CrazyFlie NanoQuadrotor w/Portable RPi Base Station

The CrazyFlie Nano-Quadrotor is a Micro-Quad/development platform. Everything from the PCB diagram to the PC-Client to the radio is based on open source components. While still very very early in development, the Bitcraze development team is a near-perfect example of open hardware best-practices in action. They have a well-organized product-wiki- http://wiki.bitcraze.se/ which is frequently updated with suggestions, hacks and mods culled from an active user-forum-http://forum.bitcraze.se/. The Crazyflie is operated from a "CrazyRadio" USB Dongle attached to a PC running the client software with native support for a PS3 Gamepad. Getting it up and running on Ubuntu was simple as can be, but it wasn't long before the PC started to get in the way. Enter the Raspberry Pi! Following these instructions for running the Headless PC-Client on the Raspberry Pi (http://wiki.bitcraze.se/projects:crazyflie:hacks:rasberrypi) I was able to get it up and running through the command line. After some difficulty getting the program to start automatically with SSH, I eventually found success following the autostart method outlined in this slideshare- http://www.slideshare.net/SeggySegaran/raspberry-pi-autostarting-a-python-program. Adding a USB Battery-Backup and an old Wii carrying-case, I now have myself a fully-portable RC base station for the open source quadrotor! All thats left to do is to find a workable microcamera to mount and the best is yet to come!


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/crazyflie-nanoquadrotor-w-portable-rpi-base-station

Android Version

  While Bitcraze devs have released a full preflashed SD Card Binary for the Raspberry Pi (http://wiki.bitcraze.se/projects:crazyflie:binaries:raspberrypi) the real game changer came in the form of an unofficial Android App forked off of the development source on Bitbucket https://bitbucket.org/fredg02/crazyflie-android-client.

  At home all I need to do is plug the Crazyradio into the Android-based Ouya Game Console and it automatically brings up the interface with the controller already paired!

  I’ve managed to get it flying with a Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and various Android MiniPCs with the help of a Micro-USB OTG adapter cable in the case that bluetooth-pairing for the controller doesnt work.

 


Sorry to tell you but you

Sorry to tell you but you posted your stuff in the wrong section. There is a proper forum for product introduction. Here in “Robots” we want to see how you did it, combined with a more or less step-by-step description, lots of pictures and of course video.

However, your little fly looks interesting, just tell us more details about it or just move the post to the Forum i mentioned if you don’t want to share more.

I’m sorry but it is not at

I’m sorry but it is not at all clear what you are asking of me.  I didnt invent the Crazyflie, it has been for sale for almost a year now on Seeed Studio and my only interaction with the devs was through ordering their product.  My purpose for posting here is to highlight steps I took to get it flying on Android and the Raspberry Pi, of which only the Pi method is officially recommended by the Crazyflie developers.

 

I know Crazyfie but your

I know Crazyfie but your post seems a bit scary with all those links. The people on Letsmakerobots (LMR) would like to stay here and not finding informations to your project somewhere else. I mean a few links to external information or even a shop are not forbidden but the purpose of LMR is to show your progress building something or doing some bugs fixing.

So what exactly is the issue

So what exactly is the issue again?  Too many links?  Or because it was in the wrong place?  I was under the impression that the whole thing about the open source community is well… its openness…  That is so long as certain ethics such as attribution and sharing are respected.  So unless “LMR” is a proprietary trademark entailing strict adherance to a predefined format, I guess I don’t grasp how sharing attributed information about controlling a micro-quadrotor from an Android tablet stands in violation of any guidelines.  

Please don’t get me wrong,

Please don’t get me wrong, we do love to share our creations, and we do love to see others creations as well, that is not what I am talking about. 

There are several categories in the top menu bar where you can choose from. “Robots” is mainly the place where LMR members posting the stuff they build by themselves as well “Something else”, “Tips” or “Blogs”. Your post could fit in to the categorie “Blogs” if you want to share something or in the forum category “Web link” at the start page.

This whole system of different categories only makes is easy to find the right information when you visit the letsmakerobots website.