Solex Survey Questions

[blahdc]

I partially completed my first mission using Solex today. I consider it as a win as I didn't crash and was able to capture a few pictures but I have a few questions and can't seem to find much detail in the user manual.

The solo came back mid-mission after telling me there was a RC Failsafe. It looks like this is because it was not able to keep a connection with the controller. Looking under vehicle settings there appears to be a fix for this but I'm a little unclear what each option does.

Throttle Failsafe

Disabled - I assume this is what I want?
Always RTL - This is the default and appeared to work.
Continue Mission - Not really sure what this does
Always Land - Not sure how this one would be helpful...​

Mission Resume Behavior - Is this when you hit Pause on the controller?

Resume Mission
Restart Mission​

RTL Altitude - If this is set at 100 feet will the solo go up 100 ft from its current position or will it go to elevation 100.

Distance Limit - Not sure what this does. It will either notify me when it is X feet away or RTL?


Unrelated to Solex I also received an EKF alert during the flight. Is this something to worry about? Prior to the flight I had done a compass calibration because anywhere I had placed the Solo it was giving me a magnetic interference error.

 

[David Boulanger]

I would not disable the throttle failsafe. Continue mission is what you are looking for I believe. If RTL Altitude is 100 that is the minimum altitude it will RTL. If you are above 100 it will climb a bit initially before returning. All these parameters can be found on Ardupilot.org.

 

[blahdc]

I would not disable the throttle failsafe. Continue mission is what you are looking for I believe. If RTL Altitude is 100 that is the minimum altitude it will RTL. If you are above 100 it will climb a bit initially before returning. All these parameters can be found on Ardupilot.org.

Thanks ardupilot.org helped. I think you are right "continue mission" is what I want. Disabling could be bad if I am just flying in manual mode and can't regain signal. Now to look for some better antennas.

 

[David Boulanger]

Thanks ardupilot.org helped. I think you are right "continue mission" is what I want. Disabling could be bad if I am just flying in manual mode and can't regain signal. Now to look for some better antennas.

Get the Alfa antennas. They help

 

[blahdc]

Get the Alfa antennas. They help

Thanks I will buy them. I have one additional question about "RTL". Is the RTL set when you start up the motors or is it when you power on the Solo. I hit return to home during a survey last night and it looked like it was coming down 10-15 feet away from my launch location. This might be due to GPS error? I paused it and manually landed it from there. Not a huge deal, just curious about the specifics. The other concerning thing is that it seems like I have to do a compass calibration each time I fly. The solo tells me there is a magnetic interference after a cold boot. I am wondering if my compass is or has gone bad...

 

[David Boulanger]

Home position is set when the Solo has a GPS fix and is armed. Land in FLY MANUAL. Otherwise a GPS drift close to ground, with objects effecting the signal, could cause trouble. Calibrate your compass in an area that has no metal around. No keys in you pocket, belt buckle, cell phone etc. If your flying in an area with mag interference, recalibrating the Solo is probably not the best thing to do. Once it is up in the air away from the interference the calibration will be wrong again.

 

[blahdc]

Home position is set when the Solo has a GPS fix and is armed. Land in FLY MANUAL. Otherwise a GPS drift close to ground, with objects effecting the signal, could cause trouble. Calibrate your compass in an area that has no metal around. No keys in you pocket, belt buckle, cell phone etc. If your flying in an area with mag interference, recalibrating the Solo is probably not the best thing to do. Once it is up in the air away from the interference the calibration will be wrong again.

Ah ok, I didn't realize they were that sensitive to metal. I have a few metal screws on the belly of my drone right now to mount a 2nd camera. Would I need to remove all of those and then calibrate it?

 

[David Boulanger]

Ah ok, I didn't realize they were that sensitive to metal. I have a few metal screws on the belly of my drone right now to mount a 2nd camera. Would I need to remove all of those and then calibrate it?

You could try high quality stainless steel but here is the point. Calibrate the aircraft with whatever equipment you will be flying with. The equipment is flying with the aircraft so things won't change. If you are taking off around all sorts of metal in the environment, recalibrating it may get you in the air but you could have problems later in flight.

 

[Kelly Schrock]

I partially completed my first mission using Solex today. I consider it as a win as I didn't crash and was able to capture a few pictures but I have a few questions and can't seem to find much detail in the user manual.

The solo came back mid-mission after telling me there was a RC Failsafe. It looks like this is because it was not able to keep a connection with the controller. Looking under vehicle settings there appears to be a fix for this but I'm a little unclear what each option does.

Throttle Failsafe

Disabled - I assume this is what I want?
Always RTL - This is the default and appeared to work.
Continue Mission - Not really sure what this does
Always Land - Not sure how this one would be helpful...​

Mission Resume Behavior - Is this when you hit Pause on the controller?

Resume Mission
Restart Mission​

RTL Altitude - If this is set at 100 feet will the solo go up 100 ft from its current position or will it go to elevation 100.

Distance Limit - Not sure what this does. It will either notify me when it is X feet away or RTL?


Unrelated to Solex I also received an EKF alert during the flight. Is this something to worry about? Prior to the flight I had done a compass calibration because anywhere I had placed the Solo it was giving me a magnetic interference error.

I can help out here.

Throttle Failsafe: Use "Continue Mission". With that set, you'll get an RC failsafe if you're flying around in Fly or Fly:Manual or some other piloted mode, but if you get one while flying a mission, it will just continue flying instead of RTLing like it did in your case. This is the setting I always use.

Mission Resume Behavior: This depends on what you want it to do. "Resume Mission" is almost always the right choice, unless you want it to always start at the beginning of a mission every time you switch into Auto.

Distance Limit: What this does depends on how you have the "Fence Action" setting configured. If you have it set to RTL, it will come home if you fly too far away. If you have it set to "Report Only", it won't.

RTL Altitude: If you set this at 100 feet, it will ascend to 100 feet on RTL before starting the trip back to the launch point.

As for the EKF warning: It depends on what it was. If you get something about yaw being realigned due to variance, it's because the compass and travel headings disagreed, and the compass heading was adjusted as a result. On Solo, I've never seen that cause a problem. On a rover, it nearly always results in the compass heading being off by a huge amount (usually because I ran over concrete and a piece of buried steel rebar interfered with the compass).

 

[blahdc]

I can help out here.

Throttle Failsafe: Use "Continue Mission". With that set, you'll get an RC failsafe if you're flying around in Fly or Fly:Manual or some other piloted mode, but if you get one while flying a mission, it will just continue flying instead of RTLing like it did in your case. This is the setting I always use.

Mission Resume Behavior: This depends on what you want it to do. "Resume Mission" is almost always the right choice, unless you want it to always start at the beginning of a mission every time you switch into Auto.

Distance Limit: What this does depends on how you have the "Fence Action" setting configured. If you have it set to RTL, it will come home if you fly too far away. If you have it set to "Report Only", it won't.

RTL Altitude: If you set this at 100 feet, it will ascend to 100 feet on RTL before starting the trip back to the launch point.

As for the EKF warning: It depends on what it was. If you get something about yaw being realigned due to variance, it's because the compass and travel headings disagreed, and the compass heading was adjusted as a result. On Solo, I've never seen that cause a problem. On a rover, it nearly always results in the compass heading being off by a huge amount (usually because I ran over concrete and a piece of buried steel rebar interfered with the compass).

Thanks Kelly. I was finally able to fly a few missions and it is working out great. I am using a GoPro Hero4 with Gimbal for my missions. Is there a way to geotag/reference the images I am taking in a missions survey? I am trying to process the images in opendronemap but a little lost on how i tie the photos with a gps location. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Edit: Just realized I didn't install the photo firmware package. This should help...

 

[Kelly Schrock]

Thanks Kelly. I was finally able to fly a few missions and it is working out great. I am using a GoPro Hero4 with Gimbal for my missions. Is there a way to geotag/reference the images I am taking in a missions survey? I am trying to process the images in opendronemap but a little lost on how i tie the photos with a gps location. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Edit: Just realized I didn't install the photo firmware package. This should help...

Ah, well, if you installed the Photo Events Logging package, then the geotag plugin for Solex should make geotagging the images pretty straightforward. Since the GoPro's file system isn't accessible to the app, you have to get the images off of the SD card and make them available to Solex through an import process for the geotagger. Once you've done that, you select the flight log where the photos were taken, and it will match the times/locations in the flight log with the time offsets in the imported pictures and geotag them accordingly.

