Crazyflie 2.0 feedback

[marcus]

Hi everyone!

First of all a big thanks for everyone helping out in the forum answering questions and giving support! The last couple of months have been really hectic and we've spent most of our time on manufacturing and developing. Last week we finally reached the goal, the first batch of Crazyflie 2.0 was produced As the first batch was completed the Crazyflie 2.0 (and other products) started shipping to users and distributors all around the world. It feels a bit surreal to finally have reached this goal, the last months is a blur of factories, code and testing. But now that it's done we are shifting back more and more to software and we have lots of fun ideas that we want to implement.

We are really eager to get feedback about the Crazyflie 2.0 (and the other products) and would love to hear what you think about it. But not only the product itself, also everything around it. What about the docs, instructions, apps, hardware and performance?

If you run into any problems while using the product, drop by our normal support forum and post a new topic. But don't forget to tag it Crazyflie 2.0 so it's a bit easier to keep everything apart. If you notice any bugs it would be great if you could report them on GitHub, there are trackers for the Android, iOS, PC/Mac/Linux clients and all the firmwares available.

Last, but not least, have fun with the new hardware!!

/Marcus

[erwincoumans]

I already replied in the support forum, but I find it impossible to fly (and I own and fly several other quadcopers, small and large).

Do you plan implementing stable hovering and recovery to hover? Without that it seems no fun.

[tobias]

We just wrote about unbalanced propellers on our blog, it seems that many of the CCW propellers are unbalanced and needs balancing. That is probably why it does not hover as it should. We have put together a guide on how to balance them, it is not that difficult and only takes a couple of minutes.

Can you please try this and feedback to us?

[chad]

Oops. The link Tobias provided goes to the admin page. Until he has a chance to fix that, here's the link to the guide on prop balancing...

[dbrgn]

The balancing really does help a lot. The crazyflie was initially unfliable. I could never get it to hover in the air. Now with balanced propellers, it is still hard but manageable.

Some improvement suggestions:

- The pushbutton is quite hard to press. Maybe you find a better one for a future release?
- Use LEDs as charging indicator: When charging while turned off, show an LED as loading indicator.
- Use LEDs on crazyradio: Could you continuously light up an LED on the crazyradio when it's plugged in and has been recognized by the OS? At first I thought the driver weren't installed properly because there was no LED active on the crazyradio board.
- Bluetooth on Android: Does this already work? Didn't work for me so far. Maybe create a guide or improve the app?

[tobias]

Thanks for noticing the bad link chad! ( a bit stressed at the moment)

We are glad that it made it fly better dbrgn.

Thanks for the feedback!

- The pushbutton is quite hard to press. Maybe you find a better one for a future release?

I'm not so sure we are able to do that much about the pushbutton but whats cool is that in the future we plan to put it in beacon mode so you can remotely wake it up and shut it down. The push button wouldn't have to be used then .

Use LEDs as charging indicator: When charging while turned off, show an LED as loading indicator.

We think so too. The only confusion then is that it has to be the blue M2 led that shows it as the rest of the system is turned off.

Use LEDs on crazyradio: Could you continuously light up an LED on the crazyradio when it's plugged in and has been recognized by the OS? At first I thought the driver weren't installed properly because there was no LED active on the crazyradio board.

Some kind of heartbeat could be a good idea. Now the indication is that if they booth turn off it has been detected by the host but that is a bit counter intuitive.

Bluetooth on Android: Does this already work? Didn't work for me so far. Maybe create a guide or improve the app?

Yes it should. Are you using the latest version, from yesterday? Android is tricky though as there are so many devices with different hardware. What are you testing with?

We will soon create a development road map for all suggested features so it will be easy to track what has been implemented or not.

[derf]

@dbrgn: Please open an issue for your problem with the Android client and Bluetooth at https://github.com/bitcraze/crazyflie-a ... ent/issues
and specify your phone brand/Android version so we can track this better

[lxrocks]

Battery Level Indicator.
----------------------------
So I have not had time to dig around the code to see what readings you can get on the battery, however a battery level readout might be good if it were possible.

[dbrgn]

lxrocks: You can see the battery voltage in cfclient. The battery is full at 4.2V and empty at 3V.

Additionally, if you have the Neopixel LED ring, you can try this version of the firmware: https://github.com/bitcraze/crazyflie-firmware/pull/29 It visualizes the battery charge as color.

[lxrocks]

dbrgn - thanks for that. I loaded the VM client to see what I was missing and it seems cfclient on my MAC is not showing the battery and link quality bars properly and they are not labelled at all.
The only thing showing is 2 thin horizontal bars with no text labels

I think I might just start using the VM rather than try and fix Mac issues.

Merry Christmas