Crazyflie PC client

The Crazyflie PC client enables flashing and controlling the Crazyflie. There's also a Python library that can be integrated into other applications where you would like to use the Crazyflie.

For more info see our wiki.

Installation

Linux

To install the Crazyflie PC client in Linux, you can run the setup script with:

sudo setup_linux.sh

This will install the Crazyflie PC client systemwide, create a udev entry for the Crazyradio and setup the permissions so that the current user can use the radio without root permissions after restarting the computer. For further instructions on how to run from source see bellow.

Windows

To install the Crazyflie PC client in Windows, download the installation program from the binary download page."Crazyflie client" will be added to the start menu.

Running from source

Windows

Install dependencies. With Windows installers (tested with 32Bit versions):

• Python 2.7 (https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/)
• PyQT4 for Python 2.7 (http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt/download)
• Scipy for Python 2.7 (http://sourceforge.net/projects/scipy/files/scipy/)
• PyQTGraph (http://www.pyqtgraph.org/)

Python libs (to be install by running 'setup.py install'):

• PyUSB 1.0.0a3 (https://github.com/walac/pyusb/releases)
• pysdl2 (https://bitbucket.org/marcusva/py-sdl2/downloads)

Download SDL2 from http://libsdl.org/download-2.0.php and copy SDL2.dll in the crazyflie-clients-python folder.

Run with:

C:\Python27\python bin\cfclient

Mac OSX

Using homebrew

IMPORTANT NOTE: The following will use Homebrew and its own Python distribution. If you have a lot of other 3rd party python stuff already running on your system they might or might not affected of this.

1. Install the Command Line Tools.

2. Install Homebrew.

3. Install Homebrew's Python

   brew install python
   

   This will also pull pip, which we will use later to install some Python modules that are not distributed through Homebrew.

4. Make sure the homebrew Python version is used system-wide To do this we need to prepend this installation to our PYTHONPATH:

   echo 'export PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages:$PYTHONPATH' >> ~/.bashrc
   source ~/.bashrc
   

5. Install SDL for Python

   brew install sdl sdl2 sdl_image sdl_mixer sdl_ttf portmidi
   

6. Install remaining dependencies

   brew install pyqt libusb
   pip install --pre pysdl2 pyusb pyqtgraph
   

7. You now have all the dependencies needed to run the client. From the source folder, run it with the following command:

   python bin/cfclient
   

Using MacPorts

1. Install MacPorts if needed. Otherwise update your installation with:

   sudo port selfupdate
   sudo port upgrade outdated
   

2. Install dependencies. Note that there are quite a few, so this could take a while:

   sudo port install libusb python27 py27-pyusb py27-SDL2 py27-pyqt4
   

   To enable the plotter tab install pyqtgraph, this takes a lot of time:

   sudo port install py27-pyqtgraph
   

   You can now run the client from source with

   /opt/local/bin/python2.7 bin/cfclient
   

3. To make it easier to run MacPorts, add /opt/local/bin to your PATH variable. The MacPorts installer should take care of that, but take a look at ~/.profile to make sure. If you have any issues it could be due to the libraries not getting picked up correctly. Fix that by setting DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH to /opt/local/lib in ~/.profile:

   export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/local/lib
   

4. Now you're good to go! Run the client from the source folder with the following command:

   python2.7 bin/cfclient
   

Linux

Launching the GUI application

To launch the GUI application in the source folder type: python bin/cfclient

To launch the GUI after a systemwide installation, execute cfclient.

Dependencies

The Crazyflie PC client has the following dependencies:

• Python 2.7
• PySdl2
• PyUSB
• libusb
• PyQt4

Example commands to install these dependencies:

• Fedora (tested for 16 to 18):

  sudo yum install pysdl2 pyusb PyQt4

• Ubuntu (tested for 10.04 / 11.10 / 12.04):

  sudo apt-get install python2.7 python-usb python-pysdl2 python-qt4

• OpenSUSE (tested for 11.3):

  sudo zypper install python-pysdl2 libusb python-usb

Setting udev permissions

The following steps make it possible to use the USB Radio without being root.

Note: If using a fresh Debian install, you may need to install sudo first (executing exit command to exit from root shell first):

su -
apt-get install sudo

Now, with sudo installed, you should be able to do the following commands

sudo groupadd plugdev
sudo usermod -a -G plugdev <username>

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"

Restart the computer and you are now able to access the USB radio dongle without being root.