Controlling the Crazyflie from the PC client through the Crazyradio gives you a lot of flexibility and power when it comes to coding and scripting. The drawback is that you need a computer and Crazyradio which is fine in the office, but not as convenient when flying on the go. As a part of our Friday-Fun hacks we have been working on a standalone controller with everything included to solve that problem.

I finished the first working basic prototype a few weeks ago and have done some test flying during my vacation. I (and the son of a friend) am very happy with the performance end ease of use, so I think it is time to move on and create a usable product.

So far the controller is very basic, it is only two joysticks, an Arduino and a radio. All it does is to scan the joysticks and send controller packets on a fixed radio channel. Even though it is super simple I like that it is possible to just turn it on and fly, no other actions are required!

The product will have (many) more features, the question is what to add? This is your chance to be a product designer, if you have any input or wishes let us know!

Some ideas that we have so far:

• Support other protocols to control other copters or robots
• Arduino compatibility to make it simple to alter the functionality and behaviour
• Expansion ports, maybe compatible with Crazyflie decks
• USB and bluetooth low energy to use it as a generic game controller
• A mode to use it as a Crazyradio connected to a computer over USB

We also need to come up with a name, please share your ideas!

Up until now, we’ve made our products available to customers through Seeedstudio and a number of distributors around the world. This has been a great solution since we’ve been able to focus on development of products instead of shipping packages and maintaining our own e-shop. When customers contact us and want to buy, we’ve been directing them towards local distributors where they can buy in local currency and with faster delivery times. But the last year more and more customers wanted to buy products directly from us and this has been taking up more and more of our time. The main reason has been complex purchasing procedures or local distributors not carrying the hardware the customer wants. Also if a customer starts discussing with us about what to buy, they tend to want to buy directly from us instead. Since we haven’t had a good set-up for this, we’ve been shipping packets on a case-to-case basis from our office basement (yes, the same basement where we fly with the Loco positioning). This has been very time consuming.

So, in order to optimize the sales and shipping, we’ve decided to launch our own e-shop. Our idea is that it is a complement to other distributors and the Seeedstudio Bazaar. Buying from local distributors will result in lower shipping costs and faster delivery. So we’re not aiming at replacing this, instead our goals are:

• Have one place where we offer a full assortment of our products
• Take responsibility for the end-to-end experience (both the purchasing and product support)

In order to service the e-shop, we’ve set up warehousing in Hong Kong, close to Shenzhen were the Seeedstudio manufacture is located. Aside from servicing the e-shop, this solution will also be used for drop-shipping custom orders, so replacing our basement packaging system.

As with most things, the more you know about something, the more you understand how complex it is. When we first started thinking about setting up our own e-shop/warehouse solution, we thought that this would probably take about a week: we evaluate a couple of solutions, select one and then just start selling/shipping. Turns out that things are more complex and this has caused a few weeks delay for the Loco positioning products since they will only be available through our shop. Now we’re hoping everything is on track, but we’re very new at this so please bare with us if there’s any hickups along the way when starting this up.

We’re opening up the store today, so you can have a look. Any feedback and comments are welcome! But as you might quickly notice, all the products are out of stock. The Loco positioning hardware as well as the other products are on their way to the warehouse, but they got a bit delayed along the way. Our best estimate is that the products are stocked at the end of the week or beginning of next week. The link to the e-shop is store.bitcraze.io.

Here’s a photo of some of the boxes. Looks a lot like normal boxes, but these contain the Loco positioning hardware :-)

As early as when the first Crazyflie prototype did it’s first flight back in 2009, we where dreaming about a local positioning system that would allow our future micro quadcopter to fly autonomously indoor. This dream is now becoming a reality with the development of the Ultra Wide Band radio that we have been using the last months to develop our own local positioning system for the Crazyflie 2.0. We are now reaching a very important milestone: the first early access production batch has been ordered!

We sat down to find a name for the system and since ‘Crazy’ is kind of a theme for our products here at Bitcraze we settled for “Loco Positioning”. So the two products we are about to launch are the Loco Positioning Node and the Loco Positioning Deck.

If you want to receive information as the system evolves, sign up to our mailing list. If you want to talk to us directly do not hesitate to comment or send us a mail at locopositioning@bitcraze.io.

The positioning system is based on the Decawave DW1000 Ultra Wide Band radio chip. These radios work by transmitting very short pulses instead of full sinus waves the way a standard radio would, and the advantage for positioning is that it is possible to measure the time at which these short pulses are received very precisely. By using clever algorithms it is possible to measure the time it took for the radio signal to “fly” from one radio to another and from that we can calculate the distance between the radios.

A basic system is composed from a number of Anchors (Loco Positioning Nodes) at fixed positions and a Tag on the Crazyflie 2.0 (the Loco Positioning Deck). The system continuously measures the distances from the Tag to the Anchors and calculates the position of the Tag from that information. The concept is similar to GPS where the Anchors represent the satellites and the Tag the GPS-receiver. 4 Anchors is the theoretical minimum required to calculate a 3D position, but 6 has turned out to be more realistic number.

We have designed the Loco Positioning Nodes as standalone boards containing a micro controller and the DWM1000 UWB radio module. The nodes are intended to act as Anchors: they are setup at fix positions in the room and will serve as references for the system.

The Loco Positioning Deck, also based on theDWM1000 module, acts as a Tag and plugs into the Crazyflie 2.0 expansion port. It allows the Crazyflie 2.0 to calculate its absolute position in space and this is all we need to start flying it autonomously in the room. In this case the Crazyflie 2.0 acts as a Tag, but since we are always striving for flexibility, the nodes can also act as Tags for example for other robotic application.

We consider the first batch to be an early access release. This means that the hardware is finished and tested but the software is still very much work in progress. Currently the Crazyflie ranges with the Anchors, while a PC running ROS interprets the ranges and calculates the estimated position. More in depth information will come if future blog-posts and e-mails on the list. For a video and some more information see our previous post “Update on Local Positioning System“.