Tower app. Input GPS coordinate.

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Guys, sorry if this question has already been asked elsewhere. I did a search and reviewed other posts but didn't come across anything similar to what I need. Also viewed YouTube tutorials but, still, same thing.

This is what I need. I have State Plane coordinates which I need to convert to Lat / Long and then to GPS coordinates. I want to input those coordinates into waypoints instead of tapping in a waypoint on the screen which won't be precise. When the Solo gets to the waypoint, I want it to hover until we get there. Once we're done doing what we need to at that waypoint, I need to tell Solo to resume to the next waypoint.

How can I accomplish this? Thanks in advance brothers for your assistance. This is my first volunteer project for my local club. We're actually doing this project for another club who wants us to put markers on their property boundary.
 
Sounds like a lot of work and conversions to rely on. I use Tower quite a bit and what you want to do would be simple in Tower. But I would use a satellite map to look at the SP coordinates and zoom all the way in and skip any conversions. Then I would use Tower to zoom in at the same spot and place a WP.
 
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Sounds like a lot of work and conversions to rely on. I use Tower quite a bit and what you want to do would be simple in Tower. But I would use a satellite map to look at the SP coordinates and zoom all the way in and skip any conversions. Then I would use Tower to zoom in at the same spot and place a WP.

Thanks for the info/tip. I hope there's no rain tomorrow so I can do a small test in the field.
 
Thanks for the info/tip. I hope there's no rain tomorrow so I can do a small test in the field.
Sure, let us know how you did. SP coordinates are very accurate and that's great. But regardless of what you start with you are still flying Solo with a consumer grade GPS receiver in it. Zooming in and placing your WPs is about as close as you are going to get anyway. Put a GPS coordinate in manually and your Solo will still be flying with just 10-20' accuracy at best.
 
Got an official word from 3DR support that they don't support direct input of coordinates in Tower. Personally, I find this a bit odd for software that allows an operator to perform what essentially equates to surveying pieces of land? Like...a shovel...without the shovel...but you can use the handle to kinda sorta dig. Anyhow, winds too gusty today to do a test. Will have to wait until tomorrow. uuuuugh.
 
If you have access to a windows machine running Mission Planner, you can directly enter GPS coords in a mission. Save/Upload the mission to Solo, and then use Tower to trigger the saved autonomous mission out in the field.
 
Got an official word from 3DR support that they don't support direct input of coordinates in Tower. Personally, I find this a bit odd for software that allows an operator to perform what essentially equates to surveying pieces of land? Like...a shovel...without the shovel...but you can use the handle to kinda sorta dig. Anyhow, winds too gusty today to do a test. Will have to wait until tomorrow. uuuuugh.

Drone,

I've used Tower quite a bit and I agree with Jubalr. You should be able to get pretty damned close using the method he described. A little bit of tweaking may be necessary depending on what you're trying to achieve but I don't think it will be very much. I've done 3 mile Tower runs that have been pretty much dead-on. I think your getting a bit caught up in the coordinates idea (although it would be easier, I can do as you're describing using Litchi and my P3Pro). Give it a shot using Jubalr's method before you get too strung out. Just my opinion, of course. Good luck!

Jerry
 
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If you have access to a windows machine running Mission Planner, you can directly enter GPS coords in a mission. Save/Upload the mission to Solo, and then use Tower to trigger the saved autonomous mission out in the field.

Okay, I'm going to put it on a laptop to bring with me so I can also try that method if I'm able to directly input. Thanks.
 
Mission Planner is the grand daddy. It has tons of features including an actual Survey mode. Tower is slowly implementing them, but unlikely to get all features (like survey). I'm not an MP expert, but it most likely will do everything you want it to. The tricky part would be the waiting until you get to the waypoint before manually triggering to go to the next, but It's probably possible. Or you might have to fake it with adding delays. It might also be possible to pause/resume a mission in progress. Again, I'm not an expert but MP is a very capable piece of software. None of the others come close.

However, Tower has Solo specific features and Mission Planner is general purpose. There are some things you wouldn't be able to do with the Solo that you could with another quad. For instance, there aren't any extra programmable buttons on the Controller that you could send to trigger some features of Mission Planner. There are some ways to hack that, but it involves modifying the Solos guts.
 
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Drone,

I've used Tower quite a bit and I agree with Jubalr. You should be able to get pretty damned close using the method he described. A little bit of tweaking may be necessary depending on what you're trying to achieve but I don't think it will be very much. I've done 3 mile Tower runs that have been pretty much dead-on. I think your getting a bit caught up in the coordinates idea (although it would be easier, I can do as you're describing using Litchi and my P3Pro). Give it a shot using Jubalr's method before you get too strung out. Just my opinion, of course. Good luck!

