Hectic release week!

2014-12-08 | Tobias | 11 Comments

This week is going to be an exiting week! Crazyflie 2.0 has started to ship and we are pushing out a lot of code during the week. We wish that we would have gotten more time to work on the code before releasing it, but all three of us have been really busy with production. With the first units now shipping we can finally switch focus to software and documentation. Since there’s quite a few source code projects we are releasing, they each get its own bold headline below. As we role out the different releases we will update this post and post the link in social networks.

iOS Client

iOS joystick screen – Download on Appstore

This is our first ever iOS app, and it’s just been released. It got accepted just in time and you can get it from the AppStore, free of course. Currently it is pretty simple, you can connect to a Crazyflie 2.0 and fly it with thumb controls. There is a settings menu where you can adjust sensitivities and configure mapping. The app is all open source and the code can be found here on Github.

Android Client

Android joystick screen – Android app on Google Play

This is more or less the same as the client that has been available for the Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter, but now we have added Bluetooth LE support. Since this app has been manged by our community member Fred for a while it has more functionality then the iOS app, such as tilt control. One cool feature is that you can connect a gamepad with a USB-OTG cable to the phone to get better flight precision with real thumb sticks. The app is all open source and the code can be found here on github. Thanks to Fred Sauer the Crazyflie app has been available for a while now on the market, but now we have taken over the ownership of it. Due to a change in the certificate used to sign the app you will have to re-install the application to get the latest version (market link).

PC Client

The PC client written in Python has got some new features to support the Crazyflie 2.0. E.g. the bootloader in Crazyflie 2.0 is different as it now contains two MCU. It also has a EEPROM which needs new functionality, but other then that we are trying to keep things as common as we can to make things easier. The code is all open source and the code can be found here on Github. Edit: We have made a new tag (2014.12.1), source-code is available here and a windows installer is available here.

Crazyflie 2.0 Firmware – STM32

This firmware is based from the Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter firmware and the aim is to merge the old and new code, but we haven’t had the time to do it yet. Therefore it is now located in its on crazyflie2 branch on Github. We plan to merge them together but more work needs to be done before this is possible, a perfect job for the cold and dark winter months here in Sweden.

Crazyflie 2.0 Bootloader – STM32

This is the code that can flash new code into the STM32F405 MCU. Now the data comes from the nRF51 MCU over the uart, so the booatloader had to be updated. The code is all open source and will be released later this week on Github.

Crazyflie 2.0 Firmware – nRF51

This firmware is completely new and handles the radio communication (Bluetooth LE and Shockburst, compatible with Crazyradio). It also handles the power management and the expansion boards 1-wire memories. The code is all open source and will be released later this week on Github.

Crazyflie 2.0 Bootloader – nRF51

The program to load new code into the nRF51 over the radio link. It also boots the STM32 in bootloader mode and serves as a radio gateway to be able to flash it. The bootloader handles Bluetooth and shockburst so that not only the PC client but also future version of the mobile apps will be able to update the Cazyflie 2.0 firmware. The code is all open source and will be released later this week on Github.

Hardware

We have not yet had time to finalize the hardware files. We are reorganizing the kicad lib and we need to clean things up properly. The hardware projects therefor have to wait, but the schematics has been released if anyone needs to see how things are connected.

Winner of the expansion board naming contest

We have now done a local vote. We are almost hundred percent sure this voting was not tampered with. And the winner is… Flykit. So even though Flykit got a lot of “proxy” votes online it seems the local people liked the same thing. Deck finished second, strange, maybe the voters had read the online vote results… Anyway congratulations to Ramin who will receive a Crazyflie 2.0! We still have not decided if we should go with Flykit or Deck for the real expansion board name. As soon as we have decided we will let you all know.

A week in Shenzhen

2014-12-02 | Marcus | 6 Comments

Starting up production and doing the first batch of a product is always problematic, no matter how well you try to plan it. So just like for the Crazyflie 1.0, we decided to pack our bags and leave for Shenzhen for the production of the first batch of the Crazyflie 2.0. When we launched the first Crazyflie we tried to take things easy and minimize the number of products we launched at once. But for the Crazyflie 2.0 we went all in and launched 13 new products at once. Some of these are just spare parts, but many are more complex products. It’s been a few busy months to say the least :-)

Production

The production timeline that we have been working towards for the Crazyflie 2.0 has been pretty tight. So our main goal with this trip was to help out in any way possible to make sure that everything was going smoothly. Like I wrote above, we are launching a fair amount of boards at the same time. The Crazyflie 2.0 itself is of course the most complex, but also the Crazyradio, the LED-ring and Qi expansion requires a lot of attention. Aside from that there’s also the debug-kit and prototype/breakout boards as well as all the spare parts that should be inspected. Everything started off very well and things was going ahead of schedule, somehow we became the ones slowing things down. We had to work almost around the clock to catch up. In the end though it was all worth it because on Saturday it all came together and everything was following schedule.

