Solex for Solo

Copied from FB.
From:
Kelly Schrock

1.3.4: No More Twitching

As promised and previewed, 1.3.4 is out and eliminates the twitching problem people have been seeing. It should be en route to your devices.

. Preflight Checklist

This is what it sounds like. Click the little clipboard-looking icon in the controls panel, and a preflight checklist pops up. The top items are "system" items, and are checked when the relevant
items become "good" for flight. The bottom items are things you can specify, and check if you want. To edit the list of items that appear, hit the Edit button, and specify one item per line.

. EKF widget
. Improved error handling

The other day, I had a weird crash. I was running my Master Airscrew props, flying backwards about 25mph and descending. I pushed forward to slow down, and the copter flipped over and landed on its top from about 4' up. No damage, because Master Airscrew props are evidently pretty stout in addition to being awesome in other ways. (Although they do make the copter handle a bit differently, which may have been the cause of the crash.) So I picked up the Solo, dusted off the shredded dry grass, set it down and launched again, only to find that it freaked out a second time and crashed into my neighbor's fence. The only other time I've seen a copter do that was when I was running Tower with my Iris and it said "EKF Variance!" before spinning wildly out of control. The thought occurred to me that it would be nice to have a way to look at EKF status, as well as having the app yell "EKF Variance" at you when things aren't going so well with EKF. So, there's a new EKF widget that displays the various EKF attributes. Green good, red bad, just like the vibration view. Solex also listens for "autopilot error" events now, so you'll hear things like "Need GPS lock" and "Gyros not healthy" and "System is shutting down now". It also now knows when it's OK to launch, and says "Ready for Takeoff". (Prior to this, it only said that when you armed and it checked EKF status right then.)

. Run commands on connect

A few people requested the ability to run specific commands when the copter connects. So in the "Remote Commands" screen, you can check the "Run on connect" checkbox, and that command will be launched when the app connects to the copter.

. Flight Profile load/unload commands

A few of the same command-loving people asked if it would be possible for a Flight Profile to run commands when it was loaded. It is now.
1f603.png
:-D Also, it can run a command when a Flight Profile is unloaded. There's a new Flight Profile called "Cmd Test" which does essentially nothing except show how load/unload commands are specified in a Flight Profile. (It's what we in the industry call "sample code".)

. Fix overlay text on flight screen

Someone observed that the overlay text on the flight screen was getting all jumbled up on smaller screens. That should be fixed now.

. Update MPCC time display when slider is moved

Someone else said the MPCC's playback time display wasn't being updated when you moved the slider to adjust its time. That should be fixed now too, although the min and max time fields were always there, reporting their values.

. Touch-based Gimbal Control

Another person had an idea, a pretty cool one too: Make it possible to control the gimbal from the screen.

There are 2 ways to do this: One is to open up the Controls panel and click the bottom item (looks like an egg with an arch-shaped thing next to it). One the right side of the screen, a green-ish slider appears to the left of the camera panel. Move that slider up and down to move the gimbal. If you open the HUD view, the slider disappears, but you can swipe up and down on the screen (anywhere but the color adjuster on the right) and move it too. Slide all the way to the top to make the gimbal point straight
ahead, and slide all the way to the bottom to point it straight down.

. Dronekit Downgrade

A few people in the group had mentioned some twitchy flight behavior on occasion, along with lost GPS. Neither of these things are something that an app can control, HOWEVER: I had noticed the same thing here over the past month. After flying 18+ months with the same Solo, I had only lost GPS once. In the last month, I lost GPS probably 5-6 times. This is sometimes followed by a weird rhythmic pulsing of the motors in Fly:Manual, which sounds a lot like the "twitching" people described. Power-cycling the Solo
appeared to cure it, but it's strange that it happened at all. It never did before.

It turns out, if you adjust your vehicle speed (or guidance speed) while flying, the twitch happens like clockwork. And it's often accompanied by a loss of GPS signal.

1.3.3 included an upgraded version of DroneKit. I hadn't encountered any bugs in the old version I had customized, but I wanted to include any bug fixes that appeared in DroneKit since I'd started using it. (Oh the irony.)

So this version downgrades back to the reliable version that's been tested heavily and doesn't cause twitching, lost GPS, or other nonsense. Down with new technology!
1f603.png
:-D
 
Copied from FB.
From:
Kelly Schrock

1.3.4: No More Twitching

As promised and previewed, 1.3.4 is out and eliminates the twitching problem people have been seeing. It should be en route to your devices.

. Preflight Checklist

This is what it sounds like. Click the little clipboard-looking icon in the controls panel, and a preflight checklist pops up. The top items are "system" items, and are checked when the relevant
items become "good" for flight. The bottom items are things you can specify, and check if you want. To edit the list of items that appear, hit the Edit button, and specify one item per line.

