Solex for Solo

[Don H.]

Im using the 7". I'll have to try and go fly tonight if the wind dies down to see how it works. I'll probably buy Solex too to try out.

Thanks..ill be interested in knowing how yours works. Mine was the Tab A 7 as well. I'm curious if the Solex app has problems on the Tab A like it does on the Nexus 7.

 

[Chardia]

yes I also feel the select button has an issue, multiple times I have tried to select a smart shot and it has simply not responded, and then I have had to go back to the 3DR app to get the shot, after setting back down and restarting the whole kit and caboodle again. about the only gripe I have with Solex, but as I am not sure of the root cause of this, thought best to see what happens over the course of the next update or so.

by the way, i am using a samsung galaxy tab s2 8" running the latest android version

 

[Mauiwind]

Ah, that's strange. You should be able to just click on the place where you type the battery's name and a keyboard should pop up automatically. I have an S7 Edge here I can test that with. It's really more of a function that happens automatically in Android on any text field, an app doesn't have to do anything special to get a keyboard to appear.

How'd it work on your S7?

 

[Don H.]

by the way, i am using a samsung galaxy tab s2 8" running the latest android version

That's pretty much what's happening to me.
Ive gotten to the point where I use the 3DR app for smart shots and only use Solex for fun flying since I can't access the smart shots in Solex.

 

[Don H.]

How'd it work on your S7?

I've run diagnostic apps for the touchscreen hoping it would find something wrong with the digitizer. Everything tests fine on my Nexus 7 2013

 

[Kelly Schrock]

How'd it work on your S7?

It worked great, really. Just now I created a Battery entry: I clicked the green "+" button in the lower right, clicked the "Name" field, the keyboard popped up, I typed it in, hit "Next", left a note, hit "Done", and it created the battery. I want to make sure I understand what's going on here... You're saying the keyboard does not pop up at all no matter what you do?

 

[Kelly Schrock]

by the way, i am using a samsung galaxy tab s2 8" running the latest android version

I'd like to get this fixed for these devices. So, you click on the shot in the list on the left, and the Select button doesn't do anything when you tap it? Is the text on the Select button white, or gray? (It's gray when it's disabled, which it will be if you're not actually in the air with the Solo.) What happens when you check the "Launch shot on select" option? Does it select the shot then?

 

[Kelly Schrock]

That's pretty much what's happening to me.
Ive gotten to the point where I use the 3DR app for smart shots and only use Solex for fun flying since I can't access the smart shots in Solex.

I'd really like to get to the bottom of this. If you don't mind, tell me how you're trying to access the smart shots. You're obviously in the air when you try, correct? (I ask because I've had a number of people ask if it's possible to run smart shots while they're parked, starting by saying "I can't get smart shots to run in Solex. I'm parked on the ground, and..." (hint: it's not)).

So... you're in the air, you hit the Smart Shots button, a list of smart shots appears, you click one of them, and... what happens next? The Select button's text should turn white (which is being fixed as I type this), but it will only select a shot if the copter is reporting that it's flying.

I'm doing some work in this area. If you don't mind, could you test this again when v1.2.5 appears (soon)? I want Solex to work properly for all the features, not just fun flying. Thanks.

 

[Don H.]

I'd really like to get to the bottom of this. If you don't mind, tell me how you're trying to access the smart shots. You're obviously in the air when you try, correct? (I ask because I've had a number of people ask if it's possible to run smart shots while they're parked, starting by saying "I can't get smart shots to run in Solex. I'm parked on the ground, and..." (hint: it's not)).

So... you're in the air, you hit the Smart Shots button, a list of smart shots appears, you click one of them, and... what happens next? The Select button's text should turn white (which is being fixed as I type this), but it will only select a shot if the copter is reporting that it's flying.

I'm doing some work in this area. If you don't mind, could you test this again when v1.2.5 appears (soon)? I want Solex to work properly for all the features, not just fun flying. Thanks.

Hi Kelly,
I'm in the air, hit smart shots. The list is on the left side and I select any one of them then when I tap Select, it clicks but nothing happens.
I can repeatedly tap Select with an audible click but no response.
A few times when attempting to try an make any of them work I hit selfie and tap all around the Select button and sometimes it will load. It seemed to be on the right side of Select in the main screen when it activated.

I will be happy to test it when the v1.2.5 is released.

