G’day all -
Have been absent from the world of Drones for a couple of years, but recently returned only to happily discover that OpenSolo and ArduPilot - have lifted all of us stock 3DR Solo Owners, up and out from obscurity!
Looking to migrate both my Controller and Solo, fully across to OpenSolo v4 - but have noticed a couple of shortcomings in the upgrade instructions as follows ;
( I’m specifically looking for assistance from someone who has successfully performed migration to both their Solo and Controller - expressly and exclusively via SSH! - So please, I don’t need any of those, ‘…just use Solex / …just use SidePilot’, upgrade suggestions, eh? )
In a nutshell - All I’m looking to discover are the missing elements, which once understood, will permit anyone to achieve a successful upgrade path, for any bog-stock factory original 3DR Solo and its Controller - exclusively via SSH.
Currently, instructions for those looking to upgrade via SSH, ( found over on GitHub ), contain some caveats, which unfortunately lead further still - into some additionally unanswered ambiguities…
First link ;
https://github.com/OpenSolo/OpenSolo/wiki/Install-via-SSH
Contained within these instructions, is the first caveat for upgrade via SSH, as follows ;
‘If you are upgrading a stock cube that still has the old 3DR 1.3.2 or 1.5.4 ArduCopter firmware, you need to install ArduCopter 4.0 first! The old firmware is so old, it will not play nicely during the full IMX update, so we need to do it separately first. Visit the ArduCopter Firmware for instructions.’
So, over we go to the associated GitHub ArduCopter Firmware Page, for instructions on how to manually SSH upgrade this specific firmware just for the Solo, all before performing the SSH upgrade to OpenSolo ;
https://github.com/OpenSolo/OpenSolo/wiki/ArduCopter-Firmware
Over on this new page, it quickly becomes apparent that even though the specific firmware required for this upgrade can be SSH’d into your Solo, ( as per the instructions found at the bottom of the page for SSH ), it won’t work in any case, as stated further up on the same page ;
‘Note: Older versions of ArduCopter used old NuttX RTOS based firmware and a .px4 file extension. This includes the ArduCopter versions included in Open Solo 3 and from 3DR. ArduCopter 3.7 uses the new ChibiOS RTOS. These firmware files have a file extension of .apj. Due to the file extension change, the firmware will not load without some additional file changes. The beta testing packages in Solex and SidePilot include this.’
My question is, where are all of these necessary file changes documented?
With fingies-crossed, I’ve tried ‘just to see’, if the Solo will simply take the prescribed ‘arducopter.apj’ firmware - SSH’d directly into the Solo at ‘/firmware’ as instructed - but as expected, after a reboot the Solo simply deletes the file…
Anyone hovering about, with an idea or two?
Cheers in advance - Solo-Loco
(c;=