. EKF widget
. Improved error handling

The other day, I had a weird crash. I was running my Master Airscrew props, flying backwards about 25mph and descending. I pushed forward to slow down, and the copter flipped over and landed on its top from about 4' up. No damage, because Master Airscrew props are evidently pretty stout in addition to being awesome in other ways. (Although they do make the copter handle a bit differently, which may have been the cause of the crash.) So I picked up the Solo, dusted off the shredded dry grass, set it down and launched again, only to find that it freaked out a second time and crashed into my neighbor's fence. The only other time I've seen a copter do that was when I was running Tower with my Iris and it said "EKF Variance!" before spinning wildly out of control. The thought occurred to me that it would be nice to have a way to look at EKF status, as well as having the app yell "EKF Variance" at you when things aren't going so well with EKF. So, there's a new EKF widget that displays the various EKF attributes. Green good, red bad, just like the vibration view. Solex also listens for "autopilot error" events now, so you'll hear things like "Need GPS lock" and "Gyros not healthy" and "System is shutting down now". It also now knows when it's OK to launch, and says "Ready for Takeoff". (Prior to this, it only said that when you armed and it checked EKF status right then.)

. Run commands on connect

A few people requested the ability to run specific commands when the copter connects. So in the "Remote Commands" screen, you can check the "Run on connect" checkbox, and that command will be launched when the app connects to the copter.

. Flight Profile load/unload commands

A few of the same command-loving people asked if it would be possible for a Flight Profile to run commands when it was loaded. It is now.
1f603.png
:-D Also, it can run a command when a Flight Profile is unloaded. There's a new Flight Profile called "Cmd Test" which does essentially nothing except show how load/unload commands are specified in a Flight Profile. (It's what we in the industry call "sample code".)

. Fix overlay text on flight screen

Someone observed that the overlay text on the flight screen was getting all jumbled up on smaller screens. That should be fixed now.

. Update MPCC time display when slider is moved

Someone else said the MPCC's playback time display wasn't being updated when you moved the slider to adjust its time. That should be fixed now too, although the min and max time fields were always there, reporting their values.

. Touch-based Gimbal Control

Another person had an idea, a pretty cool one too: Make it possible to control the gimbal from the screen.

There are 2 ways to do this: One is to open up the Controls panel and click the bottom item (looks like an egg with an arch-shaped thing next to it). One the right side of the screen, a green-ish slider appears to the left of the camera panel. Move that slider up and down to move the gimbal. If you open the HUD view, the slider disappears, but you can swipe up and down on the screen (anywhere but the color adjuster on the right) and move it too. Slide all the way to the top to make the gimbal point straight
ahead, and slide all the way to the bottom to point it straight down.

. Dronekit Downgrade

A few people in the group had mentioned some twitchy flight behavior on occasion, along with lost GPS. Neither of these things are something that an app can control, HOWEVER: I had noticed the same thing here over the past month. After flying 18+ months with the same Solo, I had only lost GPS once. In the last month, I lost GPS probably 5-6 times. This is sometimes followed by a weird rhythmic pulsing of the motors in Fly:Manual, which sounds a lot like the "twitching" people described. Power-cycling the Solo
appeared to cure it, but it's strange that it happened at all. It never did before.

It turns out, if you adjust your vehicle speed (or guidance speed) while flying, the twitch happens like clockwork. And it's often accompanied by a loss of GPS signal.

1.3.3 included an upgraded version of DroneKit. I hadn't encountered any bugs in the old version I had customized, but I wanted to include any bug fixes that appeared in DroneKit since I'd started using it. (Oh the irony.)

So this version downgrades back to the reliable version that's been tested heavily and doesn't cause twitching, lost GPS, or other nonsense. Down with new technology!
1f603.png
:-D

Fantastic

Can't wait to try it first thing in the morning

(Cheesy grin)
 
Thanks again Kelly for all the updates, even though i haven't experienced "Twitching" or GPS lost, good to know your on top of it.

I noticed that, someone may just say "it would be great if Solo could do XXXX" & By the next update its' there!
bc0c367148ee626377a7962d4276ac8c.png
bc0c367148ee626377a7962d4276ac8c.png
bc0c367148ee626377a7962d4276ac8c.png
 
For those whom chose not to have a FB acct.
Here are some of the other Solex users comments"
Partial Names have modified to protect the innocent,
a183ae8c35545a59ccf22571b4fe486b.png



upload_2017-3-10_15-3-22.png
 

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Kelly Schrock
Firstly great job on these new tools. I just wanted to let you know that I found a bit of an issue with the control menus on smaller devices such as my HTC M8 phone. It seems that if you add another item such as Kill Switch, you can't scroll down to select the new camera control tool. This is not an issue with a larger device like my Nexus tablet. Cheers [emoji482] Sam
 
Kelly Schrock
Firstly great job on these new tools. I just wanted to let you know that I found a bit of an issue with the control menus on smaller devices such as my HTC M8 phone. It seems that if you add another item such as Kill Switch, you can't scroll down to select the new camera control tool. This is not an issue with a larger device like my Nexus tablet. Cheers [emoji482] Sam
I have a Nexus 6 as my dedicated Device, it's display is really Hi resolution of 1440 x 2560.

