Another wave of x 3dr folks support arducopter

[PdxSteve]

I'm not sure if it's actually hardcoded. Most people don't have the equipment or know how to change the parameters in the smbus chip and were using batteries that weren't matching what the smbus was reporting. The parameters just need to match the cell configuration/voltage of whatever battery is being used. For instance you program max charge rate, max charging amps, capacity, voltage, etc. They're parameters in the smbus firmware. There is also an option in smbus firmware to lock it so you can't change the values. Not sure if they did that for this battery as I haven't tried to write to it yet - I've only read the data.

 

[User Name]

Even if they do open source the code, the major players to leverage it for the average users are these guys. Be part of that. Donate

I have, and will again as often as possible.

Do we know specifically where the break is in what gives Solo it's capabilities - between the Pixhawk 2 flight controller and the onboard computer? From what I've read of the recently released PH2, it sounds like a very robust flight controller, but doesn't offer any of the type of features that make the Solo unique. That seems to come from the onboard computer.

 

[PdxSteve]

Regular flying and navigation comes from the ardupilot firmware. The smartshots come from solos onboard computer and is what sets it apart. 3DR has tweaked some things in the version of ardupilot that solo uses. They didn't keep up with the changes of the main ardupilot branch (like boat mode, lidar, etc), so it's also lacking the newer capabilities, but some people are working to restore that by adding the solo-specific stuff into the main branch of ardupilot so we can stay even with them and not rely on 3dr's version going forward.

 

[RichWest]

In the big picture 3DR succeeded in bringing arducopter (per pyrate arducooter) to a larger audience. What was once just a DIY only for nerds is now broadly exposed to the masses. Dronecode is a by-product of the 3DR Solo endeavor. PixHawk is a house hold word now, as is Arducopter.

We can all judge ChrisA for what appears to be mis-steps, but he had more than himself making the decisions. I'm fairly certain he depended on all the leads for what they felt is the right choice for a given system, if not totally trusting their stance on a given component. "You're Only As Good As Who You Surround Yourself With." So many at 3DR share the blame for the failure.

As was said, Solo is a DIY'able platform being completely maintainable and extremely upgradable. EOL for my Solos may never happen. It may not look like a Solo, but it will have its heart and brains...

 

[DattaGroover]

In the big picture 3DR succeeded in bringing arducopter (per pyrate arducooter) to a larger audience. What was once just a DIY only for nerds is now broadly exposed to the masses. Dronecode is a by-product of the 3DR Solo endeavor. PixHawk is a house hold word now, as is Arducopter.

We can all judge ChrisA for what appears to be mis-steps, but he had more than himself making the decisions. I'm fairly certain he depended on all the leads for what they felt is the right choice for a given system, if not totally trusting their stance on a given component. "You're Only As Good As Who You Surround Yourself With." So many at 3DR share the blame for the failure.

As was said, Solo is a DIY'able platform being completely maintainable and extremely upgradable. EOL for my Solos may never happen. It may not look like a Solo, but it will have its heart and brains...

"What's that thing flying around up there?"

"Oh, that's Rich West's Frankensolo . . .
. . . and don't worry, that thing on the front only looks like a flamethrower.
. . . I think . . ."

 

[cynfab]

Solo is still the most mod friendly platform IMHO.
There is more than one FrankenSolo about, mine flies with my Not-so-Smart-Battery consisting of a 5500MAH Fureon battery from e-bay and my DIY SMBUS interface. It reads the battery voltage and discharge current accurately as well as calculating the remaining capacity. I'm still tweaking the code to calculate the remaining capacity correctly, but it's ok to about +/-15%.
My third or forth test flight I ran a bit too close to the end of the battery, landed before anything bad happened, but as you can see from the graph it got down to 0% (or less). Flown several times since with no apparent harm (but I don't want to repeat that).

 

[DattaGroover]

Solo is still the most mod friendly platform IMHO.
There is more than one FrankenSolo about, mine flies with my Not-so-Smart-Battery consisting of a 5500MAH Fureon battery from e-bay and my DIY SMBUS interface. It reads the battery voltage and discharge current accurately as well as calculating the remaining capacity. I'm still tweaking the code to calculate the remaining capacity correctly, but it's ok to about +/-15%.
My third or forth test flight I ran a bit too close to the end of the battery, landed before anything bad happened, but as you can see from the graph it got down to 0% (or less). Flown several times since with no apparent harm (but I don't want to repeat that).

That's good to know. I've been concerned about running out of batteries down the road.
I've gotten into trouble with my battery a few times, mainly when I'm coming back against the wind. A couple times I landed JUST in the nick of time.

 

[pyrate]

I have, and will again as often as possible.

Do we know specifically where the break is in what gives Solo it's capabilities - between the Pixhawk 2 flight controller and the onboard computer? From what I've read of the recently released PH2, it sounds like a very robust flight controller, but doesn't offer any of the type of features that make the Solo unique. That seems to come from the onboard computer.

its coming, first step is to do what 3dr did not
rebase it to master

 

[fpvsteve]

its coming, first step is to do what 3dr did not
rebase it to master

Well, there was a rebase to master, with the 2.0.18 pre-release of the FC firmware on April 18.
This release even included EKF2 and boat mode.
Me and others extensively tested it during beta. Since we experienced some drifting, 3DR switched back to EKF1 in May, but still including all AC 3.3 features.