Jerry
Bro, "strung out", is exactly how I've been feeling with coords and conversion from Gismo and Earthlink. Ugh. But, yeah, I'm going to try out his method first and then the other using Mission Planner on a laptop. Might as well get exposure to both methods while I'm at it. There's nothing like a double-triple-whammy learning curve! *rolls eyes*. lol
 
Bro, "strung out", is exactly how I've been feeling with coords and conversion from Gismo and Earthlink. Ugh. But, yeah, I'm going to try out his method first and then the other using Mission Planner on a laptop. Might as well get exposure to both methods while I'm at it. There's nothing like a double-triple-whammy learning curve! *rolls eyes*. lol

Drone,

I hear ya! Just be careful that you don't bite off too much, too soon. As Steve noted, MP is the Grand Daddy but it'll take some learning. Tower will take a bit of learning too but it's a little less complex. It'd be a lot easier to help if we (I) knew what you were trying to achieve. Tower is somewhat simplistic but it's a bit more robust than many think. If you're trying to do advanced maneuvers, it may be a bit lacking but if you're trying to get images of certain items or features it should be able to fill the bill. It's too hard to say based on what I've been able to understand is your objective. You should be able to "test" some of these strategies before going out into the field for the real deal. Just my opinions.

Jerry
 
Drone,

I hear ya! Just be careful that you don't bite off too much, too soon. As Steve noted, MP is the Grand Daddy but it'll take some learning. Tower will take a bit of learning too but it's a little less complex. It'd be a lot easier to help if we (I) knew what you were trying to achieve. Tower is somewhat simplistic but it's a bit more robust than many think. If you're trying to do advanced maneuvers, it may be a bit lacking but if you're trying to get images of certain items or features it should be able to fill the bill. It's too hard to say based on what I've been able to understand is your objective. You should be able to "test" some of these strategies before going out into the field for the real deal. Just my opinions.

Jerry

I'm part of my local Las Vegas Soaring Club, still a new member, and I volunteered along with four other senior members of the club who was asked by our neighbor across the street, a gun club, to use our capabilities to locate GPS coordinates that mark their property line, and have a crew install warning posts to hikers using unofficial trails to get into the shooting range. Our club actually is within their property line too so it's only natural / logical they ask us to do it.

I'm actually the volunteer designated to simply get 4K orbit footage of the range while one of the senior members who has a ground station capability of flying his Phantom to a GPS coord is officially designated to do the plotting/surveying. A small crew from the gun range tethered to our ground control members via walkie-talkies will be following the Phantom in ATVs to the spots where it will loiter and then move onto the next spot until all the coordinates given are marked. As far as I know from our prep exercise at our airfield on Saturday, they're using a separate ground station mounted on a tripod that's connected with the Phantom as an additional FPV, calling out the GPS coordinate which he then flies to. One of the senior members is already working out the SP to GPS coords and didn't want to bother him with noob questions that's out of scope for my volunteer role. Was thinking, "afterward", I'll pick his brain. One other senior member will be taking his winged aircraft to do video footage of the surrounding mountain ridge. Really eager to get footage of his bird taking off.

While we were at it on the official project day, I wanted to be able to take advantage of the Solo's capabilities to do a post-implementation flight to all the posted markers and have 4K video results the gun club owners can use for "verification" and "auditing" purposes of the effort and also for my club to use for use-case learning, marketing or whatever.

I want to take advantage of this opportunity to learn what the Phantom will be doing, using the "Solo way", i.e. plotting out the locations using Tower / Mission Planner, with the learning curve also taking me down the route of having to learn State Plane measurement, Plat maps, County Assessor map which isn't really a map but more like the lines that would be on a map, Google Earth etc, etc. Ugh. I thought that part was going to be a slam dunk but, it's not. One good grief moment I had was trying to superimpose the Assessor's bare bone map onto the Google Earth map and I was like, dammit, why isn't this part the easiest?? Lol.

So, yeah, the above is the 360 foot overview of what I, we're trying to accomplish. I'm just making it more hard on myself trying to learn it all at once for and from the perspective of a Solo user. On the selfish side, I'm trying to build up my UAS related resume.

I can confirm with no hesitation whatsoever that this site, and you guys, are the absolutely the best for someone crazy like me trying to learn all this stuff at the same time. I'm appreciative at all the information and assistance I've gotten thus far. It's a much needed "overlay" on top of all the learning curve ugh-ness to which at some point in my future, I can say to another, my resume wouldn't be where it's at if it wasn't for "these guys", i.e. this site and you all.
 
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I wrote, "While we were at it on the official project day, I wanted to be able to take advantage of the Solo's capabilities to do a post-implementation flight to all the posted markers and have 4K video results the gun club owners can use for "verification" and "auditing" purposes of the effort and also for my club to use for use-case learning, marketing or whatever."

My purpose / goal with the post-implementation flight was to fly to each marker, hover directly above it with the gimbal pointing my gopro down and above the marker and afterward, extract my flight logs and use the data to verify the accuracy of the marker to its GPS coordinate. I thought that would be a nice additional deliverable to give the gun club owners.
 
