Back to FOSDEM 2026

2026-01-05 | Barbara | Leave a comment

FOSDEM is one of the largest open source conferences in Europe, happening every year in Brussels. It’s a special place where developers, researchers, and enthusiasts come together to share ideas, showcase projects, and explore the latest in open-source technology. Over the years, we at Bitcraze have been regular attendees, enjoying the chance to meet fellow open-source fans and see what’s happening across the community.

Last year, we decided to take a bigger step and helped organize a developer room. 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. Before, the conference lacked a dedicated devroom for robotics, which is a shame as a lot of robotics, at least in research, are open source, thanks in large part to ROS. That’s why we’re devoted on helping out organizing a devroom focused on robotics and simulation. Being part of the developer room gives us the chance not only to attend talks but also to contribute to the schedule, help coordinate speakers, and support discussions among attendees.

The developer room is packed with exciting content for anyone interested in robotics, swarming, simulation, and more. There are presentations on new tools and libraries, discussions about open-source projects pushing the boundaries of what small robots can do. Last year, talks ranged from advanced motion planning and multi-robot coordination to hands-on experiments with drones and embedded systems. For 2026, the schedule promises even more fascinating sessions, highlighting the latest developments in robotics software and hardware, and providing a space to exchange ideas with people working on similar challenges.

Whether you’re interested in ROS, sensor fusion, or just curious about what researchers and makers are building, the developer room is a great place to meet like-minded people and get inspired. We’ve found it to be an incredible platform for sharing knowledge, discovering new tools, and seeing how open-source contributions can accelerate innovation.

This is happening on Saturday 31st of January, from 10.30 to 18.30, in room UB2.147. You can check out the full FOSDEM 2026 Robotics and Simulation schedule here: FOSDEM 2026 schedule

We’re really looking forward to being part of the developer room again this year, and we hope to see some of you there. If you’ll be at FOSDEM, come by, say hi, and share what you’ve been working on — we can’t wait to see the amazing projects the community will bring this year!

Looking forward to 2026

2025-12-29 | Barbara | Leave a comment

With 2025 coming to a close and only a few days left on the calendar, it’s time to turn our attention forward and take a look at what we have planned for 2026. As usual, the year ahead is shaping up to be a busy one, with several long-running projects finally moving closer to release.

Projects

Our first major release of the year will be the Color LED deck, currently planned for the end of January. You can sign up here to receive an email when it’s available! This has been a long-awaited addition, and getting it out the door will allow us to fully shift focus to two larger projects that have been steadily progressing throughout 2025: Lighthouse v2 and the camera deck.

The upcoming Lighthouse v2 deck is designed to support Lighthouse systems with up to 16 base stations, significantly increasing the size of the spaces that can be covered. We made solid progress on this during 2025, both in hardware and software, and 2026 will be about pushing this work further toward a more complete and robust solution.

The camera deck is another project that has been quietly advancing behind the scenes. Several prototypes have already flown successfully, and with more dedicated time now available, we’re aiming to make meaningful progress on this front during 2026 as well. While there’s still work to be done, things are moving in the right direction.

Beyond these headline projects, we also expect to continue improving the Crazyradio 2, building on the updates from 2025 and further strengthening its performance, especially for swarm use cases.

Conferences

As is now tradition, the year will kick off with FOSDEM, where we’ll once again be present — more details on that coming soon. In late March, you’ll also find us at ERF, followed by ICRA in Vienna in early June. Conferences are always a great opportunity to meet the community, see what others are working on, and share what we’ve been building.

We’ll be sharing more information about these events — and possibly a few others — as the year unfolds, so keep an eye on the blog for updates.

Team

After a big growth spurt in 2025, the team is in a good place, but we’re not quite done yet. We still have one open position for a production QA & Embedded Engineer, and we’re looking forward to welcoming the right person to join us.

2026 is shaping up to be an exciting year, and we’re looking forward to sharing more as things develop. With that, we’d like to wish all our users, contributors, and readers a great start to 2026. We hope it will be a year full of successful experiments, smooth flights, and maybe even a few unexpected discoveries. See you in the new year!

