Solo Development Area

Other than a few tests when I first got Solo in 15', I don't use Acro or drive it hard now anymore anyway. And when I did, it was before the changes and it was fine. And I doubt Fly or Manual will drive it hard enough to make a difference as those modes don't allow full power to the motors like Stab and Acro. I'll keep flying 152 until something better or dangerous code materializes..
 
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Me too. I haven't had time to actually dig into the parameters on 1.5.2 yet. I need to disable or adjust that distance based failsafe. That's the only thing that isn't working in useful manner for me on 1.5.2. It may be working as intended, or it may be dysfunctional. Either way I want to change it.

I believe I saw the new landing detection algorithm doing its thing, and it worked nicely.
 
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Me too. I haven't had time to actually dig into the parameters on 1.5.2 yet. I need to disable or adjust that distance based failsafe. That's the only thing that isn't working in useful manner for me on 1.5.2. It may be working as intended, or it may be dysfunctional. Either way I want to change it.

I believe I saw the new landing detection algorithm doing its thing, and it worked nicely.
Let me know what you change and how it works for you. I haven't dug into it yet.
 
Me too. I haven't had time to actually dig into the parameters on 1.5.2 yet. I need to disable or adjust that distance based failsafe. That's the only thing that isn't working in useful manner for me on 1.5.2. It may be working as intended, or it may be dysfunctional. Either way I want to change it.

I believe I saw the new landing detection algorithm doing its thing, and it worked nicely.

Take a look at this attached (remove the .txt on file extension). See FS_BATT_CURR_RTL. :)
 

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Probably Monday after work I will tinker with the parameters some more. Just flew another pack while visiting my Dad's. The new landing detection is definitely doing it's thing. You can see it do the "landing maybe" portion, and it takes a second or so longer to shut down. But does so very reliably.
 
I just flew a couple of batts as well and also noticed another second or 2 to shut down in manual.
 
Are you saying 1.5.2 has the modified code to prevent burning out the ESCs? Confident or speculating?
The changes that were originally put in are still there, however, there are some other changes in the same motor code and I wouldn't want to speculate on whether they would pose a risk or not, however I'd suspect not.

I'd just keep an eye on changes before committing firmware in future. I can understand why some of you have chosen to flash the firmware as there are some good bug fixes for the GPS in the code.

Incidentally there are Solos now flying on Master (with alpha testers), so keep an eye on the progress there as the consumer Solo (with Pixhawk 2.1) is best being flashed with Arducopter Master when it's ready.

Hopefully there should be a video example of Solo on Master in the coming weeks.
 
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Ian, are the DF13 connectors different on the sitescan motorpods? Are there any other distinguishing characteristics?
View attachment 5070
The Sitescan ESCs are the same, albeit a capacitor has been changed. That's all I know.

So they take a normal Solo motorpod and they manually make changes to the ESC and the Sitescan Solo also has an M8N put in as well.
 
Me too. I haven't had time to actually dig into the parameters on 1.5.2 yet. I need to disable or adjust that distance based failsafe. That's the only thing that isn't working in useful manner for me on 1.5.2. It may be working as intended, or it may be dysfunctional. Either way I want to change it.

I believe I saw the new landing detection algorithm doing its thing, and it worked nicely.
Hey Pedals, have you noticed if your GP is still turning on with the Solo? Mine still turns off but is not longer powering up the GP with the Solo. Not sure if it is the new FW or something else..
 
The old Arducopter battery MAH remaining failsafe was 520mah. That was 10-12% battery remaining, and about 1.4 minutes of flying time. In the latest solo Arducopter firmware (1.5.2), it was increased to 670mah. That will kick the failsafe in at 12-15%, and be just shy of 2 minutes flying time. This is probably not a bad idea. You just need to expect it as part of your flight planning now. If it is impractical for what you're doing, you can change it back to 520, or whatever you want.

