Solo Bricked. Getting really sick of 3DR support's delays.

I have wish this too however I'm no Chris Anderson so I'll have to wait on others to do it for me. I'm just thinking he knows what he is doing. It's hard for me to judge when I don't know whats going on behind the scenes. They are in the middle of a very exciting and disturbing technology where business models are in a continual flux. In the end 3DR has delivered me an experience better then any amusement park. I have been thrilled to dive back into making and hacking with the passion while knowing it will be paying my bills in the near future. I see 3DR as a descent shirt tail to ride until the view needs to change. Like carrying 3 cameras and a 30+ min flight time. I just can't buy a Apple product nor DJI. It's just to painful to let go of being in control. lol
I know exactly what you mean. I was hoping 3dr wouldn't bail on the hobby end of the business but I think that is what they are doing. It sucks because it would be nice to have another choice other than dji. Right now no one else offers anything comparable to the solo or phantom.
 
I know exactly what you mean. I was hoping 3dr wouldn't bail on the hobby end of the business but I think that is what they are doing. It sucks because it would be nice to have another choice other than dji. Right now no one else offers anything comparable.
Yes thus I might be building or partial build
 
Well I want to retire early and do this the rest of my live. Thus not retire. I'm diving in head first only to be one of the 1st to be replaced by AI. In 10 years life will shine much differently. I have no idea what it will look like but I embrace it all as it's an opportunity to learn, teach, develop value for society and have a blast. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. lol
 
Well I want to retire early and do this the rest of my live. Thus not retire. I'm diving in head first only to be one of the 1st to be replaced by AI. In 10 years life will shine much differently. I have no idea what it will look like but I embrace it all as it's an opportunity to learn, teach, develop value for society and have a blast. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. lol
I'm 54 and planning on retirng in a couple of years, hopefully. We will see if my plan holds together. A lot can happen in two years.
 
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12 days later, I'm finally sending my Solo back to the factory. Hooray. Curiously, they only want the Solo and the controller.

Customer support for risky things is a difficult balancing act. Err on the side of treating misuse as an exception and then have non-stop returns and on the other side risk mistreating first adopters. I have felt that support can be tone-deaf and dismissive, but at the same time persistence is eventually rewarded. Still frustratng though.

As for only the solo and the controller, I'm guessing that's where the software and logs are and the gimbal only responds. Indeed, even in the documentation, reading gimbal info only returns what it was last set to not the current value being reported by the gimbal.

On the other hand, if the gimbal has some sort of hardware error (as it's supposed to be in charge of maintaining pitch), why delay returning it?
 
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Just curious, when you say "bricked", did the Solo not reboot? I had to factory reset after last update (my battery died mid-process). I had to let Solo sit and do its thing for almost 90 minutes. All the lights just stayed green while some funky buzzing and clicking sounds played inside the bird. Then suddenly the standard ready tones, all was good as new on reboot.
 
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The Yuneec Typhoon H has already put the P4 in its place.

As for Solo it's got a long life ahead of it, the Arducopter team seem to have embraced Solo and there's the new hardware coming from project Night Raptor plus an annoucement soon which will underline Solo as an upgradeable platform for years to come.

Plus options are being looked into, using the Ublox M8P to give Solo RTK GPS which is centimetre level accurate. The optical flow/lidar was made opensource so can be added, with the software improving for that incrementally.
 
Just curious, when you say "bricked", did the Solo not reboot? I had to factory reset after last update (my battery died mid-process). I had to let Solo sit and do its thing for almost 90 minutes. All the lights just stayed green while some funky buzzing and clicking sounds played inside the bird. Then suddenly the standard ready tones, all was good as new on reboot.

I did the same thing with help of customer support. I don't know if the show went on for 90 minutes but yes was quite the production with solo squeaking and blinking and changing colors. But I knew as soon as I took her outside and got gps lock in one minute my world had changed!
 
By "bricked", my controller was not completing updates, but would crash mid-update. I tried to do a factory reset, but the controller still crashed on the first update, and the drone would not pair to the controller.

I received the replacement quadcopter and controller yesterday, and the update process worked perfectly. The gimbal, of course, is still screwed. On the first bench test, it cannot pan down more than 10 degrees, the camera sends a video feed, but all camera controls are grayed out and I cannot record images. And so 3DR support is at again. Absurd sets of calibration instructions to fix possible problems were nearly statistically impossible to affect 2 separate quadcopters in a row. These fixes had no effect except to make matters worse, and now the solo now does not even recognize that a gimbal is attached. I send this message to tec support and they ask me to send a video from the camera highlighting the gimbal function problems - for the gimbal I told them no longer functioned at all. Shall I send 60 minutes of footage of the gimbal doing nothing?.