Looking back at 2025

2025-12-22 | Barbara | Leave a comment

Time flies! 2025 is already drawing to a close, and as has become a Bitcraze tradition, it’s time to pause for a moment and look back at what we’ve been up to during the year. As usual, it’s been a mix of new hardware, major software improvements, community adventures, and some changes within the team itself.

Hardware

2025 started with a bang, with the release of the Brushless! It was a big milestone for us, and it’s been incredibly exciting to see how quickly the community picked it up and started pushing it in all sorts of creative directions. From more demanding research setups to experimental control approaches, the Brushless has already proven to be a powerful new addition to the ecosystem. Alongside the Brushless, we also released a charging dock enabling the drone to charge autonomously between flights. This opened the door to longer-running experiments and led to the launch of our Infinite Flight bundle, making it easier than ever to explore continuous operation and autonomous behaviors.

Beyond new products, we spent much of the year working on two major hardware-related projects. During the first part of the year, our focus was on expanding the Lighthouse system to support up to 16 basestations. The second part of the year much of our efforts shifted toward preparing the release of the Color LED, which we’re very much looking forward to seeing in the wild.

Fun Fridays also got some extra time in the spotlight this year. Aris produced a series of truly delightful projects that reminded us all why we love experimenting with flying robots in the first place. Have you seen the disco drone, or the claw?

Software

On the software side, 2025 brought some important structural improvements. The biggest change was the introduction of a new control deck architecture; which lays the groundwork for better identification and enumeration of decks going forward. This is one of those changes that may not look flashy on the surface, but it will make life easier for both users and developers in the long run.

We also made steady progress with the Rust Lib, moving from Fun Friday to a fully-fleshed tool. It is now an integrated and supported part of our tooling, opening up new possibilities for users who want strong guarantees around safety and performance.

Another long-awaited update this year was an upgrade to the Crazyradio, improving its ability to handle large swarms of Crazyflie™ drones. This directly benefits anyone working with multi-drone setups and helps make swarm experiments more robust and scalable.

Community

It’s fair to say that 2025 was a busy year on the community and events front. We kicked things off, as usual, at FOSDEM, where we hosted a dev room for the first time! A big step for us and a great opportunity to connect with fellow open-source developers.

Later in the year, we made our first trip back to the US since the pandemic. This included sponsoring the ICUAS competition, and hosting a booth at ICRA Atlanta, both of which were fantastic opportunities to meet researchers and practitioners working with aerial robotics. We also presented a brand-new demo at HRI.

In September, KTH hosted a “Drone gymnasium“, giving students hands-on access to Crazyflies and encouraging them to explore new robotic experiences. Seeing what happens when students are given open tools and creative freedom is always inspiring, and this event was no exception.

2025 was also marked by continued and valuable community contributions. From improvements and bug fixes to features like battery compensation, these contributions play a huge role in shaping the platform and pushing it forward.

Team

Behind the scenes, Bitcraze itself continued to grow. This year brought both change and expansion within the team. Tove moved on to new adventures in Stockholm, and while we’ll miss her, we were also happy to welcome a record four new team members!

Aris ansitioned from intern to full-time developer, Fredrik then joined as a growth and partnership guru, followed by Enya as an application engineer. Hampus was the last to join us as an administrator. With these new faces, the team is larger — and stronger — than ever.

All in all, 2025 has once again been an exciting, intense, and rewarding year for Bitcraze. Thank you to everyone in the community who flew with us, built on our tools, reported issues, shared ideas, and showed us what’s possible with tiny flying robots. We can’t wait to see what 2026 brings.

The Crazyflie Color LED Deck Meets SwarmGPT

2025-12-15 | Fredrik Ehrenstråle | Leave a comment

Recent work from the Learning Systems and Robotics Lab explores a question many of us have implicitly wrestled with:

How do we design expressive, coordinated swarm behavior without hand-crafting every trajectory?

Their answer, presented in the paper “SwarmGPT”, is to use large language models not as low-level controllers, but as a high-level interface for swarm intent, and then rely on classical robotics methods to make that intent executable and safe.

So what is SwarmGPT?

