New Year, New Solo! Open Solo 3.0.0 released

Pedals2Paddles · Jan 1, 2018

hur said:
Installed new SD cards with new Open Solo v3 images.

Pedals2Paddles,

Yes, Controller boots up normally with the Open Solo splash screen. Then switches to Waiting message. Tried removing the battery and rebooted everything. My phone can connect to the controller.

Copter Has solid green light on Pixhawk, Slow Flashing orange, and solid green on i.mx6

What you're describing is all normal. Nothing happens when you push the pair button under the solo for 2 seconds?

june03dr · Jan 1, 2018

Just upgraded to 3.0.0 with no issues. Testing it tomorrow. Thanks for the update on this. Solo lives on

hur · Jan 1, 2018

Any other suggestion guys? I waiting so long for Open Solo release.

cynfab · Jan 1, 2018

Flew for about 10 minutes, all good other than RTL. All I can say is that it is a bit squirely as the Solo approaches the point, at return altitude, just above home. If I had a video camera with a long enough telephoto I would have taken a video of it.
Altitude about 100' AGL also about 100' away from home. pushed RTL and the lights all started flashing, then the Solo started turning towards home, then accelerated, overshot home, back and forth a bit (at altitude) settled down above the home point and started descending. At about 20' it paused then descended some more to maybe 10' then slowly landed at almost the exact spot it took off from. This was with all default parameters with AC 3.5.4, speed sliders on turtle. I then reset the sliders to half way to rabbit, took off again, flew around a bit and repeated the RTL, same behaviour. Other than that, very responsive and stable. No wind this afternoon. M8N GPS 17 Sats during flight.

hur · Jan 1, 2018

Pedals2Paddles,

No, nothing. Should anything happen on the Solo Copter side?

Pedals2Paddles · Jan 1, 2018

cynfab said:
Flew for about 10 minutes, all good other than RTL. All I can say is that it is a bit squirely as the Solo approaches the point, at return altitude, just above home. If I had a video camera with a long enough telephoto I would have taken a video of it.
Altitude about 100' AGL also about 100' away from home. pushed RTL and the lights all started flashing, then the Solo started turning towards home, then accelerated, overshot home, back and forth a bit (at altitude) settled down above the home point and started descending. At about 20' it paused then descended some more to maybe 10' then slowly landed at almost the exact spot it took off from. This was with all default parameters with AC 3.5.4, speed sliders on turtle. I then reset the sliders to half way to rabbit, took off again, flew around a bit and repeated the RTL, same behaviour. Other than that, very responsive and stable. No wind this afternoon. M8N GPS 17 Sats during flight.

Parameter RTL_SPEED is how fast it goes coming home. I think I set the default for about 20mph. So it gets home quick, but i also noticed it is a rather abrupt stop. Then it descends at LAND_SPEED_HIGH down to 10m, where it transitions to the much slower LAND_SPEED final descent.

cynfab · Jan 1, 2018

Thanks Matt,
That's interesting, if it was close to home and tried to accelerate to RTL_SPEED it might overshoot before it got to that speed if it reached home first. I'll try RTLing from a longer distance tomorrow. Once it got over home landing was fine.

J0S0L0 · Jan 1, 2018

Is this new 3.0.0 all plug and play through the Solex app for a stock bird?

Pedals2Paddles · Jan 1, 2018

J0S0L0 said:
Is this new 3.0.0 all plug and play through the Solex app for a stock bird?

As stated in the very first post and the very beginning of the release notes and the instructions, yes.

J0S0L0 · Jan 1, 2018

Pedals2Paddles said:
As stated in the very first post and the very beginning of the release notes and the instructions, yes.

Just making sure, Happy New Year...

hur · Jan 2, 2018

Matt,

I figured out what was going on. Problem solved.

Here is what I did. Hopefully it would help others.

I pulled the sd card from the copter, started analyzing log files. kernel log file had wlan0 associated message, which I thought was weird, did a wifi scan and found that mac address which solo was connecting to. It was my printer set to accept direct connections. I turned that printer off restarted solo pressed the pair button, and controller found the solo.

Thanks for all the help.

Pedals2Paddles · Jan 2, 2018

hur said:
Matt,

I figured out what was going on. Problem solved.

Here is what I did. Hopefully it would help others.

I pulled the sd card from the copter, started analyzing log files. kernel log file had wlan0 associated message, which I thought was weird, did a wifi scan and found that mac address which solo was connecting to. It was my printer set to accept direct connections. I turned that printer off restarted solo pressed the pair button, and controller found the solo.

Thanks for all the help.

