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Update on Local Positioning System

  2016-03-29  |     |    3 Comments

As we already talked before in a couple of post, we are currently developping a local positioning system for the Crazyflie based on ultra-wide-band radio DWM1000. This is one of our main focus currently so we wanted to post a short update on our progress.

We have assembled and shipped a couple of LPS system already and so far the performance and progress are great. We now think that we have the copter flying as good as we can have it without running sensor fusion and the control loop in the Crazyflie microcontroller. Next step is to integrate algorithms in the Crazyflie.

We are currently working hard at finishing the design to make it ready for production. We will write more updates about that so stay tuned :).

We have shot a short video demonstrating the current state, see after the video for more information about the setup:

To make this video we have installed 6 anchors. 3 are above the room and 3 at about 50cm from the ground. The Crazyflie has a LPS deck and ranges in a round-robing fashion with all 6 anchors. The ROS driver pulls the ranging, estimate the Crazyflie position, and calculate a corrected roll/pitch/thrust in order to keep it at the pre-defined setpoint. The Yaw is not controlled externally, it is kept by the Crazyflie internal gyroscope only.

The ROS computer was setup according to the instruction on our wiki, and by launching the pf_hover launch file:

roslaunch bitcraze_lps_estimator dwm_loc_pf_hover.launch uri:=radio://0/110/2M x:=1.5 y:=5 z:=1.2

Perching at Stanford using the Bitcraze Crazyflie

  2016-03-21  |     |    5 Comments

Last week we where happy to learn that engineers at Stanford’s Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Lab have been using the Crazyflie 2.0 as a prototyping tool when creating the robot SCAMP – Stanford Climbing and Aerial Maneuvering Platform.

This very impressing work centers around the ability for a drone to actually land on vertical surfaces. In addition to this  the robot climb along that surface. Read more here and here. Really cool!

One of the future usages the researchers mention is to help out in the rescue work after earthquakes and other catastrophes. We are so proud that our drone is used in this research field!

 

Improved altitude hold

  2016-03-14  |     |    4 Comments

We have stared to look at what is needed to make the Crazyflie position aware and to integrate the upcoming positioning system. The rough idea is to add a position estimation module to the firmware of the Crazyflie that will be responsible of estimating the current position based on data from internal or external sensors. The sensors could be mounted on the Crazyflie but it should also be possible to inject the position over radio from an external system. A control module will use the estimated position to try to navigate the copter to a desired position that could be set for instance by a user or by some navigation algorithm. If you want to participate in the design discussions or implementation head over to github where we will use issues for this conversation.

We decided that a suitable first step was to improve the altitude hold, so that is what we did last week. The code has been refactored and improved and we think the altitude hold is now working much better than before. It’s not perfect, still room for improvements :-)

Tilt compensation

While we were at it we also added a thrust compensation to avoid loosing altitude when tilting the copter. It turns out it makes flying easier as the pilot does not have to add extra thrust when moving around. Good for both human and automatic pilots.

Hackster.io

Have you checked out our projects on hackster.io? Help out and make Bitcraze a featured platform by adding your own project or just follow us, we need 10 projects and 25 followers to be featured. You can make a difference!

BigQuad deck just released as early access hardware

  2016-03-07  |     |    2 Comments

Early Access

For a long time now we have discussed the BigQuad deck which basically can transform your Crazyflie 2.0 into a bigger quad by attaching it to a bigger frame. The first simple prototype we did using the prototype deck was made already in the fall of 2015. As it turns out the BigQuad deck requires plenty of software and ads a whole new level of caution. That along with limited time and resources has slowed down the development progress. To overcome parts of this hurdle we came up with the early access program. It is basically hardware which is ready, but the software is in a early and rudimentary state. This way eager development users can get hold of the prototypes we are working on and to try out the latest and greatest designs. The benefits are mutual, we make it possible for our users to get started with new hardware and development at an earlier stage in the development cycle, in return we hope the community will help out with important feedback and contributions towards finalizing the product. First out in this program is the BigQuad deck.