SwarmGPT is not about letting an LLM “fly drones”. Instead, it introduces a clear separation of responsibilities:

Language models operate at the level of structure, timing, and choreography
Motion planning and control handle feasibility, collision avoidance, and dynamics
Execution remains deterministic and verifiable

In practice, this means a user can specify swarm behavior using natural language (or music-derived cues), and the system generates structured multi-drone trajectories that are then validated and executed using established robotics pipelines.

This distinction matters. The paper does not replace control theory, but it compresses the path from idea to experiment. For researchers, this has several implications:

Faster iteration on swarm concepts
Lower barrier to expressive multi-agent behavior
A clean interface between creative intent and physical constraints

Making Swarm Structure Visible With the Crazyflie Color LED Deck

The authors used Crazyflie drones as research platform and we sent them a handful of Crazyflie Color LED Decks to experiment with.

The LED deck is not just decorative. It provides, per-agent visual feedback, clear indication of phase, grouping, or timing, and immediate insight into synchronization and coordination.

For research, this supports:

Real-time inspection of swarm state
Easier debugging of generated behavior
More legible demonstrations of complex coordination

For drone show–style applications, it enables:

Tight coupling between motion and light
Expressive patterns where choreography and illumination reinforce each other
Rapid iteration on visual concepts without custom hardware

The same capability serves both domains, which is part of its appeal.

Happy Robotic Holidays!

In our annual holiday video, nine Crazyflies take off from the Bitcraze HQ in Malmö. After briefly hovering to demonstrate the three mounting options of the Color LED Deck, they make their way to the Learning Systems and Robotics Lab in Munich.

There, they perform a SwarmGPT-generated choreography before slowly landing in a sparkling snowflake pattern.

When sandwich-mounted, the top- and bottom-mounted Color LED Decks can display independent colors and light patterns, enabling richer visual expressions and more nuanced feedback.

Happy Robotic Holidays from all of us!

Learn More

📄 SwarmGPT paper (Learning Systems and Robotics Lab)
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11197931

👉 SwarmGPT project website:
https://utiasdsl.github.io/swarm_GPT/

💡 Crazyflie Color LED Deck product page
https://www.bitcraze.io/products/color-led-deck/

🛒 Bitcraze store (Color LED Deck – available early 2026)
Crazyflie Color LED Deck – Top Mounted
Crazyflie Color LED Deck – Bottom Mounted

A Christmas Tree made of Crazyflies

2025-12-01 | Aris | Leave a comment

Christmas is getting close, and while most people are just starting to hang lights and decorate their tree, we decided to go a little bigger and a whole lot brighter. Instead of adding tinsels and ornaments, we set up a swarm of 8 Crazyflie 2.1 Brushless drones with the upcoming Color LED decks along with some long-exposure photography magic, and decorated our flying arena with a Christmas tree made of Crazyflies.

How it works

The project is split into two parts: the firmware side that controls the Color LED decks and the script that is responsible for the choreography of the swarm.

The Firmware

Instead of lighting the LEDs based on time or commands, each Crazyflie uses its 3D position to decide on the correct color. This makes the whole communication with the central computer easier. Inside the firmware, multiple virtual spheres are created in the flight arena, just like ornaments floating in a tree-shaped structure. Whenever a Crazyflie flies into one of these spheres, its Color LED deck switches instantly from green to red. When it flies back out, it glows green again. Since we’re taking a long-exposure photo, the whole color pattern begins when the drones are ready to perform the choreography and stops when they start landing.

The Script

The python script is pretty simple. It commands a swarm of Crazyflies to perform a coordinated spiral choreography resembling a Christmas tree outline in 3D space. Each drone takes off to a different height, flies in spiraling circular layers, and changes radius as it rises and descends, forming the visual structure of a cone when viewed from outside. To pull this off with the current state of the cflib, we used 3 Crazyradios 2.0 and the high level commander.

A Testbed for Crazyradio 2.0 Improvement

Lately, we have been looking again at improving the radio communication with the Crazyflie. A prototype featuring a new USB communication mode for the Crazyradio was ready just in time for testing with the Christmas tree demo.

