It’s hard to believe it’s already been almost a month since the Crazyflie 2.1 Brushless was released. We know some of you have already had the chance to take it for a spin, and we’re really excited to hear what you think.
Here at the office, we have started using them a lot – to discover gaps in the documentation, to test our new features, or simply to make nice trajectories during a Fun Friday as shown here:
We’re constantly amazed by it and the new capacity it brings… But, interestingly, we haven’t received many support questions so far… which has us wondering—did we accidentally make it too good? Jokes aside, we’d love to get your thoughts! Whether you have feedback, questions, or just want to share your experience, we’re all ears.
We have a quick form for you here to fill out – it takes a couple of minutes and would help us a lot:
Marcus and I are going to visit FOSDEM 2025 at the end of the week. This is a great open-source conference that I visit every year but this year there is a twist: I am part of the organisation of the Robotics and Automation devroom! I am going to give the welcome talk there:
FOSDEM is a conference with many tracks, the main track and devrooms. Devrooms are like mini-conferences: they are handled by a committee that produces a call for participation and handles the schedule for the room. FOSDEM allocates a time slot, a physical room, and video recording for the devroom so that all talks are broadcasted in real-time and recorded.
Since my first visit to FOSDEM in 2015, we have been thinking about the lack of a dedicated devroom for robotics: a lot of robotics, at least in research, is open source. This is in part thanks to ROS, which allows for easily sharing modules and algorithms between projects, but it also applies to things like flight stacks that are often open-source. So we took it upon ourselves to organize what we wanted, a robotics-dedicated devroom.
We started last year, at FOSDEM 2024, by organizing a robotics Bird of Feather with Kimberly. These are impromptu meetups that can be organized by booking a time on the spot for a couple of dedicated rooms. There, we had some really nice discussions with fellow robotics enthusiasts and figured out that there was indeed quite some interest in robotics at FOSDEM and that we were enough interested parties to organize a devroom.
If you’re interested in open source and/or robotics and you can be in Brussels, Belgium, on the weekend of the 1st and 2nd of February 2025, please join us! The Robotics and Simulation devroom is on Sunday afternoon. I will also be monitoring our Mastodon channel more carefully, so do not hesitate to poke me if you want to meet either me or Marcus, as we will be at the conference both days.
Hello there! I am Aris, a recent graduate from the Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics Department at the University of Patras, Greece.
For the last couple of years, as a member of the Robotics Group at the University of Patras, I have been working with Bitcraze products, including the Crazyflie 2.1 and the Lighthouse Positioning System, exploring swarming scenarios. In my diploma thesis I investigated the autonomous transportation of an object by a swarm of two rope-tethered quadcopters, where the introduced path planning algorithm enables the swarm to approach, grasp, lift and transport the load.
The swarm grasping the load. Trajectories Simulation
I’m excited to join Bitcraze as part of the team, where I can further develop my skills and gain valuable work experience. My principal objective is to improve the Lighthouse Positioning System and contribute to the development of a new solution for tracking in larger volumes. During this time, I look forward to deepen my knowledge on Bitcraze’s products and learn how they apply in real-world applications.
After a busy fall of testing and fine-tuning, we’re thrilled to announce that the Brushless is now available! Our team has put in a lot of effort to ensure it meets our high standards, and we can’t wait for you to experience it.
If you’re curious to see it in action, we’ve featured the Brushless in our recent Christmas video, where it showcases its capabilities by navigating through Christmas obstacles with precision.
For those interested in its application in research, our latest blog post demonstrates how the Brushless can be used in academic settings. It’s exciting to see the potential it holds for various fields!
If you need anything to keep your Brushless flying, all spare parts are already stocked in our store. Additionally, many of our bundles now offer Brushless versions, providing more options to suit your needs.
We’re eager to hear your thoughts and feedback as you explore the capabilities of our latest drone. Your insights are invaluable to us and help drive our continuous improvement.
We look forward to seeing what you’ll achieve with the Brushless!
Robotics and Simulation at FOSDEM 25
Arnaud will be at Fosdem the 1st and 2nd of February 2025 in Brussels, Belgium. He’s actually hosting with Kimberly the robotics and simulation dev-room! If you’re in Brussels, we’ll be happy to meet you.
2024 is almost over and 2025 is coming fast so it is a good time for us to think about what is coming for Bitcraze in 2025.
