Solo 4 upgrade - Controller Wifi gone

[MacIrish]

Upgrading a working Solo to 4.0. The Solo upgrade went fine - bird is now 4.0

The controller upgrade failed - these are the symptoms:

1. Power on - Controller hangs in "waiting for Solo" - The Wifi network is gone
2. Factory reset (hold power+fly while power up) fails - goes to "waiting for Solo"

I used ssh to upgrade the Solo and the controller. Which proves the network was there (and I know how to connect to it).
The controller files and solo files were from the same source.

Any suggestions on how to proceed would be appreciated.

I'm assuming I'll probably have to pull the controller memory card and reload it (although I'd like to avoid this).

Here's the bash reload:

kenmc-laptop:solo_3DR_2022 kenmc$ ssh 10.1.1.1 -l root

[email protected]'s password:

root@3dr_controller:~# sololink_config --update-prepare sololink

root@3dr_controller:~# ls /log/updates/

./ ../

(at this point I csp'd the files from another shell)


root@3dr_controller:~# ls /log/updates/

./ 3dr-controller.tar.gz

../ 3dr-controller.tar.gz.md5

root@3dr_controller:~# sololink_config --update-apply sololink --reset



The system is going down for system halt NOW!onsole) (Sun Apr 10 00:08:56 202



The system is going down for reboot NOW!er (pts/0) (Sun Apr 10 00:08:56 2022)

root@3dr_controller:~# packet_write_wait: Connection to 10.1.1.1 port 22: Broken pipe

kenmc-laptop:solo_3DR_2022 kenmc$

 

[MacIrish]

Update -
The problem was the Solo that was paired with this controller. I thought it had been updated correctly - but something is wrong with it. When powered on - it plays the music, then the LEDs turn GREEN and stay GREEN (they should change to White front and Red back).

For whatever reason, to complete the update the controller had to see a valid Solo Bird - NOT EVEN ONE IT WAS PAIRED WITH.

I brought in a known good Solo and turned it on. I then tried turning on the updated controller - it seemed to start up - then the screen went blank and it would not respond to the power button.

I turned to something else - thinking I was going to have to check the battery.

I turned back a couple of minutes later and the controller screen had lit up and said "Controller Updated - Reconnect app to SoloLink wifi - Press A to continue".

The controller's wifi was back up - I could log in and confirm it was 4.0.0.

But pressing A or trying to power down did not work. So I rebooted from the command line (nothing changed).

Finally I pulled the battery. Next power up (with NO Solo present) the controller showed 4.0.0 and "Waiting for Solo".

Interesting note - a controller with standard 3DR code does not start the network until it "sees" a Solo. But a controller with 4.0 code does start it's network - even while waiting for Solo.

So - on to sorting out the Solo with 4 green LEDs and a bad upgrade.

 

[jonbrotherton]

There is a tutorial posted in my JB's 3DR Solo Owners Group that will help you fix this. The Solo is bricked and the controller will probably need the battery disconnected and reconnected.

The easiest way out of this is to flash back to stock and follow the Open Solo 4 installation instructions.

 

[MacIrish]

Thanks very much for your answer. I will join that group and go thru the tutorial.

FWIW - Here's some detail - assuming my Solo is bricked.

A Solo 4.0 controller starts the Sololink Wifi without a Solo present. You can log into it at 10.1.1.1

At that point if the Solo is turned on (solid green LEDs) - you can press the "pair" button and the Solo will be present at 10.1.1.10.
d
I've been trying to update the firmware on the Pixhawk - I found the instructions that Peddles2Paddles posted - using pixhawk.py and uploader.py - I can't get it to work in either factory code or 4.0.

The pixhawk.py code looks for "/dev/serial/by-id/usb*" which doesn't exist in either the factory or Solo 4.0 version of the bird.

Connecting to the bird - it confirms a succesful upgrade to Solo 4.0 - so problem appears to be the Pixhawk firmware. (When I started the 4.0 upgrade - I followed the advice about upgrading the PIxhawk firmware - apparently it failed.)

I've backed the Solo back to factory.

I'll let you know how the tutorial works out.