This version made it with the version number 2.0.21 into the Solo 2.4.0 release.

Some people including myself experienced a flyaway with this FW, root cause [**speculation on **] is a hardware issue with different IMU sensor types used in Solo, which can result in inconsistent readings under some conditions, such as moving Solo around during prearms and calibration. That could result in the observed EKF error in flight [speculation off]

End of story, 3DR finally went back to this crippled 2.4.1-6 firmware which now became the current release and which is way off the Arducopter code base.

Given the history, I personally don't believe in another rebase to succeed, but maybe the team gets back some of the smart developers who finally can make the Arducopter master code work on Solo.

 

[pyrate]

From what I understand it is not only doable but some folks are flying it. I think there might have been some tension between dev teams towards the end. I am fairly certain it will get done

 

[Rex Barlow]

enterprise will not save 3dr.

Agreed

 

[erikgraham]

Well, for me this 3DR journey has come full circle. It started as a DIY parts provider. Arducopter and Mission planner, APM, DroidPlanner. Then the company released the quasi consumer grade Iris/Iris+. Then the full consumer grade mass market Solo. Now the Solo is morphing back into a DIY modifiable platform. Pretty soon we'll be flying it with MP and Tower, with the Solo app way out of date. And we will be modding the hell out of it. So we've gone from DIY to Consumer back to DIY.

 

[Jubalr]

Well, for me this 3DR journey has come full circle. It started as a DIY parts provider. Arducopter and Mission planner, APM, DroidPlanner. Then the company released the quasi consumer grade Iris/Iris+. Then the full consumer grade mass market Solo. Now the Solo is morphing back into a DIY modifiable platform. Pretty soon we'll be flying it with MP and Tower, with the Solo app way out of date. And we will be modding the hell out of it. So we've gone from DIY to Consumer back to DIY.

Don't forget the new Solex app that is being actively updated and new features promised. I trained a new pilot today and I used Solex exclusively to show him smart shots.

 

[pyrate]

Kelly is rocking it
sure hope he looks at porting the app over to PH2 and an Edison companion computer. I assume the big challenge is going to be how to trigger things without the solo controller buttons.
Though technically I suppose you could adopt the solo controller to a DIY if all the code is opened

 

[Brebs]

They could succeed. They have solo designed, so that's done. Gimbal and Sony camera are done. They've closed everything they can and fired people not directly related to Enterprise. They're pretty lean and getting leaner, so it wouldn't take very many Enterprise sales (at those prices) to support the few people that remain (the bigwigs). All they have to really do is continue and maintain the SiteScan software, which has also switched from android to ios/ipad only now.

I think developing for IOS only is going to be fundamentally a short life. Apple have tremendous consumer markets, but in the Enterprise? No, not really, I have spend the best part of 20 years in the enterprise market in solutions architecture and well keeping platform consistency really helps. I know they are integrating at a cloud point and that will offer a lot, but there are certainly sovereignty constraints here as well. So short term good $$$, long term, I hope they reinject this back into a core platform again along with lessons learned. You don't walk away from selling platforms, you can end up at times in class actions and I am sure that all will be done to ensure that this won't occur, so I see support going for 3dr solo most certainly for a while.

I like the bird itself, just focusing on camera stuff is kind of OK, but there is so much more this thing can do and having the camera right up the front makes the applicability for multi-purposing the bird really worthwhile and for me that's where am working towards.

Also to note that 3dr really had no idea about Global sales, only USA so it seems, a bit like Microsoft in the 90's. The take up usually about 1-2 years post USA is how it goes and that's where there was the lost opportunity.....this time, but it never ends and always can be achieved.

Just some opinions I have from other scenarios I have seen, I would however like to be in touch with devs that are leaving and certainly wanting to keep things alive, perhaps in ways better than donations... just have to get the right information.

Have a good day everyone and thanks always for the information Steve.

 

[Nick F]

After having read this thread I am even more worried about my Solo replacement (RMA) which is delayed because off Gimbal shortage...

 

[nuggetz]

So why couldn't 3DR take another stab at consumer? I guess I don't understand how they could fail in the drone market.

Sent from my SM-T237P using Tapatalk

 

[PdxSteve]

They blew through $100 million dollars to bring solo to market. Good luck raising that much again after this debacle.

 

[nuggetz]

Maybe Trump will make 3DR great again.

 

[User Name]

So why couldn't 3DR take another stab at consumer? I guess I don't understand how they could fail in the drone market.

At some point, there's just not enough money in it to justify the continued development and support costs. Up until the time the Solo came out, drones of it's class were selling in the $1000 to $1500 range. Not a whole lot long after the Solo was release, prices plummeted and now retailers are having to sell a whole setup - Solo, gimbal, battery, for as little as $500. They probably went from expecting profits of upwards of $500 per complete Solo/gimbal package, to easily under $100. At that point, they just can't offer the generous replacement guarantee and continued software development. Next year DJI will release the Phantom 5, and even if the Solo can still hold it's own, people will take what they perceive to be state of the art over a 2 year old setup for the same price.

It is unfortunate, as the Solo is still an amazing platform, but between the changing market and their missteps (long delayed gimbal release, issues with poor GPS performance, etc.), I just don't see them making another attempt at the consumer drone space.