Well that's a new one! Never in a million years would I (or I think anyone else) think of that for troubleshooting)

drdarren · Jan 2, 2018

Just installed open solo yesterday, using side pilot. All went well and flew well. Fyi for any people new to side pilot, you have to remember to hit the antenna button in the top right corner to connect to the drone before doing calibrations. I kept getting notices that drone wasn't linked and did not know why. Newbie error

Btw, awesome job and thank you for keeping solo alive !!

John Githens · Jan 2, 2018

hur said:
Matt,

I figured out what was going on. Problem solved.

Here is what I did. Hopefully it would help others.

I pulled the sd card from the copter, started analyzing log files. kernel log file had wlan0 associated message, which I thought was weird, did a wifi scan and found that mac address which solo was connecting to. It was my printer set to accept direct connections. I turned that printer off restarted solo pressed the pair button, and controller found the solo.

Thanks for all the help.

Fascinating. This argues for an extended view of the possible operating context of a Solo-centric system at home or in the field: which RF or direct connections are possible to/with any component; how to sense and recognize an undesirable, externally-induced situation; how to reduce risk of unfortunate disruption to any component's intended behavior. Something like: what could go wrong even after you change your SoloLink password? (a topic for a different thread than this one)

cynfab · Jan 2, 2018

Explored the RTL issue I posted about yesterday. I think the issue I was having was that I was too close to home and the Solo was still acceleration towards the RTL_SPEED when it got directly above home.
Today I sent the Solo 250' away and 150' AGL, pressed RTL and watched Solo ascend, turn towards home accelerate and fly towards home at RTL_SPEED, arrive at a point directly above home with no overshoot at all. Stop, turn towards the attitude it was launched at, then descend to a perfect landing. Wow.
I repeated yesterday's RTL test and saw the same overshoot. Repeated todays RTL test several times with identical results (as above).

Conclusion: Expect a bit of overshoot if you are too close to home when you hit the RTL button. ---> Issue resolved.

hur · Jan 2, 2018

John Githens said:
Fascinating. This argues for an extended view of the possible operating context of a Solo-centric system at home or in the field: which RF or direct connections are possible to/with any component; how to sense and recognize an undesirable, externally-induced situation; how to reduce risk of unfortunate disruption to any component's intended behavior. Something like: what could go wrong even after you change your SoloLink password? (a topic for a different thread than this one)

New thread created https://3drpilots.com/threads/solo-connecting-to-random-wifi-hosts.12205/

NudgerSelby · Jan 2, 2018

Installed Open Solo v3 on stock Solo via Solex today. The instructions (pre and post installation) are very clear and complete - thank you ! I had a few issues with the app finding the files for some reason. It took a few attempts to find them on the distribution servers (maybe an internet lag thing) and then a few more to find them once they were downloaded. I could see them in the download directory but they would not show up in the app. I had to enter and exit Firmware a few times before they became available for install (I'm using a Samsung Note 10.1 2014 tablet on Android 5.1.1). First test flight was a success with no issues so far - will push it harder in coming days. Congratulations to the dev team who made this happen - outstanding work !

Crewdawg56 · Jan 3, 2018

Loaded the new firmware last night and it went flawless. thank you for all of your hard work and Happy flying new year!

John Githens · Jan 3, 2018

Loaded the new firmware with no issues except I think there is a missing step in the installation instructions. Below is a quote of a comment under Step 4. After that quote there is a suggested additional step in italics. (I have updated three Solo systems to 3.0.0, experiencing the same process all three times.)

"It is difficult to know exactly what stage it is at since it can't speak and isn't telepathic. The process takes about 6 minutes on both the solo and the controller. So just wait about 6 minutes."

The controller's display will state "Controller updated. Reconnect app to Solo_link wifi. Press A to continue." Now is the time to press the A button.

(see image below)

Reason for the suggested step? I set a timer to wait for suggested 6 minutes. Then I poked the pairing button inside the Solo several times, thinking that I had not actually hit and held the dinky button. However the Controller's display did not change to indicate an opportunity to press the A and B buttons to initiate the pairing process. It was only after I pressed the A button on the Controller that I saw the "press the A and B to pair" instruction on the Controller.

Thanks for all the work that went into this firmware update! Looking forward to flight testing when the rain stops in a week or so.

IrishmanPDX · Jan 5, 2018

Installed yesterday, had a blast, great work on the update Matt. It really is much quicker now, got one of my GC birds updated yesterday. Will do the next GC bird today, and then onto the 3 stock birds. Once Jestersdrones gets more HERE systems in, I'm all over them! When you going to give us a preview of what's in store for the rest of 2018?