Kelly Schrock
44 mins
Well, it's Saturday, and you know what that means: Tomorrow is Sunday.
Also, a new Solex update, 1.1.4. Here's what's in it:
. Tap to save location
In case you were thinking it would be handy to actually do something with a location you're at by tapping on the GPS location on the flight screen, now you can. When you tap on it, an input box comes up to ask you for a name, and optionally to save a picture of what you're looking at. Once you do that, it becomes a so-called "Named Location" stored in a flight log. Which reminds me of the next thing:
. Basic flight log
The flight logs are currently pretty basic. They save your total flight time and distance (accurate to within a few meters), and your named locations. There's logic in there to also save locations as you fly automatically, but I'd be interested in peoples' input about how they would use that kind of data. Purely for posterity? To recreate a given flight? That kind of information makes a handy guide for future flight-log features.
. Fly to location on map
If you open up the "Controls" palette, there's a little map marker on it now (if you have GPS location turned on in the settings of course). Tap that, and a map comes up with a list of your previous flight logs. Tap a flight log, and you'll see the locations you saved in that flight. If you're actually flying at the time, you'll see a little "Fly to location" button appear in the lower right. Tap that, and you can either fly to the location using the guidance arrow, or tap the familiar "Fly me there" button (as long as you're no more than 1000 meters from it). Be advised, it will go STRAIGHT there, and then match altitude once it arrives at the location. So if there's something in the way, it will hit it. As always, if you hit "Fly me there" and subsequently figure out it was a bad idea, hit Fly, or Pause. The copter will stop flying, hopefully before it hits whatever was in your way.
. Basic flight stats
Solex now collects basic flight stats, such as total number of flights, total distance traveled, and total flight time. I've flown a LOT over the past 3 years, but to be honest, I have no idea how many miles that works out to. This will give me info on how many miles and hours I have on my Solo. (By the way, this is the start of something more comprehensive in this area. Look for that in a coming update.)
. Now a bit smarter about network state
The way I was tracking network state information before was... SMH... stupid. "Am I on Solo's wifi? OK, must not have internet then." That has been corrected. Now it looks to see if it can actually *hit* the internet before deciding it needs to start looking for another type of connection (4G, Bluetooth tethering, USB).
. Correct the "Aviation" LED label
A few people contacted me to let me know that Solo's "aviation" color scheme for the LEDs is actually backwards. The red and green lights should be on opposite sides from where they are. There's nothing I can do short of a future firmware update on the Solo itself. So the workaround for now is to put the word "backwards" on the Aviation item's name. Then at least people will know I wasn't the one who screwed that bit up. :-D
. HUD units update
The HUD initially only displayed data in meters. It looks cool and HUD-like when it does that... I guess... but it's handier to see it in units I'm used to seeing, so now it honors your "Units" setting
. Spoken flight status
Someone had a great idea to add a feature like Tower has, where you can have it speak various status while you're flying. I've been using it constantly. It speaks a small variety of items, at a configurable interval (every 15s to 1 minute). You can set it up in the App Settings screen.
. Fix vehicle settings param loading
On occasion, the Vehicle Settings screen would appear to become stuck in "getting parameters" mode forever. For some reason, Solo sometimes starts barking out its parameter settings in an infinite loop. I don't know why, and there doesn't appear to be a way to tell it to stop once I've gotten all of the parameters I need from it. But I can work around it, so that's what I did. Vehicle Settings should be less annoying to use now as a result.
. PAL camera settings fixes
I've been contacted by a number of people trying to use PAL mode on the GoPro, and Solex wasn't supporting it properly. There were some missing settings, and it doesn't switching to the PAL-specific frame rates when PAL was selected in the GoPro settings screen. Now it does, so you should be able to select PAL-appropriate frame rates and film like someone who isn't American (apparently the only country in the world that uses NTSC).
Next up is hopefully a solution regarding map caching. That's becoming more important now that Solex has maps scattered around in various places (Geofences, Flight Logs, Follow/Remote).
Also, something I think is kind of cool: A type of "Smart shot" that runs completely in the app. I like this idea, because it doesn't require Solo's cooperation in order to run.
