Possible Opensolo Wifi Bug.

@n8lbv Do you have anything other than your phone to try? A large number of us use a tablet with no cell service and don't see this issue. Also, take your phone away from the controller (cradle) and see if that makes a difference. It could be your phone is "leaking" interference.
Happens to me using a Wi-Fi only tablet :\
 
This seems to be a rather huge very obvious serious and very dangerous bug and I'm able to easily re-create it.
I'm not understanding how this has not been brought up discussed and fixed after all this time that it has been going on.
And nobody here seems in any hurry to work toward a fix or even discuss how to turn up the logging so We can further diagnose this.
Or am I being impatient?

It's completely the difference between this being a viable platform or a dangerous piece of poo.
I personally would have noticed this a LONG time ago had I actually been flying it.
It mostly sat on the shelf for over a year and I just now got interested in it again and instantly upgraded it to opensolo and bought
Solex for it planning to have some fun and I discover this just after a few real flight attempts.
Rather than just hovering it in front of me.
You ARE being rather impatient, but it's kinda OK. I understand your feeling of urgency, and would love to be able to get lickety-split to the answer.

However.... I only have so much workbench space and right now the *paying* projects have to take priority. I haven't forgotten your request, I just haven't gotten to that point in the stack yet.

Also, this seems to be a Not Everyone bug. I personally don't experience it, and it is the first I've heard of it in my admittedly narrow experience. That makes it hard to track and treat, because I can't recreate it. Then again I'm running MicroTik cards and haven't gone OpenSolo so maybe I should just butt out.....
 
@n8lbv Do you have anything other than your phone to try? A large number of us use a tablet with no cell service and don't see this issue. Also, take your phone away from the controller (cradle) and see if that makes a difference. It could be your phone is "leaking" interference.

I had the same problem without the phone involved. Just the TX and the Solo.

Also most of the time I do not use the phone in the cradle but 5 ot 6 feet away from the controller on it's own stand or sitting on a table.

You make a good point that it's possible that the phone could be interfering with the wifi RX on the TX/AP
But I had same problem when flying without the phone and still line of sight 400ish feet where it lost signal.

Solo came back on GPS only as Iit no longer would connect to the TX even when close by. Waited 30 minutes.

Tried turning the TX off and back on still would not reconnect.

Power Cycled the Solo after it sat there for 30+ minutes not reconnecting to the TX and it connected right away after it (The Solo) was power cycled).

And I've been through this 4 times in the past three weeks.

Also tried it in a completely different location that had Less Wifi around (still plenty but considerably less).

When it gets up there at 300 or 400 feet it can see a lot of distant wifi signals.

In my case the closest ones being around 1/3 mile away.
 
You ARE being rather impatient, but it's kinda OK. I understand your feeling of urgency, and would love to be able to get lickety-split to the answer.

However.... I only have so much workbench space and right now the *paying* projects have to take priority. I haven't forgotten your request, I just haven't gotten to that point in the stack yet.

Also, this seems to be a Not Everyone bug. I personally don't experience it, and it is the first I've heard of it in my admittedly narrow experience. That makes it hard to track and treat, because I can't recreate it. Then again I'm running MicroTik cards and haven't gone OpenSolo so maybe I should just butt out.....

Understood and thank you.
I appreciate you time and response.

Same here when I am busy with work this had to take a back seat and sometimes takes me weeks to get back into it once I switch gears.
I'll be doing the same test away from any Wifi signals.

I think it generically has a problem re-connecting to the TX even out in the countryside far from any other wifi where it still takes a LONG
time to reconnect as in MINUTES.. even after it is back in closer on it's RTL sequence.

I need to test and compare.

Hate to say it but also sounds like it could be Wifi card firmware or driver (HostAP) issues/bugs as re-association to the AP should be happening at a fairly low level
as in firmware and driver versus Opensolo.

I think there are using HostAP (the driver) in Linux so it could be a problem bug there as well.

Do your MicroTik cards use the same exact driver/firmware as the stock ones?
If so in that case then the same problem should be there in theory unless it's a firmware issue.
 
Sorry to point this out if you guys already know this but when you installed Open Solo it installed ArduCopter Solo 1.5.4 which is 3DR's last firmware available to us. So you got a bunch of bug fixes from 3DR and Matt's changes.
OpenSolo/documentation

I guess what I'm saying is while you debug this you should try to eliminate the hardware side. Get yourself another antenna for the leg and possibly another wifi card for the controller and so on. New antennas for the controller too.
 
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From what I recall:
OpenSolo/SiteScan did not update the Yocto Linux, and fixes by Matt were mostly in the userspace Python code.

I did not have these issues in my first season (microTik, SiteScan firmware), but did have it with both of my OpenSolo microTik Solos this season. It seems like to me, the longer I fly them (10+ pack days) the more likely the Solo is to disassociate and not reconnect. It isn't a signal problem as this can happen 5ft away. After performing factory resets on everything and a re-pair, I will be able to refly at the same location at the same time with the same hardware and not have any signal issues over 2500ft away.

To me it seems to be a firmware/OS issue.
 
Sorry to point this out if you guys already know this but when you installed Open Solo it installed ArduCopter Solo 1.5.4 which is 3DR's last firmware available to us. So you got a bunch of bug fixes from 3DR and Matt's changes.
OpenSolo/documentation

I guess what I'm saying is while you debug this you should try to eliminate the hardware side. Get yourself another antenna for the leg and possibly another wifi card for the controller and so on. New antennas for the controller too.