So, tech support waits until the last minute (4:48 pm) on a Friday before the holiday weekend, to again, ask me for video footage from and for hardware that no longer functions. I've given up and asked for a refund.
 
Did it come with the gimbal installed or did you put it in. Have you check both cables for proper seating yet. It sound like the data connection cable is not seated. You can blow or check a few more things out. Sorry to say if you installed the gimbal, just take a breath and double check your work. I just got a new drone with the gimbal in a bix. I had the exact issue
 
I had the Solo delivered with the gimbal installed. On the replacement, I re-installed the gimbal with particular care to make sure the HDMI and data cables remained on separate paths to the camera. Both cables are properly seated. I have re-checked my work twice.

This is not my job. I thought I was purchasing a tool that would let me map and model spaces, much like my friends are accomplishing on a daily basis.

In the past 45 minutes I've received 3 messages from former 3DR employees. It sounds like we are all fucked.
 
I had the Solo delivered with the gimbal installed. On the replacement, I re-installed the gimbal with particular care to make sure the HDMI and data cables remained on separate paths to the camera. Both cables are properly seated. I have re-checked my work twice.

This is not my job. I thought I was purchasing a tool that would let me map and model spaces, much like my friends are accomplishing on a daily basis.

In the past 45 minutes I've received 3 messages from former 3DR employees. It sounds like we are all fucked.
What the facts? We always getting somebody saying how #DR is going down. I'm just getting a little tired of the chicken little routine that keeps coming around.
 
Companies that treat their customers like this don't last very long.

And in this, I'm glad I did not use chat support. All I need to do now is post six weeks worth of the back and forth email exchanges with 3DR to prove fraud to my credit card company.
 
Wow. 6 weeks and they didn't take care of you. I wonder what you did to piss them off. I work with them and problem solved in a week.
 
After the second request to film video from a camera that I reported as broken twice, I politely asked my tech supporter to read my emails. This same absurd game of I say X is broken and the tech supporter says use X to do Y has happened four additional times.

So, I'm at Best Buy and Holy-Moly they sell 3DR gimbals!!! If I had only known this I could have saved my company $2000 in time wasted on useless "repairs." $212 from my own pocket later, the gimbal is installed and it's working PERFECTLY!!! Hooray!

And now my controller will not connect to the Solo. Head. Desk. Smash.
Head. Desk. Smash.
Head. Desk. Smash.
 
Pull the batteries from the controller and Solo and wait a few minutes. Reinstall and reboot.
 
I'm doing just that. On my fourth try, last time I made it to changing my password, but that crashed hard.

Almost there....
 
The Yuneec Typhoon H has already put the P4 in its place.

As for Solo it's got a long life ahead of it, the Arducopter team seem to have embraced Solo and there's the new hardware coming from project Night Raptor plus an annoucement soon which will underline Solo as an upgradeable platform for years to come.

Plus options are being looked into, using the Ublox M8P to give Solo RTK GPS which is centimetre level accurate. The optical flow/lidar was made opensource so can be added, with the software improving for that incrementally.
With all that is going on with 3DR, maybe the Typhoon H put the Solo in it's place, not the P4. Just saying. I think the sales of the P4 have already surpassed the Solo's sales.
 
Customer support for risky things is a difficult balancing act. Err on the side of treating misuse as an exception and then have non-stop returns and on the other side risk mistreating first adopters. I have felt that support can be tone-deaf and dismissive, but at the same time persistence is eventually rewarded. Still frustratng though.

As for only the solo and the controller, I'm guessing that's where the software and logs are and the gimbal only responds. Indeed, even in the documentation, reading gimbal info only returns what it was last set to not the current value being reported by the gimbal.

On the other hand, if the gimbal has some sort of hardware error (as it's supposed to be in charge of maintaining pitch), why delay returning it?

I wish there was an answer to this OP's post. I decided to upgrade/update my second solo, and it has bricked. Leaving both Controller and Solo on until batteries die did no good.Removed batts from both devices, Factory reset both...nada. No pairing going on over here. Just a controller that says it's been updated and needs to pair.
Tech support email wasn't all that helpful. For the moment, the prize for tech support goes to Yuneec.
 

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