Delivery

Since things are running according to the schedule it means the products will start to ship Monday the 8th of December. So if you have chosen Air mail there is a big chance it will reach you before X-mas, but not guaranteed. If you have chosen a faster method, DHL or UPS you will get your pre-order before X-mas.

Getting to Shenzhen

Going from Sweden to Shenzhen is a pretty long journey, but that doesn’t mean it has to be super expensive. Since Shenzhen is very close to Hong Kong, the easiest for us have been to fly to Hong Kong and take the bus/train to the border at Lo Wo (map). The bus ride takes over an hour, but it’s filled with beautiful views of Hong Kong so time passes quickly. Once you are at Lo Wu you can walk across the boarder to mainland China and go directly down into the metro. While entering the metro it’s easy to pick up a Chinese SIM card for your phone and a metro card. The Chinese SIM we got was about 15 USD which also includes 300 MB of data. If you are on your way to Seeedstudio then make sure to check out their guide for getting there.

Huaqiangbei

If you are an electronics enthusiast or just like electronics you need to visit Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen. It is the worlds largest electronics market and things that can’t be found here, I’m not so sure it can be found at all. The prices are extremely low but be aware of fake products and quality problems. E.g if you buy a cheap 32GB SD card you can almost be sure it is a fake and only holds a true 4 – 8GB, so we can’t recommend you to get one there. Many guides has been written about Huaqiangbei so we won’t write yet another one. If you want to read more we can recommend dangerousprototypes guides.

Expansion board naming contest results postponed yet another week

After checking the voting log we could see that most of the naming alternatives had been tampered with. We had some idea that maybe we could filter out the suspicious ones but our attempt failed so we are back on square one. We still want to give away a Crazyflie 2.0 kit to the winning name but we more or less decided to have a local voting process with people aorund our office instead. We will therefore need more time to select the winner. As we won’t be able to ship the award unit before the 8th of December anyway so we decided to postpone it yet another week to be able to gather the local votes, which will be a lot harder to tamper with. So be sure to check back next Monday.

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It’s been Shenzhen frenzy

2014-11-25 | Tobias | 5 Comments

We are sitting here at Doha airport in Qatar writing our Monday post after a very hectic week visiting Seeedstudio in Shenzhen, China. And it’s been really hectic week, I can honestly say I don’t think any of us has worked this many hours in 7 days in whole our lives. It’s been worth it though, because we did it! We got everything working and ready in time and production is up and running and it’s all on schedule. We have just seen to many kickstarters and pre-order campaigns deliver to late and we do not want to be one of them, and If nothing unexpectedly happens, we will deliver as scheduled.

As we think many of you know of, using internet in China can be a bit difficult. It is often refereed to as the “Great Fire Wall”. We had some clues about it before our visit and tried to take some measures but without much success. We are heavy users of Google services and most of them are either extremely slow or blocked. So is Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and similar social medias so our plan of posting frequent updates failed miserably. Next Monday post we plan on making a summery post of the trip when we organized all photos and when we are a bit more clear in our heads (sleeping on an airplane is not our specialty). Until then here is one photo of us in the Seeedstudio production floor and the new Crazyflie 2.0 box.

Another very interesting thing we have tired to follow (yes Bitcraze website has been blocked by the GTW as well) is the expansion board voting process. We’ve seen now that it has been a bit to easy to manipulate and we will use the following week to figure out what to do about it. You guys are just to clever and we see now that we should have done an investigation of good voting processes before we launched it. Well, it’s been exiting to follow and we are pretty happy to see it got people involved!

Expansion board naming vote

2014-11-17 | Marcus | 18 Comments

Wow, we are a bit overwhelmed with all the naming suggestions we got for our expansion board last week. It’s fun to see so many people joining in and having an opinion, thanks to everyone that dropped a suggestion. After discussing it we decided to put favorite suggestions into a poll and see what our readers likes the best. Make your voice heard and take part in the voting below! And in case anyone missed it the winning contribution will get a Crazyflie 2.0 developer pack.