Thanks for being proactive with this.

Don.

 

[Kelly Schrock]

Hi Kelly,
I'm in the air, hit smart shots. The list is on the left side and I select any one of them then when I tap Select, it clicks but nothing happens.
I can repeatedly tap Select with an audible click but no response.

That's strange. It sounds like the copter isn't reporting that it's flying in your case. I'll change this condition in the app to only allowing it if the copter is armed (vs flying), so we can test to see if that makes a difference. It would be nice if I could reproduce this problem here, but I just got through testing on an S7 and the shots worked as expected: I'm in the air, I select a shot, hit "Select", and the shot UI opens.

 

[Don H.]

Thinking about it, I think it used to work several updates ago when I first purchased Solex. I don't remember what release that was however.

 

[Kelly Schrock]

Thinking about it, I think it used to work several updates ago when I first purchased Solex. I don't remember what release that was however.

Interesting, I'll be interested to see if it works for you in 1.2.5. I just pushed that update, so it should be available in the customary "several hours" that Google always tells me it will take.

 

[Don H.]

Hi Kelly,

I just got home and it's to dark to fly. So what I did was to remove the props and set it up for a flight without props.
Once I held it in the air I tried the smart shots and it worked fine from what I could tell. Previously I couldn't even initiate the shots. Now it appears to be working.
I'll attempt a flight this weekend.

Thank you for looking into this.

Don.

 

[SteveReno]

Kelly Schrock
3 hrs
1.2.5: The "Cleaning up some stuff" update

Christmas is a time for lots of things, including cleaning stuff up. This update has a bunch of that in it, and is consequently a bit lighter on features. I'm making way for a big-ish feature in the near future.

A couple of notable things about this update: The flight screen was largely a collection of separate components I built to do different things: Telemetry on the top bar, separate commands/telemetry/controls, fence-oriented stuff, etc. But the video streaming was sort of "baked in" on that screen. That's been changed so it's a separate component. That will be useful when I start switching between that view and another one I'm planning, finally providing an answer to the age-old question: "Where's the map view?" So in this update, the point of that change is to get essentially identical behavior with a new configuration. A map view of some kind will appear later.

As far as features go, here's the rundown:

. Tweaks to the camera controls, code cleanup

The camera controls panel is also its own component now. On top of that, it has a little tab on the edge of it that you can click to move it out of the way. Since it won't tell you much about the recording status while it's hidden, the tab lights up in red when you're recording, and goes dark when you're not. So you can still tell what you're doing in general with the camera control panel hidden.

. Refactor video stream UI

This is what I mentioned above. Not really a feature, but it's a big new non-thing that's in there.

. MGRS location format

In addition to lat/lng and UTM, Solex now displays locations in MGRS format, if you're into that kind of thing.

. A few bug fixes

Saw a couple of crash reports, and fixed those. The number of crash reports has gone down recently, due to other fixes of this kind.

. Auto-start recording on arm

Someone asked if Solex automatically stops recording when the copter is landed and disarmed. The answer is "yes, it does". I thought it would be cool to make that optional, in case you were interested in recording a lot of footage from the camera while it's sitting 1" or so off the ground. So added a "stop recording on disarm" option. But then I discovered that the Solo *itself* stops recording when it disarms, making an optional "stop recording on disarm" feature not really optional. So, not being interested in having done all of that work for nothing, I implemented an option people were asking for a couple of months ago: Make it possible to start recording automatically when the copter spins up.

And if you're interested in an option like that, it's probably because it's easy to forget you started recording. So to make that a little less problematic, there's also a new "Spoken recording status" option that says something audible when recording starts. This is different than the "Voice status" option that periodically tells you whether you're recording or not.

Every time I post an update, I try to find a cool Solo or Solex-related picture to include in it. This week, the coolest Solo/Solex-related photo I saw (by far) was from Nick Shane.

I'm headed out of town now, to go freeze my butt off doing Christmas stuff. Have a good one everyone.

 

[Deleted member 7413]

Kelly Schrock
3 hrs
1.2.5: The "Cleaning up some stuff" update

Christmas is a time for lots of things, including cleaning stuff up. This update has a bunch of that in it, and is consequently a bit lighter on features. I'm making way for a big-ish feature in the near future.

