WiFi upgrade beware

[Greg-J]

I recently did the WiFi upgrade and after about a half dozen flights with it, successfully, I experienced my first every Solo crash yesterday. Actually, two of them, one right after the other. The first crash took a few blades with it. The second crash took with it 4 blades, my gimbal, and now I need a new lense for my Hero 4 Black.

I took off from my front yard with about 30' of space in all directions. Lost connection and never could regain it. The Solo landed, on the edge of my roof, and came tumbling down. Replaced props, reset, take off again. This time it lost connection immediately and went crashing into my house.

I'm pretty certain 3DR is not going to honor any warranty since I swapped the wifi cards, so I'm out a decent amount of money and I can't fly for a week.

Wanted to share the experience. I've had many, many dozens of successful flights before the upgrade and never had I lost connection inside of 500', nor had I ever not been able to regain connection.

I can't say if the correlation is causation, but wanted to offer a bit of warning nonetheless.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

The information you've provided doesn't conclude anything. Just before your first crash, I farted after eating lunch. But that doesn't mean it caused your crash. It sounds like you are flying in an unsuitable area with poor GPS. Loss of connection doesn't invoke "crash into the house mode". Did you have it in Return to Me or Return to Home mode? Did you have a GPS lock?

I don't believe the logs will tell 3DR that you have the upgraded WiFi cards in it. So it's unlikely they'll know unless you tell them. I'm not suggesting you lie. But I am suggesting that you don't give them a reason. Let them look at the log and evaluate. Don't diagnose for them.

 

[Bilge]

All the more reason to fly in wide open spaces.......not in neighborhoods.....

 

[Greg-J]

The information you've provided doesn't conclude anything. Just before your first crash, I farted after eating lunch. But that doesn't mean it caused your crash.

Which is why I specifically stated that I can't say if the correlation is causation. You can't ignore the correlation though, which is why I'm posting about it share the correlation. If enough of us have the same correlation, it because a candidate for a theory. So on and so forth.

It sounds like you are flying in an unsuitable area with poor GPS.

9 Satellites and I have flown in this precise spot for somewhere between 50 and 100 flights. I almost always get between 9 and 11 Satellites.

Loss of connection doesn't invoke "crash into the house mode". Did you have it in Return to Me or Return to Home mode?

Return to Home. I have always landed within about a meter of my take-off location when utilizing the RtH function. I lost connection and went into RtH. RtH misjudged the landing by about 10 meters. The following flight invoked "crash into the house" mode almost immediately upon take-off.

Did you have a GPS lock?

Aye, 9 Satellites when I took off and 9 when I lost connection.

I don't believe the logs will tell 3DR that you have the upgraded WiFi cards in it. So it's unlikely they'll know unless you tell them. I'm not suggesting you lie. But I am suggesting that you don't give them a reason. Let them look at the log and evaluate. Don't diagnose for them.

Fair enough. I've sent them a log and support request, so we'll see. So far two of my friends have had pretty shit luck with theirs and have had to deal with support multiple times each. Each time they got a response within a couple business days and ultimately 3DR has been more than fair with them. We'll see how my request goes.


Again, I'm not saying the upgrade caused it or not. I'm simply sharing my experience and stating it's possible that the upgrade is the culprit, even if it's simply the act of the upgrade that caused the issue. Maybe I messed up the board during assembly/disassembly. Maybe I pushed on the foil covering the GPS and it's touching now, I don't know.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

Even with the further detail provided, I see nothing that has anything to do with the wifi card.

 

[andrew.baker.142]

Could you discuss which WiFi card(s) you upgraded to (part number, and purchase location)?
Did you make any other changes (antennas, GPS, etc)?
Sounds like your GPS accuracy has also gotten much worse. Wondering why...

 

[Frank Foster]

Installing the wi-fi cards is not exactly plug and play. The 2 antenna connections can be very hard to do "right". There has even been some claims that they came loose from the factory. Just sayin........

 

[Chuck]

I flew probably 15-20 times from my front yard before I had a loss of gps as well as a loss of signal from the controller from about 40 feet away. My Solo drifted away over my house and I thought I had lost it. It auto landed on low battery on the lawn of the church behind my house. I was lucky. I sent in the logs to 3DR, and found out a lot about my neighborhood. I have a underground electrical transformer in the street right in front of my house, as well as a whole lot of wifi signals. I have not flown from my front yard since. Neighborhood conditions change daily, and the conditions you successfully fly in today, may not be the same tomorrow. That is the reason wide open areas are the places that are recommended to fly in. Especially while learning.

 

[User Name]

The information you've provided doesn't conclude anything........ It sounds like you are flying in an unsuitable area with poor GPS.

Sorry, but I had to highlight these two sentences for their irony. If the information wasn't enough to conclude anything... then how do you conclude what you do about the specific environment of his front yard?

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

Doesn't conclude anything... As it relates to the topic at hand, which is the wifi card upgrade and subsequent crash.

Being in a 30ftx30ft back yard surrounded by trees and buildings IS an unsuitable flight area. Not saying it's impossible. Simply unsuitable, for a number of reasons. But that's not the topic of the thread.

 

[User Name]

Doesn't conclude anything...

Exactly... so then don't.