Projects
2025 will be the year of the Crazyflie 2.1 Brushless! We are finally releasing it early January. The end of the development phase was longer that expected (who would have thought manufacturing would be hard … :-), but it is now ready and we are very excited to see what awesome projects the community will come up with using the Crazyflie Brushless.
With the Crazyflie 2.1 Brushless released, we will have more time to dedicate to other projects. Following is a list of fields we think we might look at, no strong promises here though and if you think we should focus on anything specific do not hesitate to drop a comment under this post, a post on github discussions or just send us an email. We have way too many ideas, but we are always open to more :-).
We still have the Lighthouse deck V2 in the back-burner, this is likely something we will look more at soon. As a reminder, the new deck is going to support lighthouse systems with 16 base-stations which will increase the space that can be covered by a lighthouse system
We also have a Wifi camera deck in early prototype, we have been showing it at various conferences in the last years. We are still working on trying to find the perfect Wifi-chip/processor/Camera combo to make it a reality.
We (ie. I) also have a lot of ideas on how to improve the communication with the Crazyflie. Crazyradio 2.0 has a lot of untaped capabilities that we can use to implement better, easier to use and more reliable communication protocols so this is definitely something we want to have a look at.
Finally, I apparently managed to sell the Rust programming language a bit too well to the team. Some of us are even more enthusiastic than I am about it! This together with an increased frustration with Python and PyQT6 distribution to various platform will likely make us experimenting even more in Rust in the future. The first target in sight is to write a Rust lib for the Crazyflie together with binding for various languages including Python and C/C++. This means that would be able to have only one lib for most use case of the Crazyflie both in Python and in ROS.
Conferences
Arnaud is part of the organizing committee of the FOSDEM Robotics and Simulation devroom at Fosdem. Fosdem is one of the biggest open source conferences in Europe. It is an awesome community-driven conference, so if you are not too far and are interested in open-source please join us in Brussels the 1st and 2nd of February 2025!
As usual we will likely participate to a couple of robotic conferences during the year. We are not yet sure which one though so stay tuned for more information on this blog.
Team
The team has been evolving in 2024, we are now 6 in the Malmö office, Mandy is working from Shenzhen in China handling the production and Joe is doing a post-doc in Stockholm in close collaboration with us.
We are actively looking at hiring 2 more team members, one in technical support and one in Sales. Our goal is to build a team where all of us can focus on our strengths to develop even further and faster the Crazyflie ecosystem.
We wish you a great new year filled with hacking and exciting new discoveries!
The Crazyflie 2.1 Brushless with propeller guards on a prototype charging padThe optimized brushless motor
Finalizing the integration of the Crazyflie 2.1 Brushless into our software ecosystem and expanding its documentation were key steps in preparing for its launch. These efforts ensure compatibility, improve the user experience, and make the platform more accessible to the community. We’re looking forward to a smooth launch and to seeing how the community will utilize the new platform!
This year, we introduced updates to the Crazyflie 2.1 kit, making the 47-17 propellers the new default and including an improved battery. These upgrades enhance flight performance and endurance, culminating in the release of the Crazyflie 2.1+—an optimized iteration of our established platform.
And don’t forget the developer meetings, where we shared some more behind the scenes information and collected invaluable feedback from the community.
We also released a new edition of our research compilation video, showcasing some of the coolest projects from 2023 and 2024 that highlight the versatility and impact of the Crazyflie platform in research.
Team
In the past year, Bitcraze saw significant changes within the team. in February, Rik rejoined the team. Tove started at Bitcraze in April. Mandy, with whom we’ve already worked extensively over the years, joined as our production representative in Shenzen. At the end of the year, we said goodbye to Kimberly, whose contributions will be deeply missed. Additionally, we had Björn with us for a few months, working on his master’s thesis on fault detection, and Joe continued his industrial postdoc at Bitcraze that began in December 2023. Looking ahead, Bitcraze is hiring for two new roles: a Technical Sales Lead and a Technical Success Engineer, to support our ongoing projects and customer collaborations.
Midsummer lunch with the teamChristmas-themed Bitcraze office
As we close the chapter on 2024, we’re proud of the progress we’ve made, the connections we’ve strengthened, and the milestones we’ve reached. With exciting launches, new faces on the team, and continued collaboration with our community, we’re ready to soar to even greater heights in 2025. Thank you for being part of our journey!