A couple of notable things about this update: The flight screen was largely a collection of separate components I built to do different things: Telemetry on the top bar, separate commands/telemetry/controls, fence-oriented stuff, etc. But the video streaming was sort of "baked in" on that screen. That's been changed so it's a separate component. That will be useful when I start switching between that view and another one I'm planning, finally providing an answer to the age-old question: "Where's the map view?" So in this update, the point of that change is to get essentially identical behavior with a new configuration. A map view of some kind will appear later.

As far as features go, here's the rundown:

. Tweaks to the camera controls, code cleanup

The camera controls panel is also its own component now. On top of that, it has a little tab on the edge of it that you can click to move it out of the way. Since it won't tell you much about the recording status while it's hidden, the tab lights up in red when you're recording, and goes dark when you're not. So you can still tell what you're doing in general with the camera control panel hidden.

. Refactor video stream UI

This is what I mentioned above. Not really a feature, but it's a big new non-thing that's in there.

. MGRS location format

In addition to lat/lng and UTM, Solex now displays locations in MGRS format, if you're into that kind of thing.

. A few bug fixes

Saw a couple of crash reports, and fixed those. The number of crash reports has gone down recently, due to other fixes of this kind.

. Auto-start recording on arm

Someone asked if Solex automatically stops recording when the copter is landed and disarmed. The answer is "yes, it does". I thought it would be cool to make that optional, in case you were interested in recording a lot of footage from the camera while it's sitting 1" or so off the ground. So added a "stop recording on disarm" option. But then I discovered that the Solo *itself* stops recording when it disarms, making an optional "stop recording on disarm" feature not really optional. So, not being interested in having done all of that work for nothing, I implemented an option people were asking for a couple of months ago: Make it possible to start recording automatically when the copter spins up.

And if you're interested in an option like that, it's probably because it's easy to forget you started recording. So to make that a little less problematic, there's also a new "Spoken recording status" option that says something audible when recording starts. This is different than the "Voice status" option that periodically tells you whether you're recording or not.

Every time I post an update, I try to find a cool Solo or Solex-related picture to include in it. This week, the coolest Solo/Solex-related photo I saw (by far) was from Nick Shane.

I'm headed out of town now, to go freeze my butt off doing Christmas stuff. Have a good one everyone.

Hi Kelly, thanks again for all your hard work and as always look forward to future updates. Have a safe trip wherever your going and a great .

 

[Don H.]

Thanks for the updates and for being proactive with this app.Kelly,

Have fun in ur cold Christmas environment. I'll be suffering though it here in SoCal @ 68 degrees.

Have a great Christmas and New Years.
I'll be flying the crap out of the Solo and other craft between Christmas and New Years.

Don.

 

[Kelly Schrock]

Hi Kelly,

I just got home and it's to dark to fly. So what I did was to remove the props and set it up for a flight without props.
Once I held it in the air I tried the smart shots and it worked fine from what I could tell. Previously I couldn't even initiate the shots. Now it appears to be working.
I'll attempt a flight this weekend.

Thank you for looking into this.

Don.

Great, sounds like that fixed it! Let me know how your flights go.

Thanks, Kelly

 

[Don H.]

Great, sounds like that fixed it! Let me know how your flights go.

Thanks, Kelly

Hi Kelly,

I had a chance to test the software today in the desert. It works almost 100 percent better than before. I was able to test several different shots and they all worked. A couple of times I had to tap it a few times to get it to select. Other than that it worked great.
Thank you for updating that.

Don.

 

[Zee Three]

Can Solex be used in place of Solo App? I am on my second new unit that won't calibrate sensors and need an alternative so I can use the hardware. I have a Samsung S4 and Tower would access the sensors to calibrate but Solo App will not. So I am sure this is software not hardware related.

I hate to buy the program if it will not work. But would be happy too if it does!

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Chardia]

Can Solex be used in place of Solo App? I am on my second new unit that won't calibrate sensors and need an alternative so I can use the hardware. I have a Samsung S4 and Tower would access the sensors to calibrate but Solo App will not. So I am sure this is software not hardware related.

I hate to buy the program if it will not work. But would be happy too if it does!

Thanks for any advice.

Since buying this, I have not wanted to use the 3DR app at all, I needed to for a few times as outlined in earlier posts on here with the smart shots not being reponsive, but that issue appears so far to have been solved. For the additional features it gives for us Android users, its likely the best alternative app to use. very easy to navigate.