FS_CURRENT_RTL is the new parameter it uses in the distance based battery failsafe, and the default is 30. I presume this is amps. And I presume this is telling the calculation how much current is used in flight. It is really only using 20-22 amps though, not 30. Which explains why the failsafe is kicking in so damn early now. I'm getting failsafes kicking in around 20% thanks to this, which seems ridiculous.

So reading about it in the github notes, I found "helps ensure that energy-based failsafe results in at least 10% remaining on landing." So basically they artificially increased the calculated current use to force the failsafe to engage sooner. I changed it to 22 amps to be more realistic. But I understand why they did it, since they're coding it for the lowest common denominator of users.
 
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The motors on Solo are perfectly fine, the teathered Solo ran over 40 days 24/7 then at NAB so the motors last well past the suggested replacement time of around 150 hours. Any motor pods failures have been due to ESCs and not motors.

It's a FET that is different on the Sitescan Solo ESCs.
The Sitescan ESCs are the same, albeit a capacitor has been changed. That's all I know.

So they take a normal Solo motorpod and they manually make changes to the ESC and the Sitescan Solo also has an M8N put in as well

You've made, what appears to be, conflicting statements. So is it the FETs, capacitor or both?
 
The old Arducopter battery MAH remaining failsafe was 520mah. That was 10-12% battery remaining, and about 1.4 minutes of flying time. In the latest solo Arducopter firmware (1.5.2), it was increased to 670mah. That will kick the failsafe in at 12-15%, and be just shy of 2 minutes flying time. This is probably not a bad idea. You just need to expect it as part of your flight planning now. If it is impractical for what you're doing, you can change it back to 520, or whatever you want.

FS_CURRENT_RTL is the new parameter it uses in the distance based battery failsafe, and the default is 30. I presume this is amps. And I presume this is telling the calculation how much current is used in flight. It is really only using 20-22 amps though, not 30. Which explains why the failsafe is kicking in so damn early now. I'm getting failsafes kicking in around 20% thanks to this, which seems ridiculous.

So reading about it in the github notes, I found "helps ensure that energy-based failsafe results in at least 10% remaining on landing." So basically they artificially increased the calculated current use to force the failsafe to engage sooner. I changed it to 22 amps to be more realistic. But I understand why they did it, since they're coding it for the lowest common denominator of users.

I forgot to tell you it was set at 26 prior to going to 30. Not that it matters, 22 looks good to me too. They are worried about a little heavier bird...
 
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Hey Pedals, have you noticed if your GP is still turning on with the Solo? Mine still turns off but is not longer powering up the GP with the Solo. Not sure if it is the new FW or something else..

Interesting--I'll take a look at the code just to make sure. For me it was the upgrade to 5 on my GoPro that caused the issue.
 
Interesting--I'll take a look at the code just to make sure. For me it was the upgrade to 5 on my GoPro that caused the issue.
Thanks Carpy, Never did the GP upgrade as it didn't offer anything I wanted and I like the power on/off feature.
 
My GoPro is on v4, so it wouldn't have turned on anyway. Couldn't tell if you if it tried or not.
 
Thanks Carpy, Never did the GP upgrade as it didn't offer anything I wanted and I like the power on/off feature.

Went through all the changes again--can't see anything having to do with the GoPro. Definitely are changes for the R10C Sony...
 
You've made, what appears to be, conflicting statements. So is it the FETs, capacitor or both?
The FETs were the component that was blowing prior to the software change. A capacitor is the component that is replaced on the ESC for Sitescan.
 
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So if the new camera changes are for the Sony, is that not eventually going to mess with a stock solo working with a gopro?
 
I should add, there's some very positive noises about Solo code in the future, with the suggestion there's some ex-3DR staff willing to help build on the existing non-Arducopter code so that once Solo is on Master it needn't just be the flight controller code that will evolve.

So I've got my fingers crossed.
 
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So if the new camera changes are for the Sony, is that not eventually going to mess with a stock solo working with a gopro?

No, the Sony has it's own code separate from the GoPro. I believe you can use Site Scan with the GoPro too.
 

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