BiqQuad deck

We run each “early access” project as an open project on github, in this case the repository is named early-access-big-quad-deck and is the focal point. Since many changes in the Bitcraze software stack spans over multiple repositories (firmware, clients, radio and so on), this “early-access” repo is where to post issues or feature requests, discuss solutions and what to implement. We love to collaborate with the community, join the fun!

The current sparse user documentation of the BigQuad deck is put on the corresponding wiki page. Let’s add more!

Crazyflie family

Crazyflie family

Crazyflie 2.0 used in Ericsson Mobile World demo

Erricsson have presented a demo for Mobile World congress using the Crazyflie 2.0 and the wireless charging deck.

The crazyflie was also present for the keynote in the hand of the Ericsson CEO. I is always nice for us to see Crazyflie being used for cool demo and events :-).

New development tool – the Toolbelt

  2016-02-29  |     |    Leave a comment

During the autumn we introduced the docker based builder images that are used for builds on the CI server. They make sure the build environment is well known and reproducible which is key on the build server, but they can also be very useful when building code locally on your machine. The obvious upside is that if a build passes in the builder on your local machine, it should also pass on the CI server but the really nice thing here is that you don’t have to install compilers, frameworks or tools on your machine, the builder handles all that for you! The drawback has been that it requires some typing to use docker, for instance building the crazyflie-firmware project would require you to type

docker run --rm -it -v ${PWD}:/module bitcraze/builder tools/build/build

That is quite a lot of typing and to solve that we now introduce the Toolbelt, it makes it dead simple to compile or test any bitcraze project.

The Toolbelt is a set of scripts that fires up the correct builder image and then executes your build script in that container. When done, the container is shut down and disappears. For instance to build the crazyflie-firmware project with the toolbelt, locate your self in the root of the project and type

tb build

Thats it!

So how do you install it? How does it work? The toolbelt it self is also running in a docker container(!) so all you need is to install is Docker and add an alias to your .profile or .bashrc file. Run a toolbelt container to get instructions on how to install

docker run --rm -it bitcraze/toolbelt

or read the (limited) documentation on the wiki, the github repo and the help.

The toolbelt works with almost all our projects such as firmware for the Crazyflie, the radio and even our website project! The toolbelt is tested on linux and OSX. It will probably work on windows as well but we have not tested it, so if you fell inclined, please contribute any insights or fixes to the repository.

Does the Toolbelt replace the VM? No, the toolbelt is simply another option, the VM will still be around. The VM offers a more complete solution than the Toolbelt, while the toolbelt is more light weight and lets you work with your normal editor and other tools you are used to.

Let us know what you think and happy hacking!

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Crazyflie 2.0 drones used in amazing TED talk

  2016-02-22  |     |    3 Comments

If you haven’t watched it already, make sure to watch the TED talk “Raffaello D’Andrea: Meet the dazzling flying machines of the future”!

We are super excited to see that they use the Crazyflie 2.0 drones for the firefly swarm demo in the end of the talk. After all, our goal is to enable people to test their ideas, so this awesome demo makes us thrilled!

Community request

  2016-02-15  |     |    5 Comments

Greetings all community members!

This week we have a couple of requests that we hope you can help out with. First of all we would love to hear about all the cool projects you are using the Crazyflie for out there. We have wanted to collect this for a long time and now we have found hackster.io. Go to https://www.hackster.io/bitcraze/projects and add your favourite project. Also make sure to follow us at https://www.hackster.io/bitcraze, if you don’t have an account already it’s quick to create one, our hope is to use hackster.io to create a new way for our community to grow.

glove_closeup

Secondly we are curious of how the Crazyflie is used in education. If you are using it as a teacher or as a student, we would be very happy if you send us an email to education@bitcraze.io and describe how you use it and any other feedback you have.

