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.

Note. The project is currently being reorganized, which means that This documentation might become inacurate. You can track the reorganisation work in the ticket #227.

Running from source

The Crazyflie client requires cflib. Follow the cflib readme to install it.

Windows (7/8/10)

Running from source on Windows is tested using the miniconda python distribution. It is possible to run from any distribution as long as the required packages are installed. Building the windows installer requires Python 3.4 (because py2exe is not distributed for Python 3.5 yet). The following instructions assumes Miniconda 32-bit is installed.

Open a command line windows and move to the crazyflie clients folder (the exact command depends of where the project is cloned):

cd crazyflie-clients-python

Create and activate a Python 3.4 environment with numpy pyqt and pyqtgraph from conda (it is the packages we cannot easily install with pip):

conda create -y -n cfclient python=3.4 numpy=1.10.1 pyqt pyqtgraph
activate cfclient

Download the SDL2.dll windows library:

python tools\build\prep_windows

Install the client in development mode:

pip install -e .[dev]

You can now run the clients:

cfclient
cfheadless
cfloader
cfzmq

NOTE: To use the Crazyradio you will have to install the drivers

Creating Windows installer

When you are able to run from source, you can build the windows executable and installer.

First build the executable

python setup.py py2exe

NOTE: The first time the previous command will fail complaining about a PyQt4\uic\port_v2 folder. Remove this folder with rmdir \Q \S path\to\PyQt4\uic\port_v2, you can copy-paste the folder path from the py2exe error message.

Now you can run the client with dist\cfclient.exe.

To generate the installer you need nsis installed and in the path. If you are a user of chocolatey you can install it with choco install nsis.portable -version 2.50, otherwise you can just download it and install it manually.

To create the installer:

python win32install\generate_nsis.py
makensis win32install\cfclient.nsi

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 be affected by this.

1. Install the Command Line Tools.

2. Install Homebrew.

3. Install Homebrew's Python3

   brew install python3
   

   This will also pull pip3, which we will use later to install some Python modules that are not distributed through Homebrew.

4. Install SDL for Python

   brew install sdl sdl2 sdl_image sdl_mixer sdl_ttf portmidi
   

5. Install PyQt

   If you already have pyqt installed for python2 you need to uninstall it first

   brew uninstall pyqt
   brew install pyqt --with-python3
   

6. Install remaining dependencies

   brew install libusb
   pip3 install pysdl2 pyusb pyqtgraph appdirs
   

7. Install cflib from https://github.com/bitcraze/crazyflie-lib-python

8. Install cfclient to run it from source. From the source folder run:

   pip3 install -e .
   

9. 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 python34 py34-SDL2 py34-pyqt4 py34-pip
   

   To make the MacPorts python and pip the default commands:

   sudo port select --set python python34
   sudo port select --set python3 python34
   sudo port select --set pip pip34
   

   To install pyusb from pip, use:

   sudo pip install pyusb appdirs
   

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

   sudo port install py34-pyqtgraph
   

   Install cflib from https://github.com/bitcraze/crazyflie-lib-python

   Install cfclient to run it from source. From the source folder run:

   pip install -e .
   

   You can now run the client from the source folder with

   python bin/cfclient
   

   Or, if you did not run the port select command to set the MacPorts python as the default, use:

   /opt/local/bin/python3.4 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
   

Linux

Launching the GUI application

Install cflib from https://github.com/bitcraze/crazyflie-lib-python

Install cfclient to run it from source. From the source folder run (to install for your user only you can add --user to the command):

pip3 install -e .

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 3.4
• PyUSB
• libusb 1.X (works with 0.X as well)
• PyQtGraph
• ZMQ
• PyQt4
• appdirs

Example commands to install these dependencies:

• Fedora:

  TODO Please contribute
  

• Ubuntu (14.04):

  sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip python3-pyqt4 python3-zmq
  pip3 install pyusb==1.0.0b2
  pip3 install pyqtgraph appdirs
  

• Ubuntu (15.04):

  sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip python3-pyqt4 python3-zmq python3-pyqtgraph
  sudo pip3 install pyusb==1.0.0b2
  sudo pip3 install appdirs
  

• OpenSUSE:

  TODO Please contribute
  

Setting udev permissions

Using Crazyradio on Linux requires that you set udev permissions. See the cflib readme for more information.