Hi.
It's definitely not an antenna issue.
Thanks.
 
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From what I recall:
OpenSolo/SiteScan did not update the Yocto Linux, and fixes by Matt were mostly in the userspace Python code.

I did not have these issues in my first season (microTik, SiteScan firmware), but did have it with both of my OpenSolo microTik Solos this season. It seems like to me, the longer I fly them (10+ pack days) the more likely the Solo is to disassociate and not reconnect. It isn't a signal problem as this can happen 5ft away. After performing factory resets on everything and a re-pair, I will be able to refly at the same location at the same time with the same hardware and not have any signal issues over 2500ft away.

To me it seems to be a firmware/OS issue.

Thanks for reporting this, and also thank you for reporting that it also is happening on the Microtik interfaces.
That pretty much saved me from having to buy some and try them.
 
Thanks for reporting this, and also thank you for reporting that it also is happening on the Microtik interfaces.
That pretty much saved me from having to buy some and try them.
They make an appreciable difference in control range in my application. I rather like them. I installed both in both of my work Solos before I found out that they are strongly recommended against for usage in the Solo itself, but do not believe I've run into any issues with them directly. For sure, I would get one for the Artoo controller at least, though I've been told that there is also a non-zero risk to running one in there as well.
 
This seems to be a rather huge very obvious serious and very dangerous bug and I'm able to easily re-create it.
I'm not understanding how this has not been brought up discussed and fixed after all this time that it has been going on.
Are you not aware that 3DR stopped updating and fixing the solo years ago??


And nobody here seems in any hurry to work toward a fix or even discuss how to turn up the logging so We can further diagnose this.
Or am I being impatient?
Are you volunteering? If not, find someone who knows how to diagnose and fix the issue, and who is willing to actually do it, and I can 100% guarantee it will go into Open Solo.

It's completely the difference between this being a viable platform or a dangerous piece of poo.
Your results are not typical. Others do not have this happen like you do. Once in a great while is more typical. Not only are you being impatient, but you're being a little over dramatic too.
 
Maybe a silly idea, but perhaps the antenna cable came loose from the wi-fi card ????? either the Solo or the controller.....
 
Are you not aware that 3DR stopped updating and fixing the solo years ago??



Are you volunteering? If not, find someone who knows how to diagnose and fix the issue, and who is willing to actually do it, and I can 100% guarantee it will go into Open Solo.


Your results are not typical. Others do not have this happen like you do. Once in a great while is more typical. Not only are you being impatient, but you're being a little over dramatic too.

I'm volunteering AND I'm asking for help from those who may know more than I do.

My results are reproduceable easily under the conditions listed which actually are typical.

I'm no longer being impatient nor dramatic.
 
Hi Frank,
Thanks but no this is not the problem.
If antennas are fixed, another source might be a loose connection between wifi card and main board.
The symptoms you described in the OP are the same one.
I had exactly the same issue. Root cause was that I missed a screw on the main board which fixes the wifi card.
 
If antennas are fixed, another source might be a loose connection between wifi card and main board.
The symptoms you described in the OP are the same one.
I had exactly the same issue. Root cause was that I missed a screw on the main board which fixes the wifi card.
Guys - READ the thread before replying, please. He isn't talking standard antenna issues. The problem being described is one where it works until it gets out of range, then fails to re-associate when it is back in range.

The attempts at help are appreciated, however.
 
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I was going to say, the behavior is not consistent with loose antennae, and I doubt a factory reset or power cycle would have any bearing on a physical issue like that.

To add another fly to the ointment:
I've had this happen starting from takeoff. So, Solo/Tower/Artoo all talking. Send a mission. Hit fly. Solo up, Solo drops connection almost immediately, runs the ENTIRE mission without any link, never reconnects, and (this may help) doesn't actually trigger any of the CAM commands. Did some subsystem crash and that's why link goes down and commands other than NAV aren't executed?

This like I've stated before, seems to be "fixed" by performing a full factory reset/re-pair on Solo+Artoo in the field and reflying. The issue tends not to return until I've flown a lot more flights, or had a very long collect day.
 
I wonder if Solo is running out of disk space? Like someone forgot to turn on log deletion and/or something is generating MASSIVE logs that fill the available space.....Hmm. I wonder....
 
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Grab all the logs from Solo. They will be in a folder called log in the root directory (/log). The logs most interesting should be 3dr-wifi.log and 3dr-solo.log--grab them all though.

I still think it's a hardware issue and not a software one, but let's take a look anyways. :)

Somewhere in one of the logs we should see the Controller trying to reestablish a connection to Solo or Solo trying to reestablish a connection to Controller. Or maybe Solo trying to establish a connection to another access point--who knows.
 
Alright obviously a confirmed bug and problem here.
Is there an actual bug reporting testing and fixing process in place that exists for this? or for opensolo?
I'm still unclear if people here are saying it has nothing to do with open solo and that it is 3DR stuff that we have no ability to fix
Other than an individual who wants to try.
Thanks for the clarification.
Because if there is actually a bug reporting and processing path this needs to go into it for sure.

Meanwhile I'll do my best to gather some logs.
I just have a feeling that logs *likely* need to be turned up to actually log everything to be useful in this case
And I'm not sure how to set the log levels higher if they need to be.
So Right now I might go and gather a bunch of logs only to have somebody tell me I'm not logging enough later.


Thanks!
 
I concur with Carpy- this is rather a hardware defect than software.
Again, please check the connection between your wifi card and the main board.
 

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