Crazyflie is a tiny flying PCB, original version from ~2013 (no camera)
https://www.bitcraze.io/
And yes, it is not very robust, I broke one PCB arm but could fix it without affecting the balance too much.
The bigger problem was encountered when it flew out of reach. I had an xbox 360 controller connected to a xbox wireless dongle on my laptop, running crazyflie SW, connected to crazyfly via another dongle. Tested it in a city park (somebody attended to the laptop).
I moved a bit away from the laptop setup while trying to learn to fly it (manual leveling is hard). I don't know which wireless connection failed first. But the result was, it just kept running the last instruction, and flying up, up and away. Luckily the battery failed when it was up about 50-100 meters, and had drifted away about 100m horizontally due to wind.
I was sweating like hell, picturing scenarios of it coming down on a car windshield and causing a surprised driver to crash, etc.
Luckily it came down within the same park. Without new damage to drone, or third parties!
Lessons learned: Don't fly an indoor drone outdoors, it's not built to resist wind and doesn't have SW safe for it. And never, ever fly any drone outdoors without model plane liability insurance.
And yes, it is not very robust, I broke one PCB arm but could fix it without affecting the balance too much.
The bigger problem was encountered when it flew out of reach. I had an xbox 360 controller connected to a xbox wireless dongle on my laptop, running crazyflie SW, connected to crazyfly via another dongle. Tested it in a city park (somebody attended to the laptop).
I moved a bit away from the laptop setup while trying to learn to fly it (manual leveling is hard). I don't know which wireless connection failed first. But the result was, it just kept running the last instruction, and flying up, up and away. Luckily the battery failed when it was up about 50-100 meters, and had drifted away about 100m horizontally due to wind.
I was sweating like hell, picturing scenarios of it coming down on a car windshield and causing a surprised driver to crash, etc. Luckily it came down within the same park. Without new damage to drone, or third parties!
Lessons learned: Don't fly an indoor drone outdoors, it's not built to resist wind and doesn't have SW safe for it. And never, ever fly any drone outdoors without model plane liability insurance.