Hi Guys,
Just to share a newbie point of view.
So finally I flew my Solo last saturday to help a friend take photo of his home build progress from aerial point of view.
I stop flying my Phantom 1 original some years ago. I was never good at "directions" when flying a drone.
Those were the days with no video feed radio link to do FPV and the GoPro gimbal was obscene at US$700 or so. So its was basically flying for fun. I ruined 2 Phantoms in the process of the learning curve.
I read this forum info hours and hours, trying to absorb the do and don't for Solo. Thanks to all.
I updated to latest firmware and etc etc.
I have Set A button as MANUAL and B button as FLY
I took off MANUAL, as I have always been doing so on the Phantom 1 because I need to clear some of the structure where I took off from. The house roof top that is.
When I feel "safe", only then I switch to B ( FLY-AUTO ).
Indeed it is sad that Solo only use GPS sats and not in combo with the GLOSNASS, while the M7N Ublox chip is actually capable of receiving GLOSNASS. I already got the Solo GPS locked in my home and still needed like 3+ minutes to get GPS locked and ready to fly approval from Solo at my friend's house roof top.
Almanac wise, the GPS memory would still have it and distance wise from my house to friend's house direct line of sight is only 13 kilometers ( 8 mile ). So technically I would have a not so cold start.
Where I am based, if a GNSS chip is capable of receiving GPS + GLOSNASS, 12-19 sats used and 24-32 available is the norm. More sat if the chip is SBAS ready. SBAS are correctional sats by a few countries, in USA its WAAS.
This is from a Samsung El-Cheapo phone <US$150 retail in good clear sky,
I got USA GPS, Russian GLOSNASS and Chinese Beidou, #41 is Indian GAGAN correctional sat and #42 & #50 is Japanese MSAS correctional sat.
All correctional sats are geosynchronous, meaning they are placed at the Equator, so me lucky for being within +-7* north/east of the Equator.
To those who is not familiar with GPS assigned numbers which they call PRN ( Pseudorandom Noise Code ), here is the list. USA GPS is up to No 32. Correctional Sats ( all kinds ) 33 to 51. GLOSNASS get 65 to 88.
Chinese Beidou 201-235
GarminOregon6xx - Satellites
NMEA IDs · mvglasow/satstat Wiki · GitHub
When the sweet lady of Solo voiced out "Ready to fly", I have 8 sats locked.
Upon hovering to 17 meters height above a 3 storey height of the house, I got 9 sats locked and finally I got 10 sats locked. There was some unknown screw-up when I downloaded the DataFlash Log, it recorded GPS failure for number of Sats.
See the 8 sats locked, then 9 and then 10. But there is a red bar on top of graph which said Err FAILSAVE_RADIO-0 even when I had 8 sats locked. In auto analysis that is called a : Test GPS = FAIL.
I got more sats while at 17+ meters higher because to the north-east and east of my friend's house there are 4 apartment towers with at least 20 storey height if not more.
It is probably some glitch when Pixhawk recorded or complile the BIN file...me dunno, this is all new to me.
Anyway, what I want to say is :
Since I come from Phantom 1 experience ( probably 2 generation away from today's better tech ), I never seen such stability for loiter of position hold on AUTO,whatever 3DR call the term..........what a Solo can offer now,..... it is freakin' awesome !!! For me it is awesome.
The days was raining, so I got to cut short doing other SMART MOVE and only managed 15 minutes flight at best. The simultor indeed help me a great deal to be on track again with the controller joystick. I been not fyling drone for too long and is getting rusty... he he he.
Here is a graphic view of the flight.
.
.
.
.
Overall I am pleased with the Solo.
End of Report.
.
Just to share a newbie point of view.
So finally I flew my Solo last saturday to help a friend take photo of his home build progress from aerial point of view.
I stop flying my Phantom 1 original some years ago. I was never good at "directions" when flying a drone.
Those were the days with no video feed radio link to do FPV and the GoPro gimbal was obscene at US$700 or so. So its was basically flying for fun. I ruined 2 Phantoms in the process of the learning curve.
I read this forum info hours and hours, trying to absorb the do and don't for Solo. Thanks to all.
I updated to latest firmware and etc etc.
I have Set A button as MANUAL and B button as FLY
I took off MANUAL, as I have always been doing so on the Phantom 1 because I need to clear some of the structure where I took off from. The house roof top that is.
When I feel "safe", only then I switch to B ( FLY-AUTO ).
Indeed it is sad that Solo only use GPS sats and not in combo with the GLOSNASS, while the M7N Ublox chip is actually capable of receiving GLOSNASS. I already got the Solo GPS locked in my home and still needed like 3+ minutes to get GPS locked and ready to fly approval from Solo at my friend's house roof top.
Almanac wise, the GPS memory would still have it and distance wise from my house to friend's house direct line of sight is only 13 kilometers ( 8 mile ). So technically I would have a not so cold start.
Where I am based, if a GNSS chip is capable of receiving GPS + GLOSNASS, 12-19 sats used and 24-32 available is the norm. More sat if the chip is SBAS ready. SBAS are correctional sats by a few countries, in USA its WAAS.
This is from a Samsung El-Cheapo phone <US$150 retail in good clear sky,
I got USA GPS, Russian GLOSNASS and Chinese Beidou, #41 is Indian GAGAN correctional sat and #42 & #50 is Japanese MSAS correctional sat.
All correctional sats are geosynchronous, meaning they are placed at the Equator, so me lucky for being within +-7* north/east of the Equator.
To those who is not familiar with GPS assigned numbers which they call PRN ( Pseudorandom Noise Code ), here is the list. USA GPS is up to No 32. Correctional Sats ( all kinds ) 33 to 51. GLOSNASS get 65 to 88.
Chinese Beidou 201-235
GarminOregon6xx - Satellites
NMEA IDs · mvglasow/satstat Wiki · GitHub
When the sweet lady of Solo voiced out "Ready to fly", I have 8 sats locked.
Upon hovering to 17 meters height above a 3 storey height of the house, I got 9 sats locked and finally I got 10 sats locked. There was some unknown screw-up when I downloaded the DataFlash Log, it recorded GPS failure for number of Sats.
See the 8 sats locked, then 9 and then 10. But there is a red bar on top of graph which said Err FAILSAVE_RADIO-0 even when I had 8 sats locked. In auto analysis that is called a : Test GPS = FAIL.
I got more sats while at 17+ meters higher because to the north-east and east of my friend's house there are 4 apartment towers with at least 20 storey height if not more.
It is probably some glitch when Pixhawk recorded or complile the BIN file...me dunno, this is all new to me.
Anyway, what I want to say is :
Since I come from Phantom 1 experience ( probably 2 generation away from today's better tech ), I never seen such stability for loiter of position hold on AUTO,whatever 3DR call the term..........what a Solo can offer now,..... it is freakin' awesome !!! For me it is awesome.
The days was raining, so I got to cut short doing other SMART MOVE and only managed 15 minutes flight at best. The simultor indeed help me a great deal to be on track again with the controller joystick. I been not fyling drone for too long and is getting rusty... he he he.
Here is a graphic view of the flight.
.
.
.
.
Overall I am pleased with the Solo.
End of Report.
.