?
Hi! Your question seems to be not related to this post, and besides this blogpost is very old. Could you please ask your question on https://discussions.bitcraze.io/
Okay!thank you!