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Crayflie drifts severly in one direction as soon as it takes off

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2018 5:14 pm
by sumit
Hi,

I bought the Crazyflie 2.0 for the Udacity course. It has flowdeck.

Problem : The drone drifts in the right direction as soon as it takes off.

What am I doing ?
I am trying to run the motion commander example : https://github.com/bitcraze/crazyflie-l ... er_demo.py
I commented out everything except takeoff and landing parts. So, I am just trying to make it takeoff and land.

What did I try to fix it ?

I followed all the instructions on the wiki to make sure the drone is balanced. I had ordered extra rotors and propellers, I changed all of them and the drone still drifts .

I also tried all the other suggestions on the forums to fix this and nothing helps.

Do I have a defective board ?

Re: Crayflie drifts severly in one direction as soon as it takes off

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2018 7:58 am
by arnaud
This behavior sounds like the flow deck is not doing its work properly.

The first things to check is if the flow deck is detected and initialized. If you connect your Crazyflie using the python client you should a line with "Motion chip is" in the console tab:
flow_init.png

If the deck is well initialized, we can check if it is working. Look at the flight tab in the client and move your crazyflie keeping it flat ~30cm above a surface with pattern, a keyboard is a good surface to use. If you move the crazyflie side-ways quickly, you should see roll and pitch changing in the artificial horizon. If this happen, it means that the flow data are used to estimate the Crazyflie velocity and attitude.

If both these test pass, your flow deck is working well and your problem is most likely a tracking problem. The flow deck must be able to see patterns in order to track its movement, so it works best when there is enough light and if the surface bellow the sensor has visible high-contrast pattern. So it will not work on a white desk, it will work with low contrast pattern like a wooden floor if there is enough light, it works on higher contrast pattern like carpets with less light.

This should be enough info to close-in on the problem, please keep us updated with the results.

Re: Crayflie drifts severly in one direction as soon as it takes off

Posted: Mon Oct 08, 2018 6:52 pm
by ssedlmayr
I have the same issue. I have the Windows CF client; there is no mention of a 'Motion chip' in the console window. However, the artificial horizon responds perfectly when moving the Crazyflie around by hand. Unfortunately, when you try to control it with an XBox controller, it will drift or spin in seemingly random directions if you simply apply thrust. I've checked my propellers and they are properly attached in a pattern of alternating clockwise and counter-clockwise blades.

Re: Crayflie drifts severly in one direction as soon as it takes off

Posted: Mon Oct 08, 2018 7:17 pm
by ssedlmayr
I'm using this for the Udacity Flying Car Nanodegree, and just tested again with my python code for the class. I'm trying to use it indoors, but immediately after taking off it drifts backwards so far before righting itself, that when attempting to fly in a simple pattern - a half inch square, that it ends up hitting furniture because it flies somewhere without the necessary clearance. This things is meant for the indoors, but it seems like you need a gymnasium to operate it in. I simply don't have that much open space inside my small home - the largest open area I have is a VR space that is roughly 6' x 7'. Is it typical for it to take to long to get its bearings and right itself before it's ready for level flight?

Re: Crayflie drifts severly in one direction as soon as it takes off

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2018 6:12 am
by arnaud
@ssedlmayr Can you copy the output from the Crazyflie console at startup?

How does your floor looks? If the flow deck works the Crazyflie should take-off and just stand there in a stable flight above the floor. This requires some patterns to be visible on the floor though.