The Crazyflie PC utilities are developed using Python 2.6. The Crazyflie library is used from the command line tools as well as a graphical user interface.

The following has to be installed for the PC utilities to work:

• Python 2.6 (for Windows the last available binary version of Python 2.6 is Python 2.6.6)
• pyGame for reading the input devices
• pyUSB 0.X for communicating with the USBRadio

For the graphical userinterface to work the following is also needed:

• PyQt4 bindings for QT4
• PyQwt5 for plotting data

The following has been tested on Fedora 16. Note that this will pull in a lot of dependencies.

sudo yum install pygame pyusb PyQt4

The following has been tested on Ubuntu 10.04 and 11.10. Note that this will pull in a lot of dependencies.

sudo apt-get install python2.6 python-usb python-pygame python-qwt5-qt4 python-qt4

In order to fix the permissions so it's possible to use the USB Radio without being root do the following steps.

sudo usermod -a -G plugdev username

Note that you will need to logout and in again for the added group to take effect.

Create a file named /etc/udev/rules.d/99-crazyradio.rules and add the following:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1915", ATTRS{idProduct}=="7777", MODE="0664", GROUP="plugdev"

Needs to be written

A userguide for the GUI application can be found here.

Besides the common bindings nothing has to be installed.

All command line tools used the same link diver model. The link driver to use in order to communicate with the copter is chosen with the -l command line argument. Also the tools accepts the -h argument that will display help about the link driver as well as the default driver used if none is provided:

crazyclient$ python gamepadCtrl.py -h
CRTP Driver loader options:
---------------------------
 -l <driver_uri> : Load the link driver with the requested URI
 -h              : Print this help message

Unless otherwise specified the URI "radio://0" will be used

The available drivers are:

• radio://n[/channel[/speed]] Radio dongle number 'n' (many can be connected to the computer) communicating on a specified channel with a specified speed. The speed and channel are optional, default channel is 2 and default speed is 2M. The speed can be 2M, 1M or 250K. For example:
  • radio://0 uses radio dongle 0 to communicate on channel 2 at 2Mbit/sec
  • radio://0/77 uses radio dongle 0 to communicate on channel 77 at 2Mbit/sec
  • radio://0/77/250K uses radio dongle 0 to communicates on channel 77 at 250Kbit/sec
• loop:// Loopback driver. Mainly aims at testing tools without having them to crash because of the missing radio link |

gamepadctrl.py is the 'legacy' control software for Crazyflie. It works with a playstation 3 gamepad and display rudimentary information about the axis position:

crazyclient$ python gamepadCtrl.py -l radio://0/77

The gamepad mapping is as follow:

crazyload.py permits to update the copter firmware using the Crazyload radio bootloader. This is a self-documented command line tool (launch python crazyload.py -h).

To program a copter with a firmware compile in bootloader mode (see build environment documentation):

$ python crazyload.py -c flash cflie.bin

Here cflie.bin is the binary file of the firmware to be flashed. After launching this command the copter has to be restarted and the flash procedure will start. When the flash procedure is finished the copter has to be restarted again and will boot the new firmware.

The bootloader is normally able to automatically reset the copter in bootloader and firmware mode. This functionality requires to know the CPU-ID of the copter (which can be recovered with the command line tool getinfo.py). Knowing the copter CPU id, it can be reprogrammed without manipulation as follow;

$ python crazyload.py -i 32:00:6e:06:58:37:35:32:60:58:01:43 -l radio://0/77 flash cflie.bin

This command is an example that would work if the copter is currently running a crazyflie firmware with radio configured to channel 77.

getinfo.py recovers some information about a running copter. This tool is slightly bugged but fulfills its purpose (mainly getting the copter CPU ID). Its usage is quite classical:

crazyclient$ sudo python getinfo.py -l radio://0/77
Detected CrazyRadio dongle version 0.32
Channel 77
Data rate 2M

CPU ID: 52:ff:70:06:48:89:49:53:15:31:10:87
Battery voltage: 3.764599V
CrazyCopter version: 0.9.0
Copter class name: CrazyFlie
CPU ID: 52:ff:70:06:48:89:49:53:15:31:10:87
crazyclient$