I will never need Neo 8 GPS chip :) Solo's original one is awesome

SPP · May 4, 2016

Hi Guys,

Since I am a newbie, I like to record Mission Planner ( screen capture ) as video. I matched it to my Solo's video, and rendered as one. This is to learn more of what is going on during the flight.

This is open sky, at least almost open sky, if I discounted the trees at 3'oclock position from Solo.

A mere 18 seconds only from cold start I get GPS lock.
Total 34 seconds or extra 16 seconds is the time Solo waited before showing READY TO FLY...

Sweet !!!!

First GPS was at ground zero, ha ha ha, somewhere north of Papua New Guinea

18 seconds later.........

34 seconds later........Yipee !!!

So I am sticking to the original GPS and will stop drooling at other's Neo 8.
Yes, I overlay stopwatch on the video so that I know what seconds have elapsed from powered ON to take off.

The trees blocked 2 extra sattelites.
I am still getting 12 sats only when I took off

When my Solo got to 42 meters, I get alll 14 Sats.

When I did Orbit and with approx 5 degrees the Solo need to lean, I lost 3 sats. Only 11 I can get.
See next screen capture why when Solo lean 5 degrees and two sats gone.
Two sats are so very low on the horizon and that is my Solo can't pick their its signal.

Below is the Sats skyview on that particular time & day and to why I got only 11 Sats at some point.

I am curious, why Solo reported seeing 14 sats when solo is flat ? , when below showed 13 Sats.
These two separate websites maybe showing only active Sats. Even so, this two website do not agree on total Sats in view and 1 Sat name is uncertain .....PRN24 or PRN26 was actually in view ??... LOL.

I have seen supposedly non-active Sats still pumping signal, example one of the Japanese MSAS Correctional Sat.

Too bad I can get connected directly to U-Blox chip and see what are the 14 Sats in view.
When I find the mystery 14th Sat, I will let u guys know.

Bottom line is, I am very happy with Solo's choosen Neo7.

End of Report.

Pedals2Paddles · May 4, 2016

If you power it in the same vicinity of where it was last used, it will require sats very quickly, just like you showed. For your demonstration to truly be meaningful, you need to go somewhere new many miles away and try it.

SPP · May 4, 2016

P2P,

It was last flown 10th April 13.7 miles away. This post is 24th April flight.
But the 10th April flight I do not have access to a pier, it was sand patch 5 meters from treeline and was blocked half the horizon by trees.
The 24th April is not bad, the pier being 27 meters from treeline really speed up the GPS lock.
10th April one I shall take a look how fast I get GPS 3D fix.

In the city its horrible because of too many buildings and I move in 24 hours only 8 miles and like 5+ minutes to get OK-ded to fly at new location.

.

Pedals2Paddles · May 4, 2016

I'm not sure what you're finding is remarkable. You're out in the open, close to the last location it was used at, in good weather. Of course it performed well.

pyrate · May 4, 2016

been tempted to try the gps module but talk myself out of it every time
if I start solo when I get on site and then do all my preflight stuff it is ready to go by the time I am 9 times out of 10
if it aint broke

SPP · May 4, 2016

Well, that is true. Its not remarkable, but its worth noting.

I am familar with how GPS alamanac works when new location is not far away from previous one.
I think Solo's doing a lot of filtering as such when the Sats are not very very good, it simply wont allow us to fly for safety sake.

I have now many GPS loggers, some is supposedly better than Neo8.
Just got these two few weeks ago.
GNS 2000 GPS GLONASS: GNS - Global Navigation Systems

and

Bad Elf GPS Pro+

My very older ones I got , Holux MC1000 x 2, Wintec x 1 and
quite old one is Columbus V-900
Columbus V-900 Multifunction GPS Data Logger

I have a garmin GPSMAP 78S which supposedly already has the high sensitivity GPS chip.

I been doing test in my home where signal is poor and lots of multi-path , on Solo's GPS and the 2 new gps loggers and the V900. Garmin not yet.

I notice that when there are lots of multipath signals, the Solo is super slow in okey-ing to FLY.
This is why I think in good sky Solo's GPS is only then very fast to lock, but the algo written for it is probably a very conservative one.

All GPS logger below tested at the same time.
The Bad Elf Pro+ seems to have a very good filter too for multipath.
It is the most stable of all the 3 gps logger I tested.
In fact the GNS2000 seems to be poorly filtered, its drift is much higher than Bad Elf Pro+.
On paper spec, supposedly GNS2000 has the best chip.

SPP · May 4, 2016

This is the size comparison of them 3 loggers.
Build quality rating Bad Elf Pro+ #1 ,
#2 Columbus** ( **the only logger I know has microSD for fast data collection )
GNS2000 is built like shi-et ha ha ha, like Holux MC1000.

pyrate · May 4, 2016

the other thing people forget about solo GPS is that the arming is much more strict than a phantom
And so it takes longer to arm.
but on the flip side, is less likely to take off with a bad fix and lose its way

tomnjfl · May 4, 2016

I'm going to agree with SPP.

With every new update the GPS functionality seems to be getting better and better. That, along with my GPS isolation mod (Solo GPS Isolation Plate Mod Kit (Please Read All of the Description Carefully for Install Details)) have brought my GPS-lock times down to an average of a minute or two at most. That is completely acceptable in my opinion.

And while I do typically fly within a mile or two of the same location, I have also taken my Solo to Vermont and New Jersey, which at 1000+ miles away from my home in Florida, and even then, GPS lock was within 1-2 minutes.

