Upgraded cards now solo drops signal, does RTH and will not regain signal

SolidWrecks · Sep 21, 2015

Hello,

I've exhausted 3DR support on this issue. I hope people here can help as I'm looking at something like a broken drone. I will explain it as best as I can.

I've upgraded the wifi cards in the solo and on the controller and added external antenna ports.

Now, it will fly and what not but if I make a hard manuver, it will drop signal and RTH with red lights flashing. I can get up close to the solo with my controller and it will not regain signal. It just sits on the ground with blinking red lights. It's like it locked up or reached a fault and limped home. If I power cycle the solo and controller, it will be good to go again. I'm not an expert when it comes to interpreting logs but I have SSH'd into the controller because I had to calibrate my sticks since my gimbal was not working. Is there a diagnostic log like /var/dmesg I can grab to see if it is something where there is a g force issue or if there is a power management issue? I will PM a link to logs to anyone willing to take a look.

Thanks in advance for any help

Maddog · Sep 21, 2015

How well did it fly before all the mods? Will 3dr RMA it?

nuggetz · Sep 21, 2015

There are dmesg output logs on the Solo. Have you tried looking at a few? Post your logs here. Maybe someone might find something that 3DR missed.

tesmithp · Sep 22, 2015

I would be suspicious of a the antenna connections in solo since you mention losing connection during a hard maneuver. Did you silicone the uFL connectors?

SolidWrecks · Sep 22, 2015

Maddog said:
How well did it fly before all the mods? Will 3dr RMA it?

It flew fine. The range was pretty bad if wifi was close which is why I did the mod. 3dr says I'm on my own since that presume it was caused by my mod. I can't challenge that fact.

SolidWrecks · Sep 22, 2015

tesmithp said:
I would be suspicious of a the antenna connections in solo since you mention losing connection during a hard maneuver. Did you silicone the uFL connectors?

I hot glued them in place. The signal comes back fine after a power cycle.

tesmithp · Sep 22, 2015

Have you modified the hostapd.conf files yet?

Video - Software mod to increase radio range - hostapd.conf | Page 10 | 3D Robotics Drone Forum

SolidWrecks · Sep 22, 2015

tesmithp said:
Have you modified the hostapd.conf files yet?

Video - Software mod to increase radio range - hostapd.conf | Page 10 | 3D Robotics Drone Forum

Not yet. Wanted to isolate the variables. I'll do that and see if it fixes it. If not, I'll put the old cards back in I guess.

ChrisM101 · Sep 22, 2015

Wait you said you did external antennas, what did u use for the external antennas?

SolidWrecks · Sep 23, 2015

ChrisM101 said:
Wait you said you did external antennas, what did u use for the external antennas?

Low gain dipole antennae. Will get CP clover antennae at some point

ChrisM101 · Sep 23, 2015

SolidWrecks said:
Low gain dipole antennae. Will get CP clover antennae at some point

Are you certain the connections are good and that the antenna was in fact 2.4g

tesmithp · Sep 23, 2015

Would love to see pics of how you did the antennas..

SolidWrecks · Sep 23, 2015

I moved the ports forward some. Now they are next to the gimbal.

tesmithp said:
Would love to see pics of how you did the antennas..

ChrisM101 · Sep 23, 2015

SolidWrecks said:
View attachment 1276
I moved the ports forward some. Now they are next to the gimbal.

I've got the parts to do this but no solo because it's again on RMA. Point them down to the ground. I believe that by default solos antenna polarization was vertical since they were in the legs.