The OP never stated anything about GPS, yet you conclude his location had poor GPS reception at the same time you tell him there wasn't enough information to suspect the WiFi. If loosing the WiFi connection wasn't enough to suspect an issue with the WiFi connection, then his description of his yard sure as heck wasn't enough to suspect the GPS.

And a 30' radius clearing is not inherently an unsuitable location to take off from. If there's lower satellite reception, then one can take off in manual and switch into Fly once above trees or other obstructions.

You're very knowledgeable, but if you want to help, the goal should be to objectively seek and determine the actual cause of the problem, not just divine a cause and insist other potentialities were unlikely.

OP: Are you sure you had the antennas on your controller angled down? If they were up, you can experience significantly degraded range. Were you using the stock antennas, or longer range ones? More directional antennas have poorer reception close in unless you're making sure to face them directly towards the Solo.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

It didn't say there wasn't a WiFi issue. I said it doesn't conclude anything related to the WiFi card upgrade. Connection loss has been happening long before, with, and without the WiFi card upgrade. So simply having lost connection doesn't conclude anything is related to that card upgrade, any more than the last time I ate pizza for lunch. Not enough information has been provided to make such a conclusion.

The OP described losing GPS and what sounds like drifting GPS position. And flying out of a fairly small space surrounded by trees and structures. That's a fairly conclusive matter. Less than ideal location to fly under any circumstances. The loss of GPS and/or drift is not surprising at all. It's a separate matter from the WiFi issue, but one worth mentioning because it could very well happen again. Which is why I brought it up. Not to suggest it was somehow the real issue. Just a separate one that seemingly occurred at the same time.

It is also entirely possible the two issues are related. A hardware or software glitch bombing out both. Although that seems much less likely.

 

[User Name]

It didn't say there wasn't a WiFi issue.

"Even with the further detail provided, I see nothing that has anything to do with the wifi card"

You sure love mincing words.

I said it doesn't conclude anything related to the WiFi card upgrade.

This is just so bizarre. No, you didn't. I just re-read all your posts, and it was only in response to my posts that you then referred to the upgrade specifically.

The OP described losing GPS

No, he didn't. Simply a fact. He said he lost connection and never regained it. Without a wifi connection, there would have been no way for Solo to even report that it had lost GPS.

So let's recap - he states that he lost and never regained wifi connection. With the loss of wifi went any communications from Solo, including the status of the GPS fix. He states that Solo initiated Return to Home, so at the time of wifi connection loss, Solo considered it's GPS fix to be of sufficient quality to initiate RTH. The miss of the RTH spot indicates that the GPS fix may have degraded at some point, which if it was the case, would be a separate issue to the wifi connection loss outside of your aforementioned unlikely software glitch.

And flying out of a fairly small space surrounded by trees and structures. That's a fairly conclusive matter..

The irony here is the degree to which, for some unknown reason, you avoid suspecting the wifi card and/or upgrade, at the same time you take the sole description of his year as being clear in at least a 30 foot radius in all directions to specifically conclude that it's surrounded by trees and structures.

I just think some consistency is in order. If the loss of a wifi signal at close range isn't enough to at least begin with a focus on a recent wifi card upgrade, then "my yard is clear for at least 30 feet in all directions" is simply not enough to conclusively state that it's surrounded by trees and structures. It may very well be, but to be consistent with your aversion to suspecting the wifi card upgrade, you just can't make that statement.

Sorry to be a stickler for logic and consistency, but I've always found it to be the best approach for problem solving.

 

[Jose969]

Doesn't sound like a new wifi card issue to me. Unless you post your logs on here for someone to look at, you can't blame the cards specifically. It could've come from a number of reasons.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

I'm not going to repeat myself. I'm not mincing anything. You keep taking something I said, changing the wording, then complaining about that altered version. Not something I'm going to debate.

 

[User Name]

I'm not going to repeat myself. I'm not mincing anything. You keep taking something I said, changing the wording, then complaining about that altered version. Not something I'm going to debate.

Wow, yea, ok. Some people can look at the sun and swear it's midnight. I agree, continuing to debate is futile.


In fact, on the ignore list you go, so we need not run into this issue in the future, as I've noticed this exact thing to be a theme with you.

 

[stevetheweave]

My lawyer friend said have them define "lost signal" bawaaa Got 2 birds with r11e 2hnd chips in both xmtr and quad with nothing but stellar performance. Could be installers issue.

 

[Frank Foster]

Like I said before, and was chastised for it.................

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

Wow, yea, ok. Some people can look at the sun and swear it's midnight. I agree, continuing to debate is futile.

lol ok.

 

[tonyb]

I had some weird behavior after Wi-Fi cards upgrade. The first flight seemed normal except to be honest I expected better range took it to 2000 feet out at 375' high, the signal was down to one bar and rssi at around 70. It didn't disconnect but the image started to pixelate.
But second flight I paid more attention to the image and noticed pixelation at closer distances that didn't happen before with the original Wi-Fi cards. And on third flight almost had a flyaway. It said that GPS was lost and that's at 300' up with no obstructions. The problem was that for the first 10 - 15 seconds it didn't respond to manual control, then I was able to control it and bring it back in.
I know that when GPS is lost during RTH it supposed to land.
What does solo supposed to do if it loses GPS and then loses Wi-Fi connection?
Is there a delay after it loses GPS and before you can fly it manual?