Crazyflie open source quadcopter

Crazyflie open source quadcopter

Swedish startup launches this year’s must-have open source hardware toy


Swedish startup firm Bitcraze is launching an open source hardware kit for building the Crazyflie, a nano-scale quadcopter. The company’s founders Marcus Eliasson, Arnaud  Taffanel and Tobias Antonsson, say that the  project started with “a simple idea: get an electronic board to fly.” In the online demonstrations, the 9cm x 9cm quadcopter is controlled, via 2.4GHz radio, from a PC using a standard USB gaming controller. The current PC software includes a wireless radio bootloader, along with real-time telemetry, which supports the on-board gyroscope needed to keep the device steady in flight. However, the kit is intended as an open source platform for users to hack and develop with new functionality. 

                                       Existing hacks include the addition of a keychain camera, LED lighting, inductive charging and what appears to be some form of vision control system similar to an Apache helicopter. Despite the firm advertising its agility, there is also a set of training guards for novice pilots to protect the rotors from impact. A sensible addition given the blistering speeds the Crazyflie can achieve!  Ahead of release, the first batch of 300 Crazyflie kits has already sold out. The next batch of 500 kits is available to pre-order now for $173 from www.seeedstudio.com, with shipping expected at the beginning of May.  For more info and videos of the Crazyflie in action, the project’s website is at: www.bitcraze.se 

 Technical specs

 Weight  19g  
Size   90 mm motor to motor 
 Range   Up t o 80m (environment  dependent) when using the  Crazyradio USB dongle
  Flight time   Up t o 7 minutes with standard  170mAh Li-Po battery  
 Connections   Standard micro-USB connector  for charging, which takes  ~20min for the stock 170mAh Li-Po battery 
 Receiver  On-board low-energy radio @1mW based on the  nRF24L01+ chip  MCu  Po werful 32-bit MCU: STM32F103CB @72 MHz (128KB flash, 20KB RAM)