Friday, July 11, 2014

Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter Kit 6-DOF (BC-CFK-03-A).

Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter Kit 6-DOF (BC-CFK-03-A)

Ever wanted a development kit that flies? Well now you can! The Crazyflie is an open source nano quadcopter kit designed for flexible development and hacking. It's among the smallest in the world, weighing only 19 grams and measuring 9 cm motor to motor.

The development platform is open source so schematics and firmware/host source code is available at the Bitcraze website as well as a Wiki with design information and details on how to set up the development environment and get started. It’s designed with development in mind and has an expansion header that enables developers to expand the platform as well as good software development support. Due to it’s small size it’s perfect for developing new software and can easily be flown inside. It can lift a payload of up to 5 - 10 g.

This is the 6-DOF version utilizing a 3-axis accelerometer and a 3-axis gyro and thus capable of auto-leveling.

A 2.4 GHz radio chip from Nordic Semiconductors is used for receiving commands and sending telemetry data back to the host computer. The communication with the host is made possible by using the Crazyradio 2.4 GHz USB radio dongle. The Crazyradio can be connected to a PC (with support for Windows and Linux) but also to other hosts that support USB Host or OTG like Android phones. Mac OSX currently has beta support handled by the community.

The Crazyflie Quadcopter is shipped pre-programmed and can easily be wirelessly updated via a radio bootloader from a host PC, so no JTAG is required for reprogramming. For advanced development and debugging there’s also an accessible JTAG interface.

Crazyflie features
  • Small and lightweight, around 19g and about 90mm motor to motor
  • Flight time up to 7 minutes with standard 170mAh Li-Po battery
  • Standard micro-USB connector for charging which takes ~20min for the stock 170mAh Li-Po battery
  • On-board low-energy radio@1mW based on the nRF24L01+ chip. Up to 80m range (environment dependent) when using the Crazyradio USB dongle
  • Radio bootloader which enabled wireless update of the firmware
  • Powerful 32 bit MCU: STM32F103CB @ 72 MHz (128kb flash, 20kb RAM)
  • 3-axis high-performance MEMs gyros with 3-axis accelerometer: Invensense MPU-6050
  • Available footprints to manually solder magnetometer HMC5883L/HMC5983 or/and barometer MS5611 (sensors not included)
  • Expansion header 2×10 pins 1.27mm (0.05”) pitch including power, I2C/UART, SPI/ADC. Header also contains ARM Cortex 10-pin JTAG.
  • 4-layer low noise PCB design with separate voltage regulators for digital and analog supply
Kit includes
  • 1 x Crazyflie control board
  • 5 x Motor mounts
  • 5 x Coreless DC motors
  • 5 x CW propeller
  • 5 x CCW propeller
  • 1 x LiPo battery
  • 1 x 2*5 pins 1.27mm (0.05”) pitch header.

What is not included but needed for flying
  • A standard micro-USB cable for charging
  • A PC compatible joystick
  • A PC
  • A Crazyradio
Needed for assembly
  • A soldering iron
  • Solder
Resources

Disclaimer
Each part of the Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter Kit is tested before it leaves the factory, but please keep in mind that the kit is still experimental, unproven hardware. This hardware is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Notes:
This kit does not include the Crazyradio which can be bought separately.
This kit requires soldering skills and is not for beginners. It is not a toy and should be handled with care.