Mission Planner and Solo

[DavidFisher]

Seeking wisdom. I am trying to figure out the MP/tower work flow.

I have completed a few successful tower missions. This week I went out to fly on a mountainside at 5140' elevation. When trying to program a tower mission I had a really hard time finding my bearings based on the satellite map. I couldn't trust the gps dot, because it moved around slightly and I had no solid landmarks. Just tons of trees. Pretty unnerving standing on a damn near 45 degree slope. I was unaware of the terrain map option at that time. I'm not sure it would have helped that much, as its accuracy at close range is also hard to determine. I decided it best just to do a simple manual flight and call it a day.

I figured out how to connect to solo, pull the tlogs, locate the flight, play and export the flight graph to .kmz. Which is friggin awesome. Google earth shows the perfect mix of terrain modelling and sat mapping. Not to mention that I can trust the gps coordinates since solo has actually been there.

This leads me to my question. Is it possible to run a mission planer mission with solo? Or is there a way to use the data from my first flight to establish a good series of accurate waypoints in tower. I don't see a way to manualy input the gps coordinates into tower.

Ideally I could bring a macbook air with me, run mission planner, connect to solo wifi and execute the mission via MP. Is this possible? Would the fly button still take over? etc. Or should I just try to take the data from MP and improvise with tower.

MP seems to have some really nice features like the altitude compensation from map data. That would be perfect for where I am going to be flying, it is really steep.

Thanks.

 

[Jubalr]

You can use MP throughout if you are going to cake a laptop with you. You can plan the entire mission on the spot or at home before you leave. You can then upload to the Solo and fly it. Fly and other options will still work the same. Be careful with the altitude compensation as it can not be very accurate. It will have to rely on GPS altitude, which is only accurate to about 100' at best. Meaning it will be OK for large changes, but be sure you have enough altitude for the error rate.

 

[DavidFisher]

awesome information. Thanks a ton. I figure it can't hurt to have the altitude comp on. I will be staying on the safe side of things for sure. I'm a little confused about how I would take of manually and start a mp mission. Or what the correct procedure with this is. I would really prefer to use MP if possible.

 

[Jubalr]

I haven't seen the Mac version, but assuming it is the same you would plan your mission and upload it to Solo. To start the mission you would select the Action tab on the flight data screen and click on 'Auto'. This would immediately start the mission.

 

[DavidFisher]

I am unclear as to if this could be done after the solo has been launched manually (meaning fly mode via solo app, not fly manual) . I have a little bit of a path to take the solo through that I would much rather do manually, and then start the mission. I have been able to do this via tower, but as stated tower is pretty limited for my needs. I was trying to think of some way to take off manually, get the solo to a safe distance and then start auto mode. I'm not sure if I could start the "auto" mode from the action tab, while the solo was hovering in fly mode a safe distance away via solo app. Or do I have to do an auto launch via MP/ auto function. Thanks again for your help.

 

[Jubalr]

I am unclear as to if this could be done after the solo has been launched manually (meaning fly mode via solo app, not fly manual) . I have a little bit of a path to take the solo through that I would much rather do manually, and then start the mission. I have been able to do this via tower, but as stated tower is pretty limited for my needs. I was trying to think of some way to take off manually, get the solo to a safe distance and then start auto mode. I'm not sure if I could start the "auto" mode from the action tab, while the solo was hovering in fly mode a safe distance away via solo app. Or do I have to do an auto launch via MP/ auto function. Thanks again for your help.

No, like Tower, you can execute the "auto' command at anytime. You would be connected to MP through UDP, just like with Tower. When ready, just select Auto and it will start the mission from wherever you already are.

 

[DavidFisher]

Perfect. I will have to get the osx version, as my MP is running on win10, and test it out a bit. This is excellent news. I have had great success with tower, however MP seems far more capable. Providing I can simply connect a notebook via udp sololink wifi and have the same behavior as a tower mission, that's just awesome. I have really been blown away by what MP has to offer. Especially the export to kmz. Thanks agian.

 

[jeeboont]

Guys.. I've not been successful running MP on Win10 on Parallels image on my Mac book. I am able to run MP but can never connect using UDP via WiFi to my Sololink. Has anyone been successful running MPmusing this config??? Thanks.

 

[Raybro]

Guys.. I've not been successful running MP on Win10 on Parallels image on my Mac book. I am able to run MP but can never connect using UDP via WiFi to my Sololink. Has anyone been successful running MPmusing this config??? Thanks.

I can connect using UDP with baud rate set to the highest (150000). I'm using Win 10 as well. I have not flown a mission with it. I just use it to download my Tlogs.
At one time it would only connect at lower speeds, not sure why.
Play around with the different speed setting to see if it will connect.

 

[J R]

Ray,

I've been able to download ".log" and ".bin" files from MP but where are the ".tlog" files?

Jerry

 

[Raybro]

On your tablet...

 

[J R]

Got it Ray! Loaded the Tower 2 flight into MP and played it back. Definitely something going on with the bird. Shows it pretty clearly. Unfortunately, I have no idea on how to interpret any of this date at this point. Frankly, aside from being able to watch it go, which is pretty cool BTW, its basically pretty useless to me until I learn a great deal more.

Thanks for your help!

Jerry

 

[Greg Parker]

David,

In case you didn't know you can plan the mission in MP at home if happy with the detail available in Google Earth; load it to the Solo and initiate it with Tower once you reach the site. You can also download the MP mission back to Tower and edit it on site and reload. That way you don't have to lug the laptop along when not essential. Just be sure Tower has a map of the area you intent to fly. If you download the mission back to your tower tablet while at home connect to the internet it will cache the Google Earth map of the flight area.

Rather than trust Terrain Following you can use the elevation info in Google Earth to adjust waypoint heights based on the elevation changes shown. I would not try to get finer than about 25 feet with plenty of height above tree heights.