Crazyradio keeps dropping connection

[elsyx]

Hello,

I recently got a Crazyflie 2.0 and a Crazyradio PA, and the combination is great. With a game controller, the Crazyflie is much easier to keep stable than with the iOS client. But I keep having issues with the Crazyradio connection dropping. It will be flying along normally for 30 seconds or so, then suddenly communication will drop and the quad drops out of the air, which has cost me a few motor mounts already.

I'm using the Bitcraze VM on a Windows host. The most common message I've been seeing is this:

Communication failure
Connection lost to radio://0/80/2M: Dongle communication error (ackStatus==None)

Usually I can just reconnect and it works fine for another minute or so, although sometimes it will drop out after just a few seconds. I haven't found any pattern as to when it drops out -- sometimes while flying, sometimes while sitting still, sometimes with input and sometimes without touching anything.

Occasionally, I get a different error:

Communication failure
Failed to connect on radio://0/80/2M: Couldn't load link driver: [Errno 110] Operation timed out
[stack trace]

I can't immediately reconnect after this error. The simplest solution I've found for this is to unplug and re-connect the Crazyradio dongle, after which it will usually work for a little while longer before giving me one of those two errors. My suspicion is something is wrong with the Crazyradio USB dongle, but I can't be 100% sure.

Any ideas? I'm happy to provide further information, and I can get the stack trace from the latter error if it's helpful.

[elsyx]

I just tried updating the firmware of the Crazyradio to a build from the latest master branch, and I am still seeing the same behavior.

[derf]

Just to get one variable out of the equation, you can try to install the Crazyflie client directly and not use the Bitcraze VM.

You could also try the Android app (if you have an Android device and an USB on-the-go adapter) to see if it's really a problem with the Crazyradio.

[elsyx]

Good thinking. I just installed the client on Windows but may not have a chance to really test it for a couple days.

I don't personally have an Android device, but I may be able to find one to try. I've tried the iPhone client app which works fine over BLE, for the record. But I'm assuming you mean to try the Android app with the CrazyRadio PA attached. I'll see if I can find a way to do this.

[elsyx]

I tried running the client on Windows last night and it maintained a solid connection for 20 minutes or so, so it seems to be fine there. I'm not sure what was causing the problem on the Linux VM, but at this point it appears to not be a hardware issue, which is good.

Thanks for the suggestion, I wasn't aware the client could run directly on Windows before!