Recent content by gtomko

I am also not sure if how freely a motor spins has a direct relationship to the wear on the motor. The motor I am referring to being loose has a slight amount of play side to side in the bearings. Its almost imperceptible, and it does also spin slightly easier. Its not the motor physically...

I suspect that as the motor bearings wear over time, there may be more electrical noise created. Especially at certain rpms which cause resonance in the worn bearings. The refurbished solo I received has one motor which is slightly looser than the other 3. It's possible that the bearing...

Its about the same as the original single battery configuration. Before the mod the solo draws ~20 amps in flight with the gimbal and gopro. With the extra weight of the 1.0ah battery it draws ~21 amps, so there would be about a 5% reduction in flight time. That amounts to about 1 minute less...

The battery arrived, so I took some more pictures of the install. 1 - The first step is to cut the red and black wires between the battery socket and the carrier board. Then unplug the small white/green wired data cable from the carrier board and remove the battery socket. There is a small...

In APM Planner 2 there is a section in the lower left that displays all the parameters streamed from the solo during operation. Along with that there are some parameters named 12c_errors, gps_errors, comms_errors, error_0, error_1, error_2, error_3, and a couple others I cant remember at the moment.

For $270 on amazon I can't believe the quality of the solo. Its easily worth multiple times that. I have been checking the logs and am curious what the error rates people are getting with the stock solo hardware vs the upgraded GPS units etc. In APM Planner 2 under the status section, it...

Where can I find the current pixhawk firmware version? I updated the firmware to the 1.5.3 version, and everything went smoothly. It takes an extra second after landing to stop the props, but thats what its supposed to do. I've had the motors fail to turn off once after an uneven landing /...

Sounds like you spent a lot of time and money modifying perfectly functional aircraft. I just don't see a purpose for all of that. LOL, just kidding, I know its fun to experiment.

In p2ps post following yours, it says that the standard solo app software update includes this. Is it still necessary to upgrade the pixhawk firmware if the solo app says its up to date? Also, this is only the pixhawk firmware, and would have no affect on controller connection issues.

I got my first solo earlier this year, and it worked great for 50 or so flights. Then it just randomly flew away. The replacement has been very error prone without the mod, but with the second battery it works great. I bet most solos work great, and only some of them are like the one I have...

I did some amp draw tests this afternoon to help with sizing the secondary battery for optimum weight and flight time. There is 0.36 amps without the gimbal or gopro. With them it draws 0.76 amps and then up to 0.79 amps while recording 1080p video at 30fps. With those figures it looks like a...

The solo I did the mod on was a replacement for one which previously flew away. The replacement lost controller signal and gps lock every 10 minutes or so. Without the mod it was only a matter of time before it flew away as well. With the mod it has no gps or controller errors. I like flying...

Just a kite string. With the gps and controller both randomly cutting out, I wanted to avoid another fly away.

Motor rewiring: I cut the short red main power wire coming from the battery socket on the solo. I then soldered new wires from that red (positive) battery output wire to all the motor pods. I also cut the insulation on the black (ground) main power wire coming from the battery socket on the...

Actually you are both confused. The >2 hours time is how long a 1ah secondary battery would last either in flight or on the ground. Unfortunately the stock flight battery still only lasts about the same as it did originally. There is no appreciable difference in flight time with or without the...