44 mins
Well, it's Saturday, and you know what that means: Tomorrow is Sunday.
Also, a new Solex update, 1.1.4. Here's what's in it:
. Tap to save location
In case you were thinking it would be handy to actually do something with a location you're at by tapping on the GPS location on the flight screen, now you can. When you tap on it, an input box comes up to ask you for a name, and optionally to save a picture of what you're looking at. Once you do that, it becomes a so-called "Named Location" stored in a flight log. Which reminds me of the next thing:
. Basic flight log
The flight logs are currently pretty basic. They save your total flight time and distance (accurate to within a few meters), and your named locations. There's logic in there to also save locations as you fly automatically, but I'd be interested in peoples' input about how they would use that kind of data. Purely for posterity? To recreate a given flight? That kind of information makes a handy guide for future flight-log features.
. Fly to location on map
If you open up the "Controls" palette, there's a little map marker on it now (if you have GPS location turned on in the settings of course). Tap that, and a map comes up with a list of your previous flight logs. Tap a flight log, and you'll see the locations you saved in that flight. If you're actually flying at the time, you'll see a little "Fly to location" button appear in the lower right. Tap that, and you can either fly to the location using the guidance arrow, or tap the familiar "Fly me there" button (as long as you're no more than 1000 meters from it). Be advised, it will go STRAIGHT there, and then match altitude once it arrives at the location. So if there's something in the way, it will hit it. As always, if you hit "Fly me there" and subsequently figure out it was a bad idea, hit Fly, or Pause. The copter will stop flying, hopefully before it hits whatever was in your way.
. Basic flight stats
Solex now collects basic flight stats, such as total number of flights, total distance traveled, and total flight time. I've flown a LOT over the past 3 years, but to be honest, I have no idea how many miles that works out to. This will give me info on how many miles and hours I have on my Solo. (By the way, this is the start of something more comprehensive in this area. Look for that in a coming update.)
. Now a bit smarter about network state
The way I was tracking network state information before was... SMH... stupid. "Am I on Solo's wifi? OK, must not have internet then." That has been corrected. Now it looks to see if it can actually *hit* the internet before deciding it needs to start looking for another type of connection (4G, Bluetooth tethering, USB).
. Correct the "Aviation" LED label
A few people contacted me to let me know that Solo's "aviation" color scheme for the LEDs is actually backwards. The red and green lights should be on opposite sides from where they are. There's nothing I can do short of a future firmware update on the Solo itself. So the workaround for now is to put the word "backwards" on the Aviation item's name. Then at least people will know I wasn't the one who screwed that bit up. :-D
. HUD units update
The HUD initially only displayed data in meters. It looks cool and HUD-like when it does that... I guess... but it's handier to see it in units I'm used to seeing, so now it honors your "Units" setting
. Spoken flight status
Someone had a great idea to add a feature like Tower has, where you can have it speak various status while you're flying. I've been using it constantly. It speaks a small variety of items, at a configurable interval (every 15s to 1 minute). You can set it up in the App Settings screen.
. Fix vehicle settings param loading
On occasion, the Vehicle Settings screen would appear to become stuck in "getting parameters" mode forever. For some reason, Solo sometimes starts barking out its parameter settings in an infinite loop. I don't know why, and there doesn't appear to be a way to tell it to stop once I've gotten all of the parameters I need from it. But I can work around it, so that's what I did. Vehicle Settings should be less annoying to use now as a result.
. PAL camera settings fixes
I've been contacted by a number of people trying to use PAL mode on the GoPro, and Solex wasn't supporting it properly. There were some missing settings, and it doesn't switching to the PAL-specific frame rates when PAL was selected in the GoPro settings screen. Now it does, so you should be able to select PAL-appropriate frame rates and film like someone who isn't American (apparently the only country in the world that uses NTSC).
Next up is hopefully a solution regarding map caching. That's becoming more important now that Solex has maps scattered around in various places (Geofences, Flight Logs, Follow/Remote).
Also, something I think is kind of cool: A type of "Smart shot" that runs completely in the app. I like this idea, because it doesn't require Solo's cooperation in order to run.
