How to start?

[Sebalos]

Hi All,

I don't wnat to take your time and write a poem, so just in few concrete words.

I am new here as well as I am beginner and never dealt with programming neither electonical systems (thats really sad for me) however I was always impressed by "home inventors" Just looking to crazyflie it seems I found a great opportunity and solution for me to start make real my dreams by this little, flying lab with huge potential as I think.
The fait of my career directed me into production engineering and mechanics. I hope it is not too late for me for electronic and programming basic knowledge (at least on the beginning).

Could anybody guide me and indicate how to start from what point for crazyflie programming and systems expansion in a most effective way? I mean what programming language to learn and any recommended materials the same for electronic systems? At the end I would like to understand electornic schemes of crazyflie in a way to make own exepriments and aid it but pogramming ( I think necessary for any HW upgrade, expansion). I am aware there are some programming languages which could be utilized in crazyflie but which one could be the most universal and effective.

What you suggest how to start and what learning materials do you advice?

What I am interested with for my craziflies is:
- enhance flight time by solar panels
- programmed move (altitude, direction, distance, turns)
- distance sensors aplication
- gps
- voice activation

I am aware that new sensors need new code.

I didn't make it in few concrete words

Thanks for any help and guidance.
Seba

[whoenig]

The languages used for the Crazyflie are C and Python. If you never programmed before, I would recommend participating in a MOOC before you start with the real thing to get some basic knowledge. For example, https://www.udacity.com/course/cs101 or https://www.coursera.org/course/pythonlearn. Python is easier to learn for the basic concepts. C is more low level.

I am not sure about electronics. You can check udacity/coursera/edx if they offer anything though. Once you know the basics you should start by doing a small project, e.g. letting LEDs blink on the Crazyflie or similar.

[dbrgn]

The best book I know about microcontrollers for beginners is this one: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920028161.do I already recommended it in another thread.

[Sebalos]

Guys many thanks to you the most important for me is to start from the good point to not waist a time for not necessary information. Thats why I base on your opinion. I am starting to review materials recommended by you. I am not closing this subject in case anybody could share his recommendations.

[mlundh]

Always interesting to hear what resources other people recommend! When i started to get serious about programming I started with Learn Code The Hard Way, http://c.learncodethehardway.org/ they have, among other languages, a course on c and one on python, and everything is free if you use the on line resources.

The most important part is to have fun i think, and with the CrazyFlie, thats no problem!

[gulshannegi]

The advantage of Python is that there exists a lot of online courses on this popular programming language. It is a high-level universal language that has a huge community around it and allows you to build high-quality applications.

If you are looking for free educational materials, I can recommend the following tutorials:

1. Codecademy - learn python through interactive tutorials

2. Introduction to programming using Python 3 - very well written tutorial by Hans Petter Langtangen

3. A Byte of Python - free book on the Python language released under GNU Free Documentation License

I recommend reading each one of them, but if you only have a limited amount of time I advise you to start with the Codecademy tutorial. It is short and easy to understand, and it consists of material that will help you understand the basics of Python programming.

The second tutorial you can take is Introduction to programming using Python 3. This tutorial was made by Hans Petter Langtangen, which is very popular among beginner programmers. So if you are interested in learning Python step-by-step, this course will be useful for you.

It's also worth mentioning the website A Byte of Python. It's a free book on how to program in Python, and it has been written for both beginner and advanced programmers. The site was released under GNU Free Documentation License, so you can download it as an e-book.

If you want to learn it from scratch then I'd recommend you to read "python in easy steps" The reason why I love it is Because they use code examples in real language and they give you multiple screenshots of what each variable looks like when you create it and they also tell you how many times each variable is used. you will learn how to create a real-world program step by step. There is also an introduction to file handling at the beginning of the book which tells you what a program is and how to run it. I am also learning Python for the last few months and it is an amazing experience for me. and I found this post on the internet, this post is about the python cheat sheet, which helps me a lot.