It’s funny how this has worked out. 3DR built a great consumer drone, but couldn’t make a successful business out of it. So they abandoned it, leaving it up to the community to keep things going. Which they did, in a big way. As a result, it seems there is no other consumer drone available with the life this one appears to have. Great job to everyone involved with this! I have 5 of these birds, so my grandkids will probably flying Solo too. 
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With all of the complaints currently swirling around DJI’s draconian geofencing system, it will be interesting to see if this leads to an actual competitor for commercial (e.g. Part 107 etc.) users.
The GoPro is unfortunately a limiting factor in the solo today. However this all opens the door to additional gimbal and camera combinations.
Yes – but it is a huge limiting factor that GoPro. And is anyone else really stepping up with another gimbal/camera? Cannot see it happening.
I really wonder if integrating with DJIs X3/X4 and/or even Phantom gimbals would not be a bad approach. Someone has already produced an adaptor for the X5/X3 (the guys that do UGCS). Since this will never be mainstream, maybe DJI will not kill such efforts. Unlikely though.
I think it will be a DIY effort for new gimbal options. You can put a conventional gimbal on the solo for any camera you want. Including the mavlink controlled Storm32.
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True, but can you do Smart Shots with a conventional gimbal?
And just how well is Mavlink controlled Storm32 working these days? I got the impression that Olli was a little frustrated with Mavlink implementation. Is this actively being developed still?
The smart shots work. We have one user working with a Storm32 right now. Manual pitch works. But some shots the pitch goes backwards. Haven’t figured out why yet, but it is likely an easy fix once we find it.
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Oh good news and good work!
That is great !! I’m delighted to hear this news. Well done on this hard work !
Does the recent move by 3DR to finally, and very belatedly, release all the Solo code mean that we will be able to make the Storm32 gimbal controller work with Solo and smart shots?
Will we be able to recreate a Solo-like platform on other hardware?
Hey Matt – can you point me in the direction of where the Solo using Storm32 is documented?
I have a storm32 gimbal on my solo I’ll see if I can dig up any documentation
Is the gimbal pitch working properly in both manual and smart shots with the Storm32?
Their is a discrepancy between the Solo transmitters reported tilt angle and the The Storm32 reported tilt angle. When conducting a smart shot the gimbal tilts in the opposite direction of where it should. If you look at the Solo transmitter when the gimbal is pointed straight ahead the transmitter reads 90 degrees, and so does the Storm as reported by Mavlink.
The problem is when you point the gimbal down with the Solo transmitter the lcd displays that it is looking straight down at 0 degrees, while the storm says it is looking down at 180 degrees. In my opinion, the Solo transmitter tilt angles are backwards. This can be further demonstrated by connecting to Mission Planner and sending ROI commands. Once this is fixed one could mount almost any camera to the solo with a storm and get smart shot functionality. I had been working on fixing this since last year, but have fallen short of time to do it since my little one arrived.
I’ll add that if using a storm with a Solo it works perfectly fine when controlling it manually, and provided a number of parameters are changed, up is up and down is down. Best results are when using a Storm32NT gimbal controller with dual imu to eliminate any yaw drift.
That’s what happened with @jubalr as well. Neither of us could figure out why it is doing that in the smart shots.
hey
I very much appreciate your efforts to marry the solo with the STorM32. I just want to tell that I would be happy to support this. Pl don’t hesitate to contact me if there is something the STorM32 should do differently/better in order get the smart shots working.
I wouldn’t be of direct help, though, as I don’t have a Solo (sadly the cheap offers are only in the US).
cheers, Olli
What would the limitations be with merging Storm32 NT with Ardupilot? CPU?
There is no limitation. It works connected via Mavlink serial right now. There are just some issues that cause the smart shots to sometimes tilt in the wrong direction. See other threads here on Ardupliot.org discussing the ways to fix these issues.
Unless you are talking about running STorM32 on the flight controller and the problem would be space and horsepower.
To be more precise, running it natively on the autopilot. Is there enough resources left on cube to do so? Is there any interest even?
Again, to have the ability to simply plug in a couple of NT imus’ And NT motor modules to an unused uart/serial on a cube would be amazing. Of course powere would need to be derived from power distribution, but we are already using hardware in that fashion.
Keeping setups light, modular and as simple as possible is of value. This has been my focus with the Solo’s artoo gear and Ardupilot and storm32nt. Why, because they all already talk the same language, MAVLINK.
Arducopter is at 913k out of the 1mb limit imposed by the STM processor defect. So it would be too tight.