What should be name of the Crazyflie 2.0 expansion boards (tampered with)

Flykit (36%, 242 Votes)
Deck (32%, 215 Votes)
Bitboard (11%, 77 Votes)
Crazymod (6%, 39 Votes)
Payload (4%, 26 Votes)
Flieboard (3%, 19 Votes)
Pod (3%, 19 Votes)
Fliekit (2%, 16 Votes)
Companion (1%, 10 Votes)
Avionic (1%, 10 Votes)
Fliemod (1%, 5 Votes)

Total Voters: 678

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In other news we are spending the week in Shenzhen in China, visiting Seeedstudio and helping out with the testing of initial production samples. So far everything is on track and today we got to fly the first mass produced Crazyflie 2.0! Here’s a picture of it before we broke it loose and got it into the air. Next week we will post lots of updates and photos from our trip. Until then, don’t forget to vote :-)

first_cf2

Suggest a name for our expansion boards and win a Crazyflie 2.0

2014-11-10 | Marcus | 126 Comments

As everyone probably knows by now, one of the new features of the Crazyflie 2.0 is the improved expansion port. It’s something that we’ve been putting a lot of effort in and we’re really looking forward to see what you will do with it. However a couple of weeks ago we realized something: We don’t have a good name for the expansion boards. Arduino calls them sheilds, the Beaglebone capes, but what should the Crazyflie’s boards be called? Up until now we have just been calling them “expansion board”, like “LED-ring expansion board”. As far as we know this is the first flying platform that has this type of expansion port, and we think it deserves a cool name. Don’t you? We have been trying to come up with something ourselves and our current best idea is “deck”, as in the different levels on an airplane. But we’re a bit stuck there, we haven’t come up with something else and we think there must be a better name then “deck”.

So we thought that we would turn to our readers and community for help. In order to find a name to call our expansion boards we thought we would organize a little competition this and next week. For this week we would love to get some ideas in the comments for naming and then next week we will do a poll to vote for a winning contribution. To sweeten the deal we thought that we would throw in a Crazyflie 2.0 developer edition (which includes debug-adapter, proto- and breakout board and a Crazyradio PA) to the first comment that holds the winning contribution. But before everyone beings posting ideas, here’s a few rules:

Only one idea per comment, if you have more then post more comments. By posting an idea of the name you give us the right to use it, otherwise there wouldn’t be much point in posting it ;-)
Our WordPress is set-up for reviewing posts before they are accepted, but once you are accepted as poster you can freely post. This means that some comments will appear directly and some won’t. But to judge whoever is first we will use the timestamp of the comment.
The best ideas will be collected in a poll next week. Then everyone will get a chance to vote for the name they think is best during the week and then a winner is selected
The winner of the poll is the one with the highest number of votes and this user will receive a Crazyflie 2.0 developer edition. But even if everyone likes the name we still reserve the right to use something else, but you will still get the price :-)

So start brainstorming and get the chance to be the inventor of the Crazyflie expansion boards name! Also the winner of a Crazyflie 2.0.. :-)

At the moment we are just overloaded with work and we haven’t had time to be so active in the forum lately. We feel really bad about this and hope things will change as soon as the Crazyflie 2.0 is starting to ship. Until then we hope our community can step in and help us out, it would mean a lot to us. We have already got a lot of help from Chad, thanks a lot for that Chad and others! For urgent matters you can still reach us at our contact address found in the about page.

Oh, one last thing. The manufacturing of the first batch of Crazyflie 2.0 it’s still on track and no delays to report. When we have any updates on a final estimated shipping date we will let you know.

Crazyflie 2.0 bootloader and USB

2014-11-04 | Marcus | 2 Comments

The production of the first Crazyflie 2.0 batch is still on track. Currently all the components are being purchased and when they are all in, the assembly will start. We are still busy preparing things for the production, but we have now slowly shifted over to software and firmware development. The last week has been spent implementing the bootloader and implementing our communication protocol (CRTP) over USB support.

The bootloader has gone from a simple piece of firmware to something that’s more complex. For the Crazyflie 2.0 we have a dual-MCU architecture, which means that we have to flash two MCUs instead of one. Aside from that we now also support bootloading via Bluetooth LE as well as the enhanced shockburst protocol. Another fact that complicates things is that the nRF51 uses a closed binary for it’s Bluetooth LE support, which means we have to take special care when upgrading it. But the trickiest part of all this is to make it safe so that it’s always possible to rescue the system without needing a JTAG/SWD dongle if something goes wrong. It’s important to get it right, since the bootloader is flashed during production it can’t be updated at a later stage without using JTAG/SWD.