This new mode makes Crazyradio 2.0 much more efficient when communicating with swarms. With it, we were able to fly the same demo using only one Crazyradio 2.0 instead of 3 with the connection time to the swarm greatly accelerated. This demonstrates the efficiency of the new mode.

The new mode is called “inline setting mode” since it works by inlining all radio settings with the packet data, negating the need to issue time-costly USB setup requests. It is currently a Pull Request to Crazyradio 2.0 and the Rust Crazyradio driver. Support for Crazyswarm/ROS and CFLib will be implemented and when we know that the protocol works out for all libs, we will merge and release support for the new mode. It will be enabled by default so you will get the benefits from upgrading the Crazyradio 2.0 firmware and lib. We will talk more about it when it is released, in the mean time do not hesitate to test and feedback on the PRs ;-).

Demo source code

You can find the project’s repository as well as the rust version on Github. The python version was used for the picture and video, and the Rust one behaves identically.

Where in the world is your Crazyflie made?

2025-11-24 | Barbara | Leave a comment

Since the end of 2024, we’ve been putting effort into spreading out our manufacturing. With international trade rules rapidly changing, it felt like the right moment to expand our production footprint. Doing this helps us keep stock more stable, react faster to demand, and makes life easier for you when it comes to potential import-related costs.

To make it happen, we’ve been working closely with our long-time partner in China, Seeed Studio. They’ve been helping us move the production of some of our items to Vietnam, where exciting new opportunities have opened up. This way, we can keep the same quality and reliability you’re used to while spreading out production across more locations, which makes our supply chain stronger.

Right now, four of our products are being made in Vietnam: the Crazyflie 2.1+, the Crazyflie 2.1 Brushless, the Flow Deck, and the Crazyradio 2.0. Meanwhile, the Charging Dock is made here in Sweden, and the Lighthouse Base Station comes from Taiwan. That means our production is now spread over four different locations!

We still produce in China as well—that’s where our newest deck will come from, for example. The plan is to gradually add more products made in Vietnam, spreading production across locations, reduce risk, and keep things running smoothly for both us and you. Over time, this will make it easier to maintain stock, respond quickly to demand, and give you a smoother experience no matter where you are in the world.

We also want to make it visible where your products come from when you shop with us. In May, we updated the store to clearly display the country of origin for each item. You can now find this information at the bottom of every product page, so you always know where the item in your cart is being made. For many of you, this small detail helps plan ahead and makes it easier to estimate any extra costs from international shipping.

Fun Friday Project: Turn the Crazyflie into a Party Drone

2025-11-17 | Aris | 2 Comments

It’s always a good feeling to wrap up the week with a Fun Friday project – especially when it involves some questionable mechanical additions to a Crazyflie platform. This time, I decided to test the capabilities of the upcoming Color LED deck by turning it into a Disco deck.

Mechanics

The core of the Disco Deck is pretty simple: a 3D-printed disco ball mounted directly on top of the Color LED Deck with a couple of screws. To bring it to life, I added a Sub-Micro Plastic Planetary Gearmotor and used a rubber band as a drive belt to transfer the rotation. It’s a lightweight, low-tech solution that works surprisingly well with the Crazyflie 2.1 Brushless. All the structural parts were designed to be easily 3D printed in PLA, and they fit on a single print plate for a quick build. You can find all the part files here.

Electronics & Firmware

On my first attempt, I connected the motor directly to VCC and GND, which meant it started spinning as soon as the Crazyflie powered up. This turned out to be a problem as the vibrations prevented the Crazyflie from completing its initialization sequence, since it needs to remain completely still for about one second at startup. The proper fix was to connect the motor to one of the GPIO pins (IO_4) along with GND. For the firmware, I added a new deck driver for setting the IO_4 output to low during initialization and controlling it through a parameter.

Next Steps

The biggest limitation of the current Disco Deck design is the landing. The disco ball extends below the length of the Crazyflie 2.1 Brushless legs, which means the drone can’t take off or land horizontally – not even when using the standard Crazyflie 2.1 Brushless charging dock. To fix this, I’m planning to design a custom charging dock that also works as a stable landing platform for the Party drone.

If you’re interested on the process, you can check out the project repository for any updates.

