Public Service Announcement

Discussions and questions about the Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter
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orcinus
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Posts: 36
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 11:03 pm

Public Service Announcement

Post by orcinus »

Something i've just learned the hard(ish) way:

ALWAYS, and i mean ALWAYS check the target Thrust readout before you hit Connect.
ALWAYS.

I just had it stuck at 75% for some reason (the PS3 controller was connected, the stick wasn't pressed, it wasn't upside down or anything like that) and when i hit connect, my crazyflie flew off the table, bounced a few times against the ceiling, entangled itself into the window curtains, disentangled itself and slammed the wall a few times before i managed to react and hit the disconnect and the timeout kicked in.

What's even weirder - the PS3 controler was unresponsive until i've restarted the client, at which point it started behaving as usual.
aforcefulthrust
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Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 8:08 am

Re: Public Service Announcement

Post by aforcefulthrust »

LOL - Crazyflie still in good shape? I'm surprised at the beating these things can take.
csholmq
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Joined: Fri Dec 27, 2013 1:20 pm

Re: Public Service Announcement

Post by csholmq »

Ouch, that's rough. Perhaps there should be some form of safeguard that prevents throttle above 0% when connecting for the first time.
orcinus
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Posts: 36
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 11:03 pm

Re: Public Service Announcement

Post by orcinus »

Crazyflie is still fine, the props got a bit scratched, but nothing dramatic.
It's light enough that it can't do much damage to itself :)

A safeguard is definitely a good idea. Most RC systems initialize with the throttle disarmed and some kind of an arming "gesture" required before takeoff is possible. For a good reason :)

I've figured out what caused it, BTW. Cause #1 is disconnecting the controller with pygame still running. If you then reconnect, without restarting cfclient, the controller stick states will sometime get stuck in max. positions.

Cause #2 is controller going to sleep. Waking it up by pressing the PS button makes it resume normal function, though (unlike cause #1, which requires restarting cfclient).
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