I thought that would be a nice additional deliverable to give the gun club owners.

Drone,

Wow! I'll have to chew on this a bit. Sounds like your trying too hard to me but what do I know. Sounds like a fantastic opportunity to learn from some experienced pilots. I'm not sure I'd be as eager to highlight my capabilities with a group or project like that right out of the chute. Can't you go back on your own and do what you're interested in doing?

I'll give it a better read and some more thought later. I've finally got the opportunity to just fly! The weather broke here in the boonies for a few hours. Clear sky, no wind, not too cold. I've already burned 5 Solo batteries and am moving on to try to do the same with the "white" one. No testing, no screwing around with camera settings, just sharpening my flying skills. I truly love flying the Solo in manual! She's a pretty maneuverable bird.

Jerry
 
Property boundaries are not defined by coordinates, SPC, LL, "GPS" or other. So you're attempting to mark an undefined line using an autonomous gps that, as mentioned previously, is maybe accurate to 20'. From the air.
 
Mission Planner is the grand daddy. It has tons of features including an actual Survey mode. Tower is slowly implementing them, but unlikely to get all features (like survey). I'm not an MP expert, but it most likely will do everything you want it to. The tricky part would be the waiting until you get to the waypoint before manually triggering to go to the next, but It's probably possible. Or you might have to fake it with adding delays. It might also be possible to pause/resume a mission in progress. Again, I'm not an expert but MP is a very capable piece of software. None of the others come close.

However, Tower has Solo specific features and Mission Planner is general purpose. There are some things you wouldn't be able to do with the Solo that you could with another quad. For instance, there aren't any extra programmable buttons on the Controller that you could send to trigger some features of Mission Planner. There are some ways to hack that, but it involves modifying the Solos guts.
Steve, not sure what you are saying above. Did you not know that Tower has Survey and even Spline Survey modes? Tower has come a long way and doesn't lack much from MP outside of live status modes and post flight analysis. But most of the flight / WP stuff is there. Along with certainly more intuitive to use.
 
I've never used Tower with my Solo, but I have used it with other quads.

For pausing/continuing the flight, if you'll always be within controller range, separate missions might be the way to accomplish this. I'm pretty sure you can upload a mission while the Solo is already in the air. The only question is whether it can upload a new mission while Solo is already executing a current one. If it can, then you could just save out a mission consisting of a single waypoint (entered by GPS coordinates in MP) for each location you want to go and set the waypoint type to LOITER_UNLIM (loiter for an unlimited amount of time). It'll go there and stay. When you're ready to go to the next, just upload the next mission and re-initiate auto mode.

Again, the only possible issue is if it won't allow a new mission to be uploaded while it's still executing a current one, but that should be pretty easy to test.
 
I've never used Tower with my Solo, but I have used it with other quads.

For pausing/continuing the flight, if you'll always be within controller range, separate missions might be the way to accomplish this. I'm pretty sure you can upload a mission while the Solo is already in the air. The only question is whether it can upload a new mission while Solo is already executing a current one. If it can, then you could just save out a mission consisting of a single waypoint (entered by GPS coordinates in MP) for each location you want to go and set the waypoint type to LOITER_UNLIM (loiter for an unlimited amount of time). It'll go there and stay. When you're ready to go to the next, just upload the next mission and re-initiate auto mode.

Again, the only possible issue is if it won't allow a new mission to be uploaded while it's still executing a current one, but that should be pretty easy to test.
They could also put in a long delay at that specific point, or assuming they will be in control range they can simply press the 'Pause' button in Tower. Hitting 'Auto' again fill continue from where they paused it. Also, as long as Solo is in an Un-guided mode, like' Fly', missions can be uploaded and executed. But I think the Pause would work better for a continuous mission.
 
They could also put in a long delay at that specific point, or assuming they will be in control range they can simply press the 'Pause' button in Tower. Hitting 'Auto' again fill continue from where they paused it. Also, as long as Solo is in an Un-guided mode, like' Fly', missions can be uploaded and executed. But I think the Pause would work better for a continuous mission.

Ok, if the pause button works in auto, that's definitely the way to go. Predetermined delays would be tough, if they're too long or too short, the discrepancy with the people on the ground would grow with each way point. But if you can just pause it, and then restart the mission, that seems like it'd be perfect.
 
I wrote, "While we were at it on the official project day, I wanted to be able to take advantage of the Solo's capabilities to do a post-implementation flight to all the posted markers and have 4K video results the gun club owners can use for "verification" and "auditing" purposes of the effort and also for my club to use for use-case learning, marketing or whatever..

Drone,

Looks like you're getting a concerns us here. I hope you get a chance to do some testing soon! Good luck, we'll all be anxious to here that it all went well for you!

Jerry
 

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