Solo 3dr fell from the sky

franknitty69 · Jul 23, 2016

RossDaniel said:
So I was flying my solo yesterday about 380 foot elevation over a part of lake Murray in San Diego. About five minutes into my flight I was hovering doing stills. All of a sudden the solo started tumbling uncontrollably I was watching on my iPad as I
Saw the ground, the sky, the legs of the solo,. I looked up and watched it fall from grace directly into the lake. Gone. They don't float right? And no, I was not recording to my iPad.

sorry to hear about your loss. you submitted a ticket and 3dr will be able to determine if the hardware was at fault. it sounds as if an esc had a brownout or a motor went out. but you are in luck, this is a 3dr product, not a dji or yuneec...your solo, gimbal and gopro will be replaced.

RossDaniel · Jul 23, 2016

SARDG and Steve. I followed the instructions on how to connect my controller to (it) my mac book air. I turned on my controller and It emitted a wifi signal that i was able to recognize on my wifi list it was SoloLink_3A18DA. When I clicked on it, the wifi icon (baseball diamond shape) continued to try and connect to my controller, it never did. argggggg.
any suggestions??????

SARDG · Jul 23, 2016

Ross (or is it Daniel - you have 2 first names..) - Thanks for clarifying.

I am not going to venture into giving detailed advice here as I have never had to personally transfer those logs. On top of that, I haven't used Apple devices since the Apple IIe. I figure when I need to xfer logs, I'll learn how to do it (with my PC). No sense in me learning now, because I will forget by tomorrow...

At any rate, I only initially got into this thread when I saw Steve inadvertently give the IP address as 1.1.1.10, which would be, uh, backwards and be unobtainium.

See if some Mac folks can jump in to help you OR do a search on this forum. I'd say that it's been covered before - probably on several threads

RossDaniel · Jul 24, 2016

Additionally, I thought it was interesting that i only was able to see live video of the copters initial descent. It spun out of control and then still imaged on one of the legs. I was unable to see the splashdown as the gopro cut off early into the descent. This would tell me that it was something internal? Would a motor going out cause a complete catastrophic failure of the entire operating system?

Eric Sheehan · Jul 24, 2016

Ross,
If the wifi icon is flashing, it is connected but warning you no internet. If the system sees the sololink, and you check it you are connected. Should be able to access. Must have solo and controller on to pull more than 3 resident logs.

RossDaniel · Jul 24, 2016

Solo is on the bottom of the lake. The box was checked by the SoloLink wifi but as you said, flashing. I tried to follow the steps but mac does not have 3dr software I could not get it from the App Store on my Mac. Any suggestions?

Texzin · Jul 24, 2016

Downloading using SCP (Mac/Linux)
SCP is a great end-user tool for downloading the logs because it is available by default from the terminal on Mac OX and many Linux distributions (including Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS).

The main steps for getting the logs are:

Turn on the Solo Controller and Solo and connect your computer to the Solo WiFi network.

The default name of the Solo Controller network is "SoloLink" and the default network password is "sololink". You may have changed these during your initial setup.
Open a Terminal (on Mac OSX this can be found in Finder under menu: Go | Applications | Utilities | Terminal).
Enter the following commands into the terminal to create directories for the logs and copy the files:

mkdir solo controller
scp [email protected]:/log/* ./solo
scp [email protected]:/log/* ./controller
- Answer "yes" if prompted to confirm the authenticity of the host.
- Enter the following password (case-sensitive) when prompted: TjSDBkAu
Wait for the transfer to complete.

RossDaniel · Jul 24, 2016

As I've asked before, will his work without the solo as it is on the bottom of a lake. I've been having connectivity problems with the wifi and the Mac book air

Texzin · Jul 24, 2016

Have you tried?

RossDaniel · Jul 24, 2016

Yes. I get to the utilities part and it doesn't show the solo. Only he mac

SARDG · Jul 24, 2016

Ross- So far, every single instruction for retrieving logs includes "...turn on the Solo". Hard to do when the Solo is 95' underwater. I do not know if the Solo has to be on to actually retrieve logs from the controller, but I would hope not. If so, most of these instructions mean nothing to you. All I can say is "try the instructions without the Solo" and see if you do any good.

