Important Warranty Information - Please Read

Joined
May 5, 2015
Messages
856
Reaction score
666
As many of you know the Solo comes with a fly-away warranty, of note is that the warranty is not limited to the 12 month time frame of the manufacturing warranty, there is one caveat that won't be an issue for most users but it's worth understanding nonetheless. 3DR are working on the exact legal wording but a developer has posted a rough interpretation to elaborate on a Tweet 3DR sent earlier in the week, I'll try and explain.

The Solo was designed from the ground up with video production as its primary task, obviously it's expandable beyond that with its design, but for day one, the Solo application is focused on video alone and a number of preset moves.

At this time the fly-away warranty is only applicable if you are flying with the Solo application, i.e. you're using the Solo for its intended task of making video.

Applications exist for the Pixhawk which can do more than just video tasks, i.e. they can do mapping tasks for agriculture or making 3D point clouds for industry and so on, these are performed by applications which have waypoint controls that are not yet present in the Solo application. If you use other applications to fly, such as Droid Planner, Tower, APM Planner, AndroPilot etc that will result in those flights NOT being covered by the fly-away warranty. Also using such applications to make changes to your Pixhawk parameters outside the Solo application will also put you at risk of invalidating this particular warranty, especially if you deliberately circumvent fail-safes.

The reasoning for this hasn't been explained in detail yet, but it's reasonable to assume this is because the other applications made by 3DR and third parties allow changes to be made that can themselves cause crashes should the user not be knowledgeable enough to understand the changes they are making, it may also be the case (though this is purely assumption) that the other applications may not keep local logs as complete as the Solo application does.

In the past on other Pixhawk copters, some users have used ground station software to turn off fail safes, then sent their copters on long range missions, so far out of range the telemetry and sometimes even the Tx or video signal are out of range and they wait for the copter to come back safety, obviously this comes with a much higher risk than conventional transmitter flying.

3DR have said they will be regularly updating the Solo application, so they will be adding new video moves and additional functionality, so rather than risk using other applications it would be better to feedback to 3DR the kind of functionality you want to see added to the Solo application.
 

Attachments

  • Not covered by warranty.jpg
    Not covered by warranty.jpg
    31.9 KB · Views: 9
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: AmosMoses
Thanks Ian. I was somewhat expecting this.

Course this also allows them to offer future "premium" apps that are covered by warranty.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AmosMoses
It's not in 3DR's style to do premium apps, I don't see that happening at all, this decision I'm sure is purely based off incidents that have happened on self build Pixhawks and on the Iris.

Whilst there are incidents of user created crashes and mishaps with the existing user base, it'll be less of a potential problem as those users tend to be more technical and willing to read the Arducopter wiki and so on. The Solo is being sold primarily via retail stores rather than specialists, so the truth is it'll attract users that are too impatient to educate themselves on the settings they are changing.
 
  • Like
Reactions: rrmccabe
What will be interesting to see what IS logged during flights not conducted using the SOLO app. I'm sure it'll be the same metrics. Can totally understand that some sort of disclaimer will be in situ for non SOLO app flights. What i also want to see is as they add further shot types or perhaps more points to cable cam. A to B is fine, but this is a system that works in 3 dimensions so i think a A to B to C would have made more sense.

Still, this is an evolutionary process and one I'm looking forward to taking part in.
 
My understanding is the current apps only store telemetry logs locally, the more useful data flash logs go to the copters SD card in the Pixhawk.

You can diagnose a fair bit with the telemetry logs alone but with the specific focus made about the number of parameters the Solo stores locally I do wonder if it's taking a local copy of the data flash logs as well. The latter logs are the more detailed ones that are far more useful in identifying the causes of problems.

It's all speculation for now, I guess we'll find out for sure once people get their hands on the Solo.
 
well one would assume the SOLO app stores the entire logfile on the controller (for onwards transmission to 3DR if necessary). What proportion of the logfile if using another app, which logically some of the metrics must still be measured from the aircraft itself. will be available to interrogate/use.

I use as much info as possible for my own purposes with my current P2 setup (and it's not a fantastic amount, but far better than nothing).

Like you say, i'll all come out in the wash.
 
Thanks for the info. I wonder if those 3rd party apps should have a pop-up on first download that says something like 'Notice- Using this app voids the warranty".

Obviously that would be counter-productive for them, but i'm sure 3DR could enforce it.
 
It's not in 3DR's style to do premium apps, I don't see that happening at all, this decision I'm sure is purely based off incidents that have happened on self build Pixhawks and on the Iris.

Whilst there are incidents of user created crashes and mishaps with the existing user base, it'll be less of a potential problem as those users tend to be more technical and willing to read the Arducopter wiki and so on. The Solo is being sold primarily via retail stores rather than specialists, so the truth is it'll attract users that are too impatient to educate themselves on the settings they are changing.
You got that right on with your comment "to impatient" (arrogant) to educate themselves, I've ran into a few this year flying Phantoms and one joker with an Iris that keeps crashing it and can't understand why. Lord knows what the sky's are going to look like come late July/August after the Solo's been in Best Buy and at B&H for a couple of months......and some RC hobbyist wonder why the FAA is nervous.
 
UAV Direct just announced a new IR Agriculture camera for the DJI Inspire. No doubt Frank Wang Tao is a happy camper. But I find this exciting too as I'm rooting for Colin Guinn and 3dr to come on strong with there own camera/software/app updates through the Solo project and keep the heat on WangTao's ass. I love the competition and these two entrepreneurs going toe to toe means only great things for the consumer/prosumer drone market.
 

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
13,093
Messages
147,741
Members
16,048
Latest member
ihatethatihavetomakeanacc