Crazyflie Keyboard Control

Having played around with the crazyflie and flying it with the phone control, we know it is definitely not the easiest of drones to fly. Using the crazyflie desktop client, the radio and a game controller is one way to get a better level of control on the crazyflie. For another way, we have written a script to allow for keyboard control of the crazyflie, using the same controls from the simulator.

Bitcraze has a python API for the crazyflie that we've leveraged to be able to provide a method of much better control over the crazyflie than the mobile app does.

Below is the code for the script:

"""
This script contains a keyboard controller using the MotionCommander.

Info on API element used:
https://github.com/bitcraze/crazyflie-lib-python/blob/master/cflib/positioning/motion_commander.py
"""
import logging
from pynput import keyboard

import cflib.crtp
from cflib.crazyflie.syncCrazyflie import SyncCrazyflie
from cflib.positioning.motion_commander import MotionCommander

URI = 'radio://0/80/2M'  # ENSURE THIS MATCHES YOUR CRAZYFLIE CONFIGURATION

# Only output errors from the logging framework
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.ERROR)


class KeyboardDrone:

    def __init__(self, mc):
        self.mc = mc

        self.velocity = 0.75
        self.ang_velocity = 120

        self.sleeptime = 0.5
        # self.max_hight = 0.8
        # self.hight = 0.0
        print('Press u for taking off!')

    def on_press(self, key):

        if key.char == 'w':
            self.mc.start_forward(self.velocity)

        if key.char == 'u':
            self.mc.take_off(0.3)

        if key.char == 's':
            self.mc.start_back(self.velocity)

        if key.char == 'a':
            self.mc.start_left(self.velocity)

        if key.char == 'd':
            self.mc.start_right(self.velocity)

        if key.char == 'c':
            self.mc.start_down(self.velocity)

        if key == keyboard.Key.space:
            self.mc.start_up(self.velocity)

        if key.char == 'l':
            print('Kill engines')
            return False

        if key.char == 'q':
            self.mc.start_turn_left(self.ang_velocity)

        if key.char == 'e':
            self.mc.start_turn_right(self.ang_velocity)

    def on_release(self, key):
        self.mc.stop()


if __name__ == '__main__':

    cflib.crtp.init_drivers(enable_debug_driver=False)

    with SyncCrazyflie(URI) as scf:
        # We take off when the commander is created
        mc = MotionCommander(scf)

        drone = KeyboardDrone(mc)

        with keyboard.Listener(on_press=drone.on_press, on_release=drone.on_release) as listener:
            listener.join()

We've saved the script as keyboard_control.py. In addition to requiring that the proper drivers have been installed, it requires the following python dependencies:

cflib - the crazyflie python API

Flying

To use the script to control the drone over the keyboard:

power on the crazyflie and set it on a level surface
plug in the crazyradio PA to the computer
ensure the URI string in the script appropriately matches the interface id, channel and speed parameters for the crazyflie
run the script, python keyboard_control.py
enjoy flying with ease!