The Crazyflie 2.0 only has one button and it’s connected to the nRF51. Instead of directly switching on/off the power to the platform like on the Crazyflie 1.0, the button is now multi-functional. Pressing it will turn on/off the power and put the nRF51 to sleep, but holding it down when powering on the Crazyflie 2.0 will affect the start-up behavior. By holding it down 1.5 seconds the bootloader will launch and by holding it down 5s the STM32F4 will start in DFU mode (Device Firmware Upgrade). One of the reasons for designing in the DFU functionality was to use it as a last resort to rescue the system in case we couldn’t make the nRF51 bootloader secure. Another reason for it is that we always try to design in lots of possibilities, even if we can’t find a use for it we are hoping someone else will.

CRTP over USB is something that’s been on our TODO list for at least 2 years, but we have never gotten around to it. One idea we had was for building a bigger quadcopter using a Raspberry Pi and a Crazyflie connected to it via USB. The Crazyflie would still be used as the real-time control board, but would receive commands on the USB. This would allow the Crazyflie to become a quadcopter control board using our normal Python API for commands from Linux. This way we could for instance create a higher level autonomous system. But now we needed it for one of our test-rigs, so we had to sit down and get it done. For the implementation we use a raw USB device (i.e class 0) where we use the end-points to send CRTP packets back and forth from the PC. Since a CRTP packet is smaller than a USB packet, there’s no need for flow control or any extra protocols, we just receive new packets on the OUT requests and send a new packets back on the IN requests (if there’s any available). This fits nicely into the current architecture of the Crazyflie Python Lib and the firmware, but it still needs some cleaning up. Once everything is done it will be merged into the main firmware as well.

Crazyflie 2.0 production tests

2014-10-28 | Arnaud | 1 Comment

We kicked off the Crazyflie 2.0 production about one week ago and we are still working hard on ensuring the best possible quality of the production. To do so we have a test specification/plan that is executed on all the produced units. Making test protocols is something we have had some experience of in our former day-jobs, but it is always a challenging and time consuming task. However the reward is great, good tests ensure good quality to the end user. The higher the production quality is, the happier everyone is, and the more time we have to do other things like developing new features :-).

The tests runs on an assembled PCB and first thing to verify is an electric test checking that voltages and current consumption are normal. Then the board gets programmed.

For the original Crazyflie, the testing was heavily based on the power on self-test. This is still the case with the Crazyflie 2.0 which allows to make sure that everything is working in factory as well as every time a Crazyflie gets powered (this power-on-self-test is the first thing to run before assembling the Crazyflie).

For Crazyflie 2.0 we also needed to create new tests for the expansion port. First of all we needed to check that the connector is mounted properly and that the pins for the expansion port are able to pass though the PCB. Secondly we also have to test the electrical connectivity. For this we have created a special expansion test board which, allows the Crazyflie to self test all expansion connections. This board is detected by the 1-wire memory which is mounted on the test board. When it is inserted it will automatically trigger the test code which checks all connections.

To do tests on a limited budget you will have to get creative. E.g. to do output power and frequency test for the radio communication on the Crazyflie and Crazyradio we are using the rfExplorer. It is a neat cheap 2.4GHz spectrum analyzer that we control from Python which can measure the radio frequency and output power. ICT or bed of nail tests are also very expensive and instead we use test fixtures with pogo-pins to test the electronics. It doesn’t get as extensive as a net checking ICT but with some clever testing using the software most components can be tested anyway. We have added some photos of the original Crazyflie test rig to this post. We will soon travel to the Seeedstudio office in Shenzhen in China and we will take photos of the new production and test equipment.

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Crazyflie 2.0 expansion board template

2014-10-20 | Marcus | 1 Comment

First of all, thanks to everyone that helped us out during the pre-order. Today we are finishing the last details and tomorrow Seeedstudio will launch the production of the first Crazyflie 2.0 batch! It’s been a hectic couple of months here at Bitcraze and it feels great to finally have reached this point. For the first batch we will manufacture more units than were pre-ordered. So from now up until the units are ready we will continue the pre-order, but without the discounted prices. The first batch is planing to start shipping mid-December. We are prioritizing the discounted pre-order but will ship everything as soon as possible.

Last week we published the iOS prototype code for controlling the Crazyflie 2.0. This week we are publishing the Crazyflie 2.0 expansion board template project. The project is done using KiCad and includes the schematics, the footprint mapping and an initial layout with the connectors in the correct place. The license of the template project is CC-BY 4.0. In order for users to more easily see what their expansion board will look like and how it will fit, we have included the Crazyflie 2.0 board outline as well as some key components that might interfere.