Last week we finished the manufacturing of the first alpha builds of our new positioning system. A few systems have been shipped to selected users for initial trials but we still have a few left, so if you are interested in trying one out, drop us an email at contact@bitcraze.io and describe what you would use it for.

Producing the Alpha LPS DWM1000 boards

  2016-02-08  |     |    7 Comments

Last week and today we have been busy at making the first DWM1000-based LPS system we are currently developing.

As usual with hardware and production nothing goes according to plan. We sometime envy people working only with software, but then we think about how awesome it is do make physical things. Anyway the plan was to start producing the boards middle of last week but some components where missing. Then we discovered that the regulator we chose did not have the right pin-out (we are quite ashamed about this one, we assumed all regulator had the same pin-out ….). Finally we discovered that the reflow oven was melting the plastic component (connector and buttons), adding small pieces of tin-foil over the plastic parts fixed the problem.

At the end, we managed to start production with a good rhythm this afternoon. We have assembled half of what we where aiming for and the last half will be done tomorrow. As announced before we intend to sell this first pre-pre-production to anyone interested in having early access to the local positioning system (we think university, but getting it to the hands of research lab or hackerspace would be awesome too). If you are interested please drop us a mail.

We have also started to document the LPS system, and we have pushed the DWM1000 open-source C driver, nodes and deck driver to our github.

New front page and Fosdem

  2016-02-01  |     |    2 Comments

So as usual at Bitcraze it’s been a busy week. We have made a complete makeover of the front page of our website. The main goal has been to communicate what Bitcraze and the Crazyflie is about, in an engaging way to our visitors. We have added sections where we try to explain common use cases for the Crazyfile and all the exciting areas it is used in. We have also added a “used by” section where we want to collect all the cool organisations that use the Crazyflie. Since we made the site open, send us a pull request if your organisation is missing or if you find anything else that you think should be improved. By the way, we got the first pull request for the site the other day :-) Awesome! Finally we have updated the team member page, so now you can see what we look like and what we do.

We hope you like it! We love feedback, please share your thoughts.

Aside from being busy at the office we’ve also had a busy (and awesome) weekend at FOSDEM! When we go to conferences we normally try to either talk or exhibit something. But for FOSDEM we just wanted to take it easy and meet people, have interesting conversions and listen great talks. We had a great time and we’re definitely coming back next year. We were especially excited to catch Fred’s lightningtalk on the Crazyflie 2.0 and AdaCore’s talk on re-implementing the Crazyflie 2.0 firmware using SPARK and Ravenscar. The videos from the talks still aren’t available, but when they are we’ll make sure to let you know. Below are some images from our weekend at FOSDEM.

 

At last Fred published the slides for his talk:

Bitcraze at FOSDEM 16 and flying pixel

  2016-01-25  |     |    Leave a comment

At the end of the week Marcus and I are going at the FOSDEM 16 conference in Brussels. There we will meet Fred, who is the main community developer and maintainer of the Crazyflie Android app. If you also visit FOSDEM and want to meet 2/5th of Bitcraze, let us know!

fosdem16

Fred, like last year, is going to have a lightning talk about Crazyflie. You find him in the schedule. We look forward to seeing it!

Edit: We’re really excited to see a second talk about the Crazyflie 2.0. AdaCore will be talking about their work on re-implementing the firmware to SPARK (more info here).

Finally, as you might know, at Bitcraze we try to have fun Fridays. This means that we reserve Fridays for more personal project that are fun and would not get prioritized otherwise. For example the DWM Local Positioning System started as a Friday project as well as the led ring deck (it was for Crazyflie 1 back then, with a neopixel-ring).

Last Friday Björn tried to make a flying pixel. The idea is to enclose Crazyflie in a white paper box and to use the led-ring to light it in the air. We think that would look great with the local positioning system :-). To be honest what we ended up with is not fully working yet (we have a lot of problems making it fly), but we have ideas for next Friday and at least it looks quite nice already: