Copied from FB.
From:
Kelly Schrock
1.3.4: No More Twitching
As promised and previewed, 1.3.4 is out and eliminates the twitching problem people have been seeing. It should be en route to your devices.
. Preflight Checklist
This is what it sounds like. Click the little clipboard-looking icon in the controls panel, and a preflight checklist pops up. The top items are "system" items, and are checked when the relevant
items become "good" for flight. The bottom items are things you can specify, and check if you want. To edit the list of items that appear, hit the Edit button, and specify one item per line.
. EKF widget
. Improved error handling
The other day, I had a weird crash. I was running my Master Airscrew props, flying backwards about 25mph and descending. I pushed forward to slow down, and the copter flipped over and landed on its top from about 4' up. No damage, because Master Airscrew props are evidently pretty stout in addition to being awesome in other ways. (Although they do make the copter handle a bit differently, which may have been the cause of the crash.) So I picked up the Solo, dusted off the shredded dry grass, set it down and launched again, only to find that it freaked out a second time and crashed into my neighbor's fence. The only other time I've seen a copter do that was when I was running Tower with my Iris and it said "EKF Variance!" before spinning wildly out of control. The thought occurred to me that it would be nice to have a way to look at EKF status, as well as having the app yell "EKF Variance" at you when things aren't going so well with EKF. So, there's a new EKF widget that displays the various EKF attributes. Green good, red bad, just like the vibration view. Solex also listens for "autopilot error" events now, so you'll hear things like "Need GPS lock" and "Gyros not healthy" and "System is shutting down now". It also now knows when it's OK to launch, and says "Ready for Takeoff". (Prior to this, it only said that when you armed and it checked EKF status right then.)
. Run commands on connect
A few people requested the ability to run specific commands when the copter connects. So in the "Remote Commands" screen, you can check the "Run on connect" checkbox, and that command will be launched when the app connects to the copter.
. Flight Profile load/unload commands
A few of the same command-loving people asked if it would be possible for a Flight Profile to run commands when it was loaded. It is now.
:-D Also, it can run a command when a Flight Profile is unloaded. There's a new Flight Profile called "Cmd Test" which does essentially nothing except show how load/unload commands are specified in a Flight Profile. (It's what we in the industry call "sample code".)
. Fix overlay text on flight screen
Someone observed that the overlay text on the flight screen was getting all jumbled up on smaller screens. That should be fixed now.
. Update MPCC time display when slider is moved
Someone else said the MPCC's playback time display wasn't being updated when you moved the slider to adjust its time. That should be fixed now too, although the min and max time fields were always there, reporting their values.
. Touch-based Gimbal Control
Another person had an idea, a pretty cool one too: Make it possible to control the gimbal from the screen.
There are 2 ways to do this: One is to open up the Controls panel and click the bottom item (looks like an egg with an arch-shaped thing next to it). One the right side of the screen, a green-ish slider appears to the left of the camera panel. Move that slider up and down to move the gimbal. If you open the HUD view, the slider disappears, but you can swipe up and down on the screen (anywhere but the color adjuster on the right) and move it too. Slide all the way to the top to make the gimbal point straight
ahead, and slide all the way to the bottom to point it straight down.
. Dronekit Downgrade
A few people in the group had mentioned some twitchy flight behavior on occasion, along with lost GPS. Neither of these things are something that an app can control, HOWEVER: I had noticed the same thing here over the past month. After flying 18+ months with the same Solo, I had only lost GPS once. In the last month, I lost GPS probably 5-6 times. This is sometimes followed by a weird rhythmic pulsing of the motors in Fly:Manual, which sounds a lot like the "twitching" people described. Power-cycling the Solo
appeared to cure it, but it's strange that it happened at all. It never did before.
It turns out, if you adjust your vehicle speed (or guidance speed) while flying, the twitch happens like clockwork. And it's often accompanied by a loss of GPS signal.
1.3.3 included an upgraded version of DroneKit. I hadn't encountered any bugs in the old version I had customized, but I wanted to include any bug fixes that appeared in DroneKit since I'd started using it. (Oh the irony.)