This Christmas, Bitcraze is sending out a callout to Santa. As it turns out, one of our Brushless prototypes has a lifelong dream of becoming one of Santa’s reindeer. In a hopeful attempt to fulfill its wishes, we shot a video to prove that it’s ready for Santa’s most elite aerial team!
Imagine a tiny, determined drone with big dreams, practicing its sleigh route moves with the intensity of an Olympic athlete. Our little Brushless is proving it has what it takes to join the North Pole’s premier delivery squad.
Going through small openings, avoiding obstacles, and flying in perfect precision are skills that any good reindeer should have – but here, the Brushless accomplish this in an autonomous flight, and in a much smaller and more practical package than Rudolph and consorts.
Of course, there’s some technical magic behind this Christmas miracle. For this project, we relied on stock firmware and Python library, taking advantage of the new spiral and constant velocity features (check out the GitHub PR here). These features added variety and fluidity to the maneuvers, moving beyond straight lines and making the flight more interesting. By using the high-level commander, we took a simpler approach compared to trajectory optimization, which we’ve used in past Christmas videos. Trajectory optimization would have been far more difficult for this project due to the unique challenges of the flight path—namely its length and the need for pinpoint accuracy near obstacles and through gates.
Positioning relied on four Lighthouse base stations, which we used to manually locate the Christmas wreaths by holding the drone within each one to log their exact coordinates. This project also gave us the opportunity to further integrate the Brushless into our firmware and Python libraries, setting the stage for a smoother launch in the new year. The Brushless impressed us yet again during this project. Even though we’ve tested it extensively in the past, seeing it navigate tight gates with such precision and handle the demanding flight path reinforced just how capable it is. Working with it in this setting has made us even more excited to release it soon and share its potential with everyone.
Santa, if you’re reading this, we think we’ve found your next top reindeer recruit. You can watch the full audition tape here or below:
And if you think what you just saw is a pretty straight-forward and easy path, think again! This year’s blooper video highlights the resilience of the Crazyflie 2.1 Brushless and the fast, iterative workflow we used for this project. Since testing reliability and resilience was a key goal, we adopted a workflow that allowed for quick scripting, flying, and adjusting—often completing the cycle in just minutes. This approach made crashes more likely, especially during the spiral sections where the drone struggled to keep up and started cutting corners. While we resolved the issue by slowing those sections down, we suspect that more aggressive tuning of the Mellinger controller could have helped the drone maintain speed without cutting corners. The Brushless managed some impressive recoveries, but even minor collisions usually meant it couldn’t keep pace with the rest of the trajectory. After all the trial and error, we had a stable and reliable setup that not only performed well for the demo but also flew beautifully when we showed it to our families at the Christmas party.
Here is what our Brushless could endure during training:
Merry Christmas from all of us at Bitcraze – where even our prototypes have holiday dreams!
Hi everyone! I have a bit of news to share… I’ve decided to leave Bitcraze at the end of 2024. But not before I share with you my latest Fun Friday project that I’ve tried my best to finish up before I leave before my Christmas holiday in December.
Frankensteining the Pololu Robot with the Crazyflie Bolt
During the ROSCon talk about the lighthouse system (see the recording here), I’ve already shown a small example of how the lighthouse system could be used on other robots as well. Here you see a Pololu RPI 2040 (the hyper edition of course), with a slimmed down Crazyflie Bolt and a Lighthouse deck. The UART2 port on the Bolt (pinout is the same as Crazyflie) is interfacing with the UART0 connection on the Pololu (pinout). Then the Pololu’s 3v3 is connected to the vUSB and GND to GND (obviously), so 4 wires in total. Technically, the 3v3 port is not supplying enough power for the Crazyflie on paper, but it seemed to be enough as long as the Crazyflie Bolt doesn’t have motors connected it should be fine. But if anyone would like to do a driving-flying hybrid with this combo, you might need to check the specifications a bit closer. For now, just ignore the red low-battery LED on the Bolt, but if you see it restarting then perhaps give the Pololu a fresh set of batteries.
Since the Pololu RPI 2040 doesn’t have any wireless communication, this can be done through the Crazyflie Bolt and the Crazyradio. I’ve made an app layer variant for the Bolt to forward state estimates and velocity commands; however, it did require a bit of an extra logging variable in the firmware itself. But this allows me to control the Pololu through the CFclient! Since it’s using velocity commands, this means that the mobile app is out though, but perhaps if anyone is interested in getting this rolling, let me know. Also, the screen shows the current X, Y, Z, and yaw estimate of the Bolt transferred to the Pololu with the commands that I’ve given it.
