As the newbie to the drone world and new owner of a 3DR solo in Portland OR (see, did the newbie introduction at the same time, that's multi-tasking that is!) and I thought I’d give my feedback on upgrading the GPS (just in case it helps with anyone’s decisions).
Got my solo from B&H and was pleased with the “out of the box” performance. However a few flights in and I was pretty frustrated at the long “GPS” lock times. On most days (varying weather conditions), I was waiting for over 5 minutes to get a GPS lock. One day it was about 10 minutes. The average amount of sats I would pick up was 8 on the ground, 12 in the air maximum. So after reading up about the GPS issues, I decided to upgrade to the mRo GPS u-Blox Neo-M8N. I also decided to avoid the cardboard GPS fix and just install the Ver 2 GPS shield from 3DR. Took about 4 days to get the gps chip and a week to get the Ver 2 Shield (no tracking number from 3DR and the following day they dropped the price from $30 to $15...grrrr...). After taking my solo apart (and discovering it was using the Rev A board), I installed the new gps and the shield, then took my solo out to fly.
Powered up the drone, started the software, was connecting the Wi-Fi and immediately got 6 sats (this was under 1 minute). Within 2 minutes there were 8 sats, then it jumped to 12. Please note, I live on the side of a rather large hill surrounded by trees that block a lot of signals, even getting a GPS signal off a Garmin or my phone in this area can be tricky. Once I got up in the air, I was getting between 20-21 sats. Have to say, huge difference and well worth the upgrade.
As for swapping the chip itself, it was actually straight forward and easy, plenty of youtube clips out there showing how to do it. I found that using a small jewelers flat head screwdriver was the best way to pop off the hood covering the GPS screws. The only worrying bit was that the screws holding the battery compartment in place were really tight. I can imagine someone could easily put too much downwards pressure on the screws trying to unscrew them and possibly snapping a leg and damaging their gimble. Even more so if they are using those foldable leg extenders. I found the easiest way to remove the screws was to again, use a small jewelers Philips screwdriver and hold it in a grips. That way I was able to get the torque I needed to loosen the screws without having to apply anything other than minimum downward pressure.
Really glad I did the upgrade and I’d fully recommend any new owner do the same, especially if you have long GPS lock times or loss of signal.
Happy Flying!
Got my solo from B&H and was pleased with the “out of the box” performance. However a few flights in and I was pretty frustrated at the long “GPS” lock times. On most days (varying weather conditions), I was waiting for over 5 minutes to get a GPS lock. One day it was about 10 minutes. The average amount of sats I would pick up was 8 on the ground, 12 in the air maximum. So after reading up about the GPS issues, I decided to upgrade to the mRo GPS u-Blox Neo-M8N. I also decided to avoid the cardboard GPS fix and just install the Ver 2 GPS shield from 3DR. Took about 4 days to get the gps chip and a week to get the Ver 2 Shield (no tracking number from 3DR and the following day they dropped the price from $30 to $15...grrrr...). After taking my solo apart (and discovering it was using the Rev A board), I installed the new gps and the shield, then took my solo out to fly.
Powered up the drone, started the software, was connecting the Wi-Fi and immediately got 6 sats (this was under 1 minute). Within 2 minutes there were 8 sats, then it jumped to 12. Please note, I live on the side of a rather large hill surrounded by trees that block a lot of signals, even getting a GPS signal off a Garmin or my phone in this area can be tricky. Once I got up in the air, I was getting between 20-21 sats. Have to say, huge difference and well worth the upgrade.
As for swapping the chip itself, it was actually straight forward and easy, plenty of youtube clips out there showing how to do it. I found that using a small jewelers flat head screwdriver was the best way to pop off the hood covering the GPS screws. The only worrying bit was that the screws holding the battery compartment in place were really tight. I can imagine someone could easily put too much downwards pressure on the screws trying to unscrew them and possibly snapping a leg and damaging their gimble. Even more so if they are using those foldable leg extenders. I found the easiest way to remove the screws was to again, use a small jewelers Philips screwdriver and hold it in a grips. That way I was able to get the torque I needed to loosen the screws without having to apply anything other than minimum downward pressure.
Really glad I did the upgrade and I’d fully recommend any new owner do the same, especially if you have long GPS lock times or loss of signal.
Happy Flying!