When i first installed Solex, some menus where off, Fired a message to Kelly, He replied in 5 min. Said to re-start Mobile, I did & worked ever since.
 
Thanks for the advice, however I tried your suggestion and even went the extra mile and removed it and reinstalled it and nothing happened.
It looks like that this is a job for Kelly...
 
This app looks wicked cool. My tablet is wifi only.. Is this a concern ? Will it still be able to handle all the GPS widgets with out sending signals to cell towers to find its locatu
Location?
 
You should be fine as long as it has GPS receiver. Also, to use the map view you have to insure that you log into your home or public wifi so that you can cache your map tiles onto your tablet prior to going out to fly.

Im sure you'll get more responses from others on this forum.
 
Kelly. I was doing a battery check on my SuperSolo. I was using Solex because of the built in timer which the solo app is missing. However I lost link midflight, and when it reconected, the timer started back at zero instead of continuing. Is that changeable?
 
Copied from FB.
From:
Kelly Schrock

1.3.4: No More Twitching

As promised and previewed, 1.3.4 is out and eliminates the twitching problem people have been seeing. It should be en route to your devices.

. Preflight Checklist

This is what it sounds like. Click the little clipboard-looking icon in the controls panel, and a preflight checklist pops up. The top items are "system" items, and are checked when the relevant
items become "good" for flight. The bottom items are things you can specify, and check if you want. To edit the list of items that appear, hit the Edit button, and specify one item per line.

. EKF widget
. Improved error handling

The other day, I had a weird crash. I was running my Master Airscrew props, flying backwards about 25mph and descending. I pushed forward to slow down, and the copter flipped over and landed on its top from about 4' up. No damage, because Master Airscrew props are evidently pretty stout in addition to being awesome in other ways. (Although they do make the copter handle a bit differently, which may have been the cause of the crash.) So I picked up the Solo, dusted off the shredded dry grass, set it down and launched again, only to find that it freaked out a second time and crashed into my neighbor's fence. The only other time I've seen a copter do that was when I was running Tower with my Iris and it said "EKF Variance!" before spinning wildly out of control. The thought occurred to me that it would be nice to have a way to look at EKF status, as well as having the app yell "EKF Variance" at you when things aren't going so well with EKF. So, there's a new EKF widget that displays the various EKF attributes. Green good, red bad, just like the vibration view. Solex also listens for "autopilot error" events now, so you'll hear things like "Need GPS lock" and "Gyros not healthy" and "System is shutting down now". It also now knows when it's OK to launch, and says "Ready for Takeoff". (Prior to this, it only said that when you armed and it checked EKF status right then.)

. Run commands on connect

A few people requested the ability to run specific commands when the copter connects. So in the "Remote Commands" screen, you can check the "Run on connect" checkbox, and that command will be launched when the app connects to the copter.

. Flight Profile load/unload commands

A few of the same command-loving people asked if it would be possible for a Flight Profile to run commands when it was loaded. It is now.
1f603.png
:-D Also, it can run a command when a Flight Profile is unloaded. There's a new Flight Profile called "Cmd Test" which does essentially nothing except show how load/unload commands are specified in a Flight Profile. (It's what we in the industry call "sample code".)

. Fix overlay text on flight screen

Someone observed that the overlay text on the flight screen was getting all jumbled up on smaller screens. That should be fixed now.

. Update MPCC time display when slider is moved

Someone else said the MPCC's playback time display wasn't being updated when you moved the slider to adjust its time. That should be fixed now too, although the min and max time fields were always there, reporting their values.

. Touch-based Gimbal Control

Another person had an idea, a pretty cool one too: Make it possible to control the gimbal from the screen.

There are 2 ways to do this: One is to open up the Controls panel and click the bottom item (looks like an egg with an arch-shaped thing next to it). One the right side of the screen, a green-ish slider appears to the left of the camera panel. Move that slider up and down to move the gimbal. If you open the HUD view, the slider disappears, but you can swipe up and down on the screen (anywhere but the color adjuster on the right) and move it too. Slide all the way to the top to make the gimbal point straight
ahead, and slide all the way to the bottom to point it straight down.

