Crazyradio-HSA

The Crazyradio-HSA is a project created to take the role of the Crazyradio PA from Bitcraze AB for decentralized communication with the Crazyflies 2.1.

It has its origins in the Cooperative Control Lab of the University of Applied Sciences Augsburg. There it was first designed for a swarm of Crazyflies to be able to communicate with each other and also with a base station, so they can plan their respective paths to an arbitrary position in cooperation with each other.

This project is now a complete rework of the original one with additional features. At the moment it has two ports, one for the nRF51 DK and one for the nRF52 DK.

It features:

• an interface for communication with the cflib based on the syslink protocol via the serial port
• the CrazeT protocol for decentralized communication via Radio 2.4GHz with the Crazyflies (TODO: link the CrazeT documentation)
• a debugging console based on the J-Link RTT for controlling and debugging the Crazyradio-HSA firmware
• a command handler interface for testing and controlling the Crazyradio-HSA firmware

Crazyradio-HSA firmware

This repository contains the source code and the project configurations of the firmware. The Crazyradio-HSA uses the nrfx library for deploying and configuring the hardware of the nRF5-Series SoCs. I choose deliberately to use the nrfx-library instead of the nRF5 SDK, as one otherwise would expect, because it is simpler to work with and it is not as bloated as the SDK. Although, I added manually some required sources from the SDK.

Sources structure

├───crazyradio-hsa-nRF51822  eclipse project of the Crazyradio-HSA for nRF51822
├───crazyradio-hsa-nRF52840  eclipse project of the Crazyradio-HSA for nRF52840
├───libs                     library sources
│   ├───boards                 DK board specific sources
|   ├───CrazeT                 source code of the CrazeT protocol
│   ├───nrfx                   nrfx library
│   ├───SEGGER_RTT             SEGGER_RTT sources
│   └───toolchain              toolchain sources
└───src
    ├───arch                 architecture
    ├───board                board hardware (i.e LEDs, buttons etc.)
    ├───config               configuration
    │   ├───nRF51822
    │   └───nRF52840
    ├───debug                debugging console
    └───runtime              runtime sources

Cloning the repository

1.  git clone https://github.com/ChristosZosi/crazyradio-hsa.git 

2.  git submodule update --init 

Hardware

As already mentioned at the moment there are two ports of the Crazyradio-HSA firmware. This means that one can build the firmware and either deploy it on the nRF51822 DK or nRF52840 DK. Eventually other ports could be added i.e. for the nRF5 dongles.

nRF51822 DK

• 32-bit ARM Cortex M0 processor @16MHz
• 256kB flash and 32kB RAM
• SEGGER J-Link OB Debugger
• Buttons and LEDs for user interaction
• 2.4GHz Transceiver

nRF52840 DK

• Cortex-M4 with FPU @64 MHz
• 1 MB Flash, 256 KB RAM
• SEGGER J-Link OB Debugger
• Buttons and LEDs for user interaction
• 2.4 GHz Transceiver

Build and Flash

At the moment I just use the Eclipse CDT IDE to configure, build and flash the firmware.

Tools installation

1. Eclipse
   • Download Eclipse from https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
   • Install the Eclipse IDE for Embedded C/C++ Developers
2. Install the GNU Make to build the sources
3. Install the GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain for compilation and linking
4. Install the SEGGER J-Link for debugging, flashing and using the debugging console, as well as the command handler interface, of the Crazyradio-HSA firmware

Eclipse projects

1. Open Eclipse IDE
2. Create a new workspace, ideally not in the same path as the repository
3. Import the Crazyradio-HSA projects
   • File->Import...->Git->Project from Git->next->Existing local repository
   • next->Add->Browse->PATH_TO_THIS_REPOSITORY->add->next->Import existing Eclipse projects
   • next->CHOSE_THE_PROJECT->finish

Build

1. Project Explorer->Build Targets->DOUBLE_CLICK_ON_TARGET
   • all -> builds alls the sources
   • clean -> cleans the build sources
   • all -j8 -> builds alls the sources in with multiple jobs
   • soft_clean -> cleans only the sources in the src-directory

Debugging and Flashing

1. Run->Debug Configurations</code></pre>
2. Double click on GDB SEGGER J-Link Debugging
3. In Main set the Project and C/C++ Application
4. In Debugger
   • set Device name
     • either "nRF51822_xxAC"
     • or "nRF52840_xxAA"
   • set USB serial or IP name/address
     • It is the serial number of the debugger. On the nRF5-DKs it can be found on the chip.
5. Now press Debug and Happy Debugging. This also flashes the firmware on the SoC.

License

The actual firmware is licensed under the MIT License. The libraries and sources added from elsewhere have their respective licenses on their headers.