New co-worker at Bitcraze: Hampus!

2025-10-13 | Enya Nilsson | Leave a comment

Bitcraze is on an exciting journey on many levels and one of them is expanding the team. In the middle of September, I started at Bitcraze. My name is Hampus, I am 33 years old and I will have a role as administrator. I live in central Malmö together with my wife Hannah and my 4 year old kid, Sigge.

After a few weeks at Bitcraze I am 100% confident I made the right choice. The company might be small, but it’s full of fun and interesting people. Everyone is helpful and share an awesome enthusiasm for the company.

My role as administrator will include many tasks. But to summarize, I will “steal” responsibilities from my colleagues, for example bookkeeping and other financial tasks, so that they can focus more on the development of the Bitcraze products.

I really enjoy administration and diving into Excel-sheets. This is not always the case for colleagues, so hopefully this means that it will be a good match between me and the rest of the company.

Besides Bitcraze, I am playing professional handball in HK Malmö at the top the Swedish division. My ambition is that my my experiences from many years of playing a team sport will help in the development of Bitcraze. I will split my time between Bitcraze and HK Malmö 50/50.

Release 2025.09

2025-09-29 | Rik | Leave a comment

We’re happy to announce that release 2025.09 is now available. This update includes Python 3.13 support and improved battery voltage compensation, along with enhanced trajectory control capabilities. The release also features substantial stability and architectural work that lays the groundwork for upcoming features and products. Thanks to our community contributors for their valuable additions to this release.

Major changes

Python 3.13 support
Added support for Python 3.13, with preparations already in place to ensure faster compatibility when Python 3.14 releases.

Improved battery voltage compensation
Enhanced voltage compensation for Crazyflie 2.1, 2.1+, and 2.1 with thrust upgrade kit provides more consistent flight performance across battery discharge cycles. Crazyflie Brushless battery voltage compensation coming soon. Thanks to @Rather1337 for this contribution.

Manual flight setpoint packet
New generic commander packet type for manual flight that allows dynamic switching between Angle and Rate modes for roll and pitch without re-flashing the firmware.

Fully relative trajectories
Trajectories can now be initiated relative to the drone’s current yaw, not just position. This enables fully relative trajectory execution where subsequent trajectories maintain the drone’s current orientation. Thanks to @johnnwallace for this contribution.

Modular deck discovery architecture
Replaced OneWire-only deck discovery with a modular backend system that supports multiple discovery protocols. This enables future deck communication methods while maintaining full backward compatibility with existing decks.

Release overview

crazyflie-firmware release 2025.09 GitHub

cfclient (crazyflie-clients-python) release 2025.9 GitHub, PyPi

cflib (crazyflie-lib-python) release 0.1.29 GitHub, PyPi

Bitcraze’s Side Event at The Drop 2025

2025-09-15 | Fredrik Ehrenstråle | Leave a comment

We are hosting a side event at “The Drop” in our home town of Malmö, Sweden.

The Drop, brought to life by Pale Blue Dot and Domino Studio, is not just another climate tech festival. It’s a dynamic forum for scientists, investors, startups, and innovators who thrive on meaningful dialogue and next-generation problem solving.

Set inside a century-old, repurposed train workshop, The Drop combines historic ambiance with forward-looking discussions. Attendees often highlight how the event sparks collaborations, unlocks new funding opportunities, and reignites optimism for the future of climate innovation.

Side events at The Drop shift the focus from grand stages to gritty, solution-oriented collaboration. There’s a long list of pop-up gatherings in Malmö’s coffee shops, studios, and parks, where teams form around specific challenges to discuss, prototype, or model new ways of solving traditional problems.

At the side event we invite participants to a discussion about the emerging role of autonomous drones in society, not just as tools, but as extensions of our thinking, imagination, and responsibility. There will be good coffee, delicious croissants from our favourite French breakfast place Dame Ginette, real tech, hands-on experimentation, and an open conversation about how robotics can be both functional and poetic.

Although our attendee capacity has maxed out, you can still sign up and hope to secure a spot. See the side event page for more details and hope to connect with fellow innovators eager to push the boundaries of robotics and climate tech later this week!