The Crazyflie is the perfect development tool for your flying application
Flexible
Add external sensors and other hardware as needed, interfaced through the flexible expansion port. Modify or extend the firmware of the quadcopter to access or control your hardware - it is all open source. Do it all in the comfort of your lab, the Crazyflie is small and lightweight and can be flown indoors without extensive safety equipment. Maybe you are interested in control algorithms and have an idea you want to try out? Just do it!
Easy
There is a parameter and data logging system that makes it very easy to monitor or control parameters and data in the copter when connected to the client application on your computer. Set parameters to control your hardware or read sensor data from your sensors. All in real time and graphed on your screen. When your application is working as expected you can go bigger and use the Crazyflie control board on a bigger quadcopter frame and fly it outdoors.
Versatile
There are APIs for many languages that you can use to control the copter, or why not connect to ROS or use the ZeroMQ messaging bus? The community has created a wide array of frameworks and tools to connect and control the system.
Out of the box
To make it super easy to get started with development, we have created a virtual machine where all the tools you need are installed and pre configured. No problems of setting up your compiler for the right CPU architecture or installation of tools, it is working out of the box.
Power
Connect a debugger to the Crazyflie to easily debug and investigate what is going on in the firmware. The CPU is powerful enough to give your application the CPU time it needs to do its job. Our goal has been to make the Crazyflie a versatile development platform that gives you the power to try out your ideas immediately. Go play!