I’d like to have connected this to a differential drive controller to make use of the position setpoints, but unfortunately the AA batteries ran out at the office and I was unable to complete this by the last day. It would have been great to use the Lighthouse positioning for this. Perhaps in the next coming months, I can try to continue with it and have my cats chase an autonomous robot around the house, who knows! If anyone is interested in playing around with this, these are the repositories/branches for both the Bolt and the Pololu:
First of all, I’ll take a long holiday in the US, first visiting New York (first time) before I hop over to Tulsa and Santa Barbara to visit family. Early 2025 I’ll be taking a long break, or a mini sabbatical of sorts, where I plan to work on some personal projects but mostly have a breather. I haven’t had a break like this in over 15 years, and given a tough 2023, I can definitely say that I’ve deserved some time off. What will happen after, I will hopefully figure out then, but for sure I will be continuing to co-lead the Aerial Robotics Interest Group at ROS and helping out in support of the Crazyswarm2 project.
I’d like to thank my colleagues at Bitcraze for an amazing 5 years here in Malmö, Sweden, and everyone that I was able to meet through them. I’ve learned a lot in terms of joint software development, code maintenance, community interaction, and, most importantly, having fun during work. I also will never forget the support I received while I was going through cancer treatment, and for that I’m very grateful. I wish you all the best and I hope the Crazyflie continues to thrive, saving more PhD projects as it did mine. Thank you.
November is always a tough month in Sweden, when the darkness deepens and the cold begins to bite. We had our first snow last week, a sudden reminder that winter has arrived. So instead of letting the gloom settle in, we decided to turn to what makes us feel good: pretty lights, pretty trees, and pepparkakor!
I realized that, although we talked about it last year, we never fully showed our big new flight arena once it was up and running. It made an appearance in our latest Christmas video, but was actually never fully revealed before. Capturing a 110square meters space in a single photo is no small feat, but here is my best shot:
It felt the right time to make the office feel a little more wintery. It may be a little early, but we couldn’t resist the charm of festive decorations and a cozy atmosphere to brighten up the dark days. Especially now that we’re more settled into our massive flight arena – a space this large calls for many more Christmas lights! Of course, there’s more to it than just creating a Netflix-Christmas-movie vibe—we’re also gearing up for two big events: our annual Christmas party, which will be hosted here, and the filming of our newest Christmas video!
Speaking of Christmas video, that’s exactly what we’ll be diving into during our next dev meeting! We recently had a great time revisiting how we’ve used demos to guide development – if you missed that particular dev meeting, you can see it here. We thought it would be a great idea to dedicate our next session to exploring all the Christmas videos we’ve created over the years. It’s fascinating to see how our Christmas projects have evolved over time and we hope you’ll join us to reminisce about it Wednesday 11th of December at 15.00 (CET). You’ll find all the info here.
It’s been a while since I last talked about hiring! We successfully onboarded our most recent recruit, and now it’s time to start planning for the future.
One of our challenges as a team is that we’re very heavy on engineers and developers. While that’s fantastic for building products, it means we lack expertise in other important areas. That’s why we’re now shifting our focus to bringing in talent to help fill those gaps. We’ve partnered with a recruitment agency once again to help us find the right people for the job. We’re currently hiring for two distinct roles—here’s what we’re looking for!
Technical sales lead
You will be responsible for developing and implementing sales strategies while exploring both new and existing markets. You’ll take the lead in driving sales and acquiring new customers, becoming the company’s go-to expert on marketing and sales tactics. Your day-to-day tasks will include supporting business development, optimizing sales processes, and proposing effective marketing strategies. This role is perfect for someone with a background in technical sales with a strong strategic mindset and a sense of responsibility.
We’re looking for a Technical Success Engineer to provide our customers with technical guidance and product expertise. This role involves offering first-line support, creating documentation and tutorials, and assisting with tech-focused sales efforts. The goal is to ensure a smooth and seamless customer experience while building strong client relationships. It’s an ideal position for a “social developer”—someone with a solid technical background who also excels in communication and enjoys engaging with others.
Both positions are full-time and based at our office in Malmö, Sweden. If you’re curious about why you should join our team, I’ve already shared some of the many reasons why I love being part of Bitcraze.
If you’re interested or have any questions, please send an email to fredric.vernqvist@techtalents.se or contact us at contact@bitcraze.se.