. Dronekit Downgrade

A few people in the group had mentioned some twitchy flight behavior on occasion, along with lost GPS. Neither of these things are something that an app can control, HOWEVER: I had noticed the same thing here over the past month. After flying 18+ months with the same Solo, I had only lost GPS once. In the last month, I lost GPS probably 5-6 times. This is sometimes followed by a weird rhythmic pulsing of the motors in Fly:Manual, which sounds a lot like the "twitching" people described. Power-cycling the Solo
appeared to cure it, but it's strange that it happened at all. It never did before.

It turns out, if you adjust your vehicle speed (or guidance speed) while flying, the twitch happens like clockwork. And it's often accompanied by a loss of GPS signal.

1.3.3 included an upgraded version of DroneKit. I hadn't encountered any bugs in the old version I had customized, but I wanted to include any bug fixes that appeared in DroneKit since I'd started using it. (Oh the irony.)

So this version downgrades back to the reliable version that's been tested heavily and doesn't cause twitching, lost GPS, or other nonsense. Down with new technology!
1f603.png
:-D


Love it
A couple of questions though.


Would it be possible to have the gimbal function slower?

When using the gimbal slider, I have noticed if you don't place your finger on the screen corresponding exactly where the gimbal is currently the gimbal moves to this position.

Would it be possible to have an angular display (I know it is in the left corner) with the gimbal slider? I seam to constantly have the gimbal moving up and down as I "try" to get it to where I want?


Apart from that it's a fantastic and much appreciated update.


Many thanks Kelly.
[emoji106]
 
This app looks wicked cool. My tablet is wifi only.. Is this a concern ? Will it still be able to handle all the GPS widgets with out sending signals to cell towers to find its locatu
Location?
Most all devices have GPS receiver, most are fine. In follow me mode, A device that also has a barometer, can tell Solo the height of the local terrain & increase or decrease altitude to maintain a particular height "AGL" Most iphones ! some ipads have this barometer sensor.
 
any thoughts?
Lost connection triggering RTH on a flight test tonight just before sundown. Solo was at 269ft v and about 1219ft h LoS from controller using solex. I was facing Solo, using the Alfa antennas and the M8n it is super windy tonight with the storm working its way through. All went well, except for the reduced range triggering RTH
 
@Kelly Schrock, I have been having increasing problems with buttons not functioning when I touch them on the screen. I am using a Nexus 7 (2013) which I have had for some time.

I normally have an anti-glare shield on, but the problem persists even with it off.

Has anybody else experienced this?

Also, can the gimbal control on the Solex screen be turned off?
 
Last edited:
any thoughts?
Lost connection triggering RTH on a flight test tonight just before sundown. Solo was at 269ft v and about 1219ft h LoS from controller using solex. I was facing Solo, using the Alfa antennas and the M8n it is super windy tonight with the storm working its way through. All went well, except for the reduced range triggering RTH

Solex has no influence on antenna range. Loss of connection with the controller is what caused RTH.
Not enough info in your post to speculate on why you had this issue.
 
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@Kelly Schrock, I have been having increasing problems with buttons not functioning when I touch them on the screen. I am using a Nexus 7 (2013) which I have had for some time.

I normally have an anti-glare shield on, but the problem persists even with it off.

Has anybody else experienced this?
Maddog,

I have both a Nexus 7 (2013) and an IPad Mini 4; the buttons on the Nexus are much less responsive when using the Solo app or Solex. Some times it is really chore to get one to respond. I much prefer flying with the IPad mini for that reason alone.
 
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Maddog,

I have both a Nexus 7 (2013) and an IPad Mini 4; the buttons on the Nexus are much less responsive when using the Solo app or Solex. Some times it is really chore to get one to respond. I much prefer flying with the IPad mini for that reason alone.
Maddog,
I use a Nexus 6, so far i havn't noticed any slow response to Button pressing on my end?
"I also use a ipad" As comparing the ipad you can't cause Solex is only a Android OS.

I like the ipad, but not willing to give up all the extra features of Solex.
Solo #2 set for Solex, Solo#1 Set for Solo iOS app.
I'll try to run both of them through some work this weekend, I'll pay extra attention to Buttons being slow to responsive during flight.
 
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@Kelly Schrock, I have been having increasing problems with buttons not functioning when I touch them on the screen. I am using a Nexus 7 (2013) which I have had for some time.

I normally have an anti-glare shield on, but the problem persists even with it off.

Has anybody else experienced this?

I gave up using Solex on my Nexus 7. Every time I tried to use it for anything beyond basic flight it would become extremely unresponsive to screen touches (I have just the bare screen, no protector). Each time I tried Solex on the device I would end up aborting it and switching to the Solo app. mid flight.

Following the recommendations elsewhere in this forum I here I ended up buying a Shield. It works way better.
 
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