So this version downgrades back to the reliable version that's been tested heavily and doesn't cause twitching, lost GPS, or other nonsense. Down with new technology!
:-D
From:
Kelly Schrock
1.3.4: No More Twitching
As promised and previewed, 1.3.4 is out and eliminates the twitching problem people have been seeing. It should be en route to your devices.
. Preflight Checklist
This is what it sounds like. Click the little clipboard-looking icon in the controls panel, and a preflight checklist pops up. The top items are "system" items, and are checked when the relevant
items become "good" for flight. The bottom items are things you can specify, and check if you want. To edit the list of items that appear, hit the Edit button, and specify one item per line.
. EKF widget
. Improved error handling
The other day, I had a weird crash. I was running my Master Airscrew props, flying backwards about 25mph and descending. I pushed forward to slow down, and the copter flipped over and landed on its top from about 4' up. No damage, because Master Airscrew props are evidently pretty stout in addition to being awesome in other ways. (Although they do make the copter handle a bit differently, which may have been the cause of the crash.) So I picked up the Solo, dusted off the shredded dry grass, set it down and launched again, only to find that it freaked out a second time and crashed into my neighbor's fence. The only other time I've seen a copter do that was when I was running Tower with my Iris and it said "EKF Variance!" before spinning wildly out of control. The thought occurred to me that it would be nice to have a way to look at EKF status, as well as having the app yell "EKF Variance" at you when things aren't going so well with EKF. So, there's a new EKF widget that displays the various EKF attributes. Green good, red bad, just like the vibration view. Solex also listens for "autopilot error" events now, so you'll hear things like "Need GPS lock" and "Gyros not healthy" and "System is shutting down now". It also now knows when it's OK to launch, and says "Ready for Takeoff". (Prior to this, it only said that when you armed and it checked EKF status right then.)
. Run commands on connect
A few people requested the ability to run specific commands when the copter connects. So in the "Remote Commands" screen, you can check the "Run on connect" checkbox, and that command will be launched when the app connects to the copter.
. Flight Profile load/unload commands
A few of the same command-loving people asked if it would be possible for a Flight Profile to run commands when it was loaded. It is now.
. Fix overlay text on flight screen
Someone observed that the overlay text on the flight screen was getting all jumbled up on smaller screens. That should be fixed now.
. Update MPCC time display when slider is moved
Someone else said the MPCC's playback time display wasn't being updated when you moved the slider to adjust its time. That should be fixed now too, although the min and max time fields were always there, reporting their values.
. Touch-based Gimbal Control
Another person had an idea, a pretty cool one too: Make it possible to control the gimbal from the screen.
There are 2 ways to do this: One is to open up the Controls panel and click the bottom item (looks like an egg with an arch-shaped thing next to it). One the right side of the screen, a green-ish slider appears to the left of the camera panel. Move that slider up and down to move the gimbal. If you open the HUD view, the slider disappears, but you can swipe up and down on the screen (anywhere but the color adjuster on the right) and move it too. Slide all the way to the top to make the gimbal point straight
ahead, and slide all the way to the bottom to point it straight down.
. Dronekit Downgrade
A few people in the group had mentioned some twitchy flight behavior on occasion, along with lost GPS. Neither of these things are something that an app can control, HOWEVER: I had noticed the same thing here over the past month. After flying 18+ months with the same Solo, I had only lost GPS once. In the last month, I lost GPS probably 5-6 times. This is sometimes followed by a weird rhythmic pulsing of the motors in Fly:Manual, which sounds a lot like the "twitching" people described. Power-cycling the Solo
appeared to cure it, but it's strange that it happened at all. It never did before.
It turns out, if you adjust your vehicle speed (or guidance speed) while flying, the twitch happens like clockwork. And it's often accompanied by a loss of GPS signal.
1.3.3 included an upgraded version of DroneKit. I hadn't encountered any bugs in the old version I had customized, but I wanted to include any bug fixes that appeared in DroneKit since I'd started using it. (Oh the irony.)
So this version downgrades back to the reliable version that's been tested heavily and doesn't cause twitching, lost GPS, or other nonsense. Down with new technology!
good to know it wasn't the app.