We are really excited to see if any cool expansion board projects will come out of this template. So if you feel like giving it a try then head over to GitHub, clone the repository and add some cool stuff. Any ideas of what to do?

Crazyflie 2.0 exp template

Last week of the Crazyflie 2.0 pre-order

2014-10-13 | Marcus | 1 Comment

On Thursday this week we are ending the pre-order of the Crazyflie 2.0 and related products. A huge thanks to everyone that has supported us by taking part in the pre-order! If you are thinking about getting a Crazyflie 2.0, then remember to order before Thursday to get 15% off. This time next week we are starting the production and will keep you updated of the progress.

During the pre-order we have been busy working on production tests, marketing and planning. Now we are preparing for the next big push, the firmware and software. This year we haven’t been very active when it comes to software development. It’s not that we have forgotten about it, there just hasn’t been any time for it. But with the hardware finished and the pre-order almost over, it’s time to refocus. The first thing we are publishing is the Crazyflie iOS client. It’s still very much a work-in-progress, but it works for flying the Crazyflie 2.0.

We also got a chance to visit the Maker Faire in Rome two weekends ago. It was a really great event with lots of things to see and lots of interesting discussions. Below are some of the photos we took.

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Crazyflie 2.0: The tiny modular quadcopter

2014-10-07 | Marcus | 15 Comments

This weekend we spent at the Maker Faire in Rome and got to meet lots of fellow geeks and makers. Even though it was busy times at the Bitcraze booth, we got a chance to walk around a bit and see other projects. It’s really inspiring to see what people come up with! It was also the first time we got the chance to show off the new Crazyflie 2.0 to the public and the feedback was really positive. We have realized that we might be a bit wide in our description of the new platform. There’s lots of new features that we are very eager to talk about, but maybe we should focus a bit more on the biggest improvements. With two weeks left on the pre-order we have been trying really hard to get some extra attention for the new platform, but haven’t really succeeded yet. This might be one of the reasons.

So even though there’s lots of new features we would really like to highlight the new expansion port. It’s been something that we have been talking about internally for a while now and we are really excited that we managed to fit it in. Like we wrote in an earlier post we used some exotic use-cases to figure out what to include in the expansion header. For example this resulted in the ability to charge the battery from the expansion board, like we are doing with the Qi wireless charging expansion board. Since the Crazyflie 2.0 has the ability to connect multiple expansion boards (both on top and bottom) we also needed some way to determine what boards are added. So one of the pins in the port is used as a 1-wire memory buss. Each expansion board has a 1-wire memory that allows identification of the board, it’s revision and what resources it uses. This way we can adapt the features available from the computer client or mobile device when the platform is connected.

Below is an overview of what’s available in the expansion port:

For the pre-order we have managed to include 4 expansion boards: the LED-expansion, the Qi wireless charging expansion, the breakout expansion and the prototyping expansion. Aside from these boards we also have some prototypes of more expansions. Before the pre-order we were working really hard on a GPS expansion board, but in the end we didn’t think the current prototype had enough precision to launch. We reached about 10-20 meters accuracy with locking times of about 2-3 minutes and didn’t have time to spin another prototype. During the fall we will work on perfecting the design so we reach a level of performance that we feel is good enough.

We also have a prototype for a distance sensor to be used for precision landing. After looking for a solution for a while we finally found the VL6180, a time of flight sensor from ST. The range is not very long, but combined with the high precision pressure sensor mounted on the Crazyflie 2.0 we think the result can be very good. We also have an uSD expansion that we are currently testing.

After getting feedback from the visitors we met at the Maker Faire we have also decided that we will be designing an Edison adapter expansion for the Crazyflie 2.0. The Edison board is fairly small and light, so it should be possible to design an expansion board that has the 70-pin expansion connector featured on the Edison. Our plan is to use some of the interfaces in our expansion board to connect to the Edison, like I2C, UART and SPI.

Last but not least we are also working on an analog FPV expansion board. It’s still just an early prototype, but we think it’s something that a lot of users might be interested in.

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As we will continue making more and more boards we also hope the community will take the opportunity to do so as well. We will soon release templates for KiCad making it really quick to get started. What board would you like to make? Let us know what you think about the new expansion port. Do you have any ideas for boards or any comments about our planned ones? We would love to get some feedback!

We would also like to say congratulations to Mihir Garimella on being one of the winners of the Google Science Faire 2014 with his project the Flybot! He used the Crazyflie to work on escape maneuvers similar to those of fruit flies. Really great work!