One of the boards that we have been working on is an inductive charging expansion for the Crazyflie 2.0. Some of you might remember way back when we did an inductive charging hack for the Crazyflie. It’s always been very compelling with wireless charging, we’re not sure why. Maybe it’s because it feels a bit magic :-) For our inductive charging expansion board we choose the Qi standard, which is used in many cellphones today and finding a cheap charger for it is pretty easy. The board is designed around the BQ51013B Qi chip from Texas Instruments. Our initial testing of the board shows that it’s operating at about 65% efficiency and manages to provide an output of around 1A at 5V. The board weights about 5g, but we might be able to improve that a bit, and is 30x30mm. Now all we need is a dock that we can automatically land on :-)
Here are some images of our current prototype, the final version will look a bit sleeker. The jumper sticking out on the side is for current measurements. It won’t be mounted in the final version, but the pads will still be there. So if you would like to measure the current you can cut the track and solder a jumper for it.
There is a charging pad that will center it’s coil onto the device that needs to be charged. Would make the touch down area a much larger target.
Panasonic TM 101
Thanks for the tip!
Is there a particular charging station you recommend for best results?
Not really, any Qi charger that supports Qi WPC 1.1 should be ok. We just use a charger we got off Ebay.
I’ve been using a cheap one off Amazon that’s a perfect size and seems to work great. You can even take it apart easily and mount the coil under a table or other piece of furniture.