Thanks,
Kelly

 

[blahdc]

Ah, well, if you installed the Photo Events Logging package, then the geotag plugin for Solex should make geotagging the images pretty straightforward. Since the GoPro's file system isn't accessible to the app, you have to get the images off of the SD card and make them available to Solex through an import process for the geotagger. Once you've done that, you select the flight log where the photos were taken, and it will match the times/locations in the flight log with the time offsets in the imported pictures and geotag them accordingly.

Thanks,
Kelly

Kelly, a few more questions relating the geotagging and survey add on when you have the chance.

1) I'm assuming the photo events firmware creates the logs? Is it safe to say that any pictures prior to updating the firmware would not have a log available?
2) Can you expand a little more on what "Auto-Start camera" does? I tried this on on a survey mission and it seems like it starts taking pictures once you arm your mission. What is the best way to have the gimbal tilt to 90 degrees at the beginning of the mission and start taking pictures at the start of a survey?
3) When setting the "angle" parameter for a mission, why does it go to 180 degrees? I was thinking this was the gimbal tilt 0-90.

 

[Kelly Schrock]

Kelly, a few more questions relating the geotagging and survey add on when you have the chance.

1) I'm assuming the photo events firmware creates the logs? Is it safe to say that any pictures prior to updating the firmware would not have a log available?
2) Can you expand a little more on what "Auto-Start camera" does? I tried this on on a survey mission and it seems like it starts taking pictures once you arm your mission. What is the best way to have the gimbal tilt to 90 degrees at the beginning of the mission and start taking pictures at the start of a survey?
3) When setting the "angle" parameter for a mission, why does it go to 180 degrees? I was thinking this was the gimbal tilt 0-90.

1. Correct. The photo events firmware is what sends messages to the app when a photo is taken so it knows to record that picture and the current location in the flight log as a photo event.

2. Auto-start camera is an option on Survey that tells it to start taking pictures as soon as enters the Survey waypoint. So if your first waypoint item was a Survey, that setting would take effect as soon as you entered Auto mode. If you want to prevent that, put a waypoint before the Survey somewhere and it won't start taking pictures until it passes that waypoint.

The best way to tilt the gimbal down automatically is to add a "Gimbal Angle" action with a value of 90 to the Survey. As soon as it reaches the Survey, it will call back to the app, which will run the command to tilt the gimbal. It has to be done this way because there is no "gimbal angle" command that can be encoded into a mission.

3. I assume you mean the "angle" parameter on the survey, since missions themselves don't have an angle parameter. It doesn't actually go to 180 degrees on its own, you might have just pulled the slider to the top of its range which is 180 degrees. If you want to specify a value manually, long-press on the "value" area of the slider control and then you can type an angle in manually.

Thanks,
Kelly

 

[JoKeR]

1. Correct. The photo events firmware is what sends messages to the app when a photo is taken so it knows to record that picture and the current location in the flight log as a photo event.

2. Auto-start camera is an option on Survey that tells it to start taking pictures as soon as enters the Survey waypoint. So if your first waypoint item was a Survey, that setting would take effect as soon as you entered Auto mode. If you want to prevent that, put a waypoint before the Survey somewhere and it won't start taking pictures until it passes that waypoint.

The best way to tilt the gimbal down automatically is to add a "Gimbal Angle" action with a value of 90 to the Survey. As soon as it reaches the Survey, it will call back to the app, which will run the command to tilt the gimbal. It has to be done this way because there is no "gimbal angle" command that can be encoded into a mission.

3. I assume you mean the "angle" parameter on the survey, since missions themselves don't have an angle parameter. It doesn't actually go to 180 degrees on its own, you might have just pulled the slider to the top of its range which is 180 degrees. If you want to specify a value manually, long-press on the "value" area of the slider control and then you can type an angle in manually.

Thanks,
Kelly

These were good questions "blahdc" and great answers "Kelly". I hope to work with survey missions soon. This is very useful.
Thanks to you both.
I know this has all been discussed before, but this put it in a nice sequential order.

 

[jaylitton73]

I'm confused about what the RTL Climb setting is under the RTL Altitude setting. Do I need to change this to match my RTL Altitude setting or leave it alone?

 

[Kelly Schrock]

I'm confused about what the RTL Climb setting is under the RTL Altitude setting. Do I need to change this to match my RTL Altitude setting or leave it alone?

You know how when you hit the RTL button, the Solo climbs a bit whether you're already at/above RTL altitude? The RTL Climb setting controls how far the aforementioned "bit" actually is. That's basically all it does.

 

[jaylitton73]

Thank you