Definitive OS X Thread (hopefully)

[demcanulty]

Hello all! I'm very enthusiastic about doing development with the crazyflie, and just getting started and trying to sort out whether I should get another computer for development in Ubuntu or Windows. I'd be much more psyched to develop in my native Mac OS X on my laptop, but I'm not sure if that's a wise decision given the lack of forum discussion about Mac development. Running Virtual Box in Mac OS has allowed me to get started, but fighting with the virtual machine bluetooth problems and the inconvenient mac laptop keyboard layout for that operating system makes me think that either I need to get a working Mac toolchain or I need to commit to a different operating system.

Like most here, I'm interested in getting more autonomy into the robot and computer system, so development would be in firmware as well as in computer script control, maybe even GUI.

Have any other mac users here confronted and answered a similar question? Upgrading to Mavericks seems like a bad idea for new development, so I'm imagining developing for Max OS 10.8.x.

Anyway, open to thoughts.

[tobias]

I'm not using mac but I think I've read about some people doing Crazyflie development on it. Can't find it now though.

[demcanulty]

Do you guys have any insight into what OS the majority of users are developing in?

[demcanulty]

Well, lacking feedback, I'm guessing that Linux is the most commonly used, since wiki instructions for setting up the dev environment exist for Fedora and Ubuntu but are TBD on Windows. I think I'll get started on Ubuntu and then try porting it over when I'm more familiar with things.

[tobias]

Unfortunately we do not know what is the most common used OS for Crazyflie development. Would have been great to know. We use Ubuntu but we have used Windows as well, not Mac though.

[zak]

For what it's worth, I'm on OS X and decided to go with the Ubuntu VM over developing natively. The main reason for that was not wanting to muck around too much with the built-in Python in OS X; in the VM making mistakes is much less punishing. If you're looking to get Bluetooth support in the guest for connecting a PS3 controller, that's completely possible - you just need to unload the OS X kernel extensions to make the Bluetooth module available to the guest.

In terms of shortcut keys, that's a bit trickier but certainly doable. In the Input tab of the VirtualBox preferences, you can change the host key from Cmd to Ctrl and then remap Cmd to Ctrl in the guest OS. It's a bit hacky, but means that you'll get less confused with copy/paste actions at least!