Steve, in Post #4 gave you a link that may be useful combined with this link from 3DR:
https://dev.3dr.com/advanced-logs.html

If folks on this forum can't come up with controller log retrieval procedure without the Solo OR you can't come up with a workaround, I suppose you are at the mercy of 3DR Customer Service. 3DR CS is likely snowed right now with all the cheap Solo deals and first-time fliers. The only reason I haven't put mine in the water yet, is that I am too uncertain of my skills to even fly over water - and there is a lot of it around here.

RossDaniel · Jul 24, 2016

Flying over the water has never been a problem for me, even within the first few flights. The only thing I worried about were the territorial seagulls over the bay. They like to firebomb. Ironically, I was no where near the ocean and way inland when this happened. No Birds in sight here.

SARDG · Jul 24, 2016

RossDaniel said:
As I've asked before, will his work without the solo as it is on the bottom of a lake. I've been having connectivity problems with the wifi and the Mac book air

During ALL this troubleshooting, have you EVER seen the controller on a Wi-Fi sniffing App OR on a terminal/communications program like SCP? Do we know if the controller is squawking Wi-Fi at all?

RossDaniel · Jul 24, 2016

Controller is squawking wifi and is recognized
By my Mac book air. Mac book check boxes it but
The wifi
Icon continues to flash.

SARDG · Jul 24, 2016

RossDaniel said:
Flying over the water has never been a problem for me, even within the first few flights. The only thing I worried about were the territorial seagulls over the bay. They like to firebomb. Ironically, I was no where near the ocean and way inland when this happened. No Birds in sight here.

Yes... been to San Diego/La Jolla many times, but never to that lake. Used to play golf at Riverwalk near Mission Valley - nice small lakes. I looked up Lake Murray and saw that it's 95' deep in spots - maybe less with droughts.

SARDG · Jul 24, 2016

RossDaniel said:
Controller is squawking wifi and is recognized
By my Mac book air. Mac book check boxes it but
The wifi
Icon continues to flash.

Give me an Apple IIe with a 300 baud modem and I can conquer the world... but can't help you with what you speak of. Surely there are folks here who speak Mac/Solo Controller interfacing!

PdxSteve · Jul 24, 2016

RossDaniel said:
Controller is squawking wifi and is recognized
By my Mac book air. Mac book check boxes it but
The wifi
Icon continues to flash.

Try connecting anyway. The problem is the Solo wifi connection does not broadcast internet, so some devices don't show they are connected even though they are. Some will connect and then disconnect and try to connect to something else with an internet connection (you can set it to not do that). If on windows you will get a "connection limited" message after a bit. Same thing. Still connects and can still connect to the controller or solo in that state.

twitchyzero · Jul 24, 2016

sorry to hear...hope you'll be taken care of.

hope you didnt' have a custom lens/expensive memory card/gps mods/tracker/leg mods/filters/custom props & motors because I doubt 3DR will reimburse those

Latest FW? My solo has remained grounded for 5 weeks now awaiting a potential update since the sharp increase in what appears to be v2.4 related complete failures. A shame to be missing out the prime summer season but I'll take a conservative approach after seeing all the mishaps that's appeared in this forum. I've only flown on v2.4 once. Zero documentation/options on Android for rewind/new RTH doesn't help either.

Jubalr · Jul 25, 2016

twitchyzero said:
A shame to be missing out the prime summer season but I'll take a conservative approach after seeing all the mishaps that's appeared in this forum. I've only flown on v2.4 once. Zero documentation/options on Android for rewind/new RTH doesn't help either.

Sorry to see you missing out, as I really don't understand the statement above. The VAST majority are flying on 2.4 just fine. I have 2 Solo I use regularly myself. To make a decision based on a dozen experiences out of 1000s does not make sense to me. Like you said; "A shame to be missing out the prime summer season".
Just my opinion. YMMV..

twitchyzero · Jul 26, 2016

a dozen of downed Solos from failures/bugs is a lot compared to any previous release.

Where you getting 1000s from? Is there somewhere that's stated how many Solo's have been sold?

Again, it's my personal decision to sit out. I like to play it safe if my gut feeling tells me Solo is not stable since last release. I dont want thousands of dollars of goods to become part of the statistic.

Enjoy your Solo while I'm on the sidelines.