SPP · May 4, 2016

Pyrate,

I think it does make sense that 3DR is not offering neo8 GPS chip...at least for now.

Extra sensitivity of neo8 reading multi-path could be something 3DR don't want to gamble with. That's what we read.
Neo8 supposedly can do -167dBm, while Neo7 is -162 dBm, that -5 dBm is plenty extra.

If we look at PRECISION series of Neo8P
https://www.u-blox.com/sites/default/files/NEO-M8P_ProductSummary_(UBX-15015836).pdf
its only -160 dBm but for combo GPS & Glonass

The Neo7P precision series is -161 dBm for GPS and -158 for Glosnass.
https://www.u-blox.com/sites/defaul...ents/NEO-7P_ProductSummary_(UBX-13003350).pdf

I think if 3DR want to improve, who knows they may choose Neo8P precision series and it is RTK ready for those in professional survey work would love RTK capability. This would be awesome !!!

I think if neo8P precision is choosen, even without -167 dBm sensitivity of Neo8n, having Glosnass assisting would trade off the less sensitivity.

Below is Miami as simulated Solo location. I like Miami, the boats are plenty he he he

Dang....if only Neo8P precision is choosen...

pyrate · May 4, 2016

from the Pixhawk 2 FB page they are going forward with uBloxM8N or an M8P
this is not 3DR but the independent ongoing Pixhawk 2 Development

Flashy · May 4, 2016

Please consider, here in europe we have not so much gps sats (max. 8 sats or less). with the M8 we have a dual or triple band receiver, depends on antenna and receive gps, glonass and in future maybe galileo simultaneously.
on Neo 7 either .. or.. so it is a great benefit for us.

Burkeam · May 4, 2016

Thanks SSP for sharing your findings. Love the office view. Life look nice -enjoy it.

SPP · May 5, 2016

Flashy said:
Please consider, here in europe we have not so much gps sats (max. 8 sats or less). with the M8 we have a dual or triple band receiver, depends on antenna and receive gps, glonass and in future maybe galileo simultaneously.
on Neo 7 either .. or.. so it is a great benefit for us.

Hi Flashy,

Try to take a look at this : middle of Germany
World Map of Live Satellite Positions – In-The-Sky.org
Usually each day if the same time the sats position differs a bit.
US GPS tries to have at least 8 sats almost everywhere, except North Pole if I my memory is correct.
I agree it would be nice to have combo GPS + GLONASS, but at some time of the day you can get 10 Sats in Germany, assuming no mountains or buidings.

I think Solo's minimum requirement is 6 Sats.
Below is my anchored down test, outside my main home building but lots of obstruction including metal frame sunshade.
Total playback/log is 3 minutes, but actual is longer.
I took it from my android ( labeled as NULL ) and not the controller which would have a more complete log.
I got 6 Sats.

The actual Solo position was here

The Bad Elf GPS Pro+ is not only Glonass capable but SBAS capable too, so I get Japanese MSAS too, which is a correctional satellite, hence it is very stable. The filtering/smoothing of Bad Elf seems as good as Solo.

Solo's GPS Sats view, but not all in line of sight view, hence only 6 locked

The obstructions are....

The Bad Elf GPS Pro+ was having these GPS + GLONASS and SBAS. Too bad SBAS not included in this sattelite viewer website

This is one of the reason why I am happy with what Solo has now. Looking at Bad Elf GPS Pro+ having Glonass and SBAS support, yet still Solo neo7 and the algo is producing decent result.

Drift at 10 meters for 3 minutes logging of Solo is nothing to worry, do note this is a very lousy position the Solo was at during this test, the Bad Elf GPS was having a better test location.

10 meters or 1,000 cm divided by 180 seconds, assuming linear drifft is only 5.5 cm per second, in Loiter mode drifting 5.5cm/sec is as good as zero movement.

Looking back at 24th April test flight. Almost no multi path disturbance I am sure, I can get 2.46 meters drift only. 2.5 meters for non SBAS/WAAS assist , this is insanely good. This is a 5 minute short flight log only. Note, the gps data points , is on a photo overlay which is not a very accurate placement. I dare not land Solo using RTL in this narrow pier, otherwise I can log the HOME waypoint take off vs Landing, to see the drift more accurately.

If there is a 3rd party seller rigging a neo8P precision for Solo, I will want that over neo8m and willing to test or upgrade.

Safe flying.....

David Weston · May 5, 2016

You might not have said that had you owned a SOLO on June 16th, 2015 like a lot of us did. Todays SOLO and the one back then, well, the only thing that is pretty much the same is it's still all black.

Rusty Jones · May 5, 2016

David Weston said:
You might not have said that had you owned a SOLO on June 16th, 2015 like a lot of us did. Todays SOLO and the one back then, well, the only thing that is pretty much the same is it's still all black.

Aside from firmware, what changed?

SPP · May 5, 2016

David Weston said:
You might not have said that had you owned a SOLO on June 16th, 2015 like a lot of us did. Todays SOLO and the one back then, well, the only thing that is pretty much the same is it's still all black.

He he, agree I am lucky. Bought mine Jan 2016 when most of the bugs been worked out and me country has a proper distributor handling the brand.

pyrate · May 5, 2016

I got one of the very first ones from Best Buy
have never sent mine in, and it has only failed when the clown holding the sticks did something stooopid

Eagle Wong · May 6, 2016

The first batch of solo using neo7 really has a SAT searching time problem. This is refer to the manufacturing module hardware problem. Not the neo7 technical spec no good. After replacing it, long searching time and warm start long waiting time has gone.