SidePilot 4+

Much Better now in Dec 24

I had an early version and haven’t flown the drone in a while, and the drone wasn’t very stable figuring out if the gyros needed recalibration was fairly complicated, and this new version the app itself told me the gyros needed reconfiguration went into the configuration and walked me through it simply by hitting, turning on its side hitting next. excellent Job improvements.

The drone is much more stable as well
Probably because the gyros are properly configured now

Terrible.

Used with 3DR Solo drone. DOES NOT work properly. Has caused my drone to crash twice when trying to land and destroy its propellers.

I’ll preface this with saying that I never had ANY issues like this with the stock 3DR app before 3DR disappeared from the App Store…no crashes or any other bugs like below.

I updated all necessary firmware; the app will allow drone to fly but has several issues.

- When trying to land, the drone will get squirrely and randomly throttle up even though I’m holding the throttle all the way down as required when landing - it will have quick spurts of full throttle then stop, then full throttle again (all while throttle is held down at 0%). It tends to catch two side legs on the ground, then flip over and destroys the props, and will not shut off no matter what you do with the throttle or any buttons. I had to hold the drone in my hand with the throttle held down, but it continued to throttle itself up until the battery finally died.

- Will not trigger the GoPro to begin recording.

- Will not allow parameter changes to be synced to drone.

- With full, healthy battery the app says that the battery is critically low within 1 minute of flight time and wants to return “home”.

This app is terrible. Don’t use it.

Developer Response ,

Hi JYedi263,

Sorry to hear you’re having issues with your Solo.
I’d just like to point out that the throttle issues you described have nothing to do with the app as it does not control your throttle in any way, and you should refer to the 3DR Solo owners Facebook group for advice on that, as it is odd behaviour.

For your gopro issues, is your gopro in the stock Solo gimbal? Are you able to take a photo/start recording using the paddle on the controller? If you are not able to then it isn’t an app issue and may be a gimbal issue.

For parameter issue, please send me an email at tom@sidepilot.net with details on what isn’t getting saved to the Solo.

For the battery, unfortunately as the Solo is quite old now, the batteries are far past their useful date and will not hold a full charge for long. If the app is indicating critical battery, then it is likely that the battery is reporting that to Solo itself and is once again, not an app issue.

These ‘issues’ you describe should be easily resolved if you would like to get in contact with me for assistance.

Thanks,
Tom

Brought my Solo back to life

I don’t really leave reviews ever, but this app is so fantastic that I almost felt obligated to. Like a lot of people, when support ended for my Solo drone, the app was gone and I had eventually moved on with my phone so I could no longer fly my drone.

Recently I dusted it off to see if I could get it going again and immediately had issues with calibration, but since the app was gone I couldn’t calibrate it, and couldn’t even fly it in manual mode. I found this app and used it to upgrade the firmware on both the drone and the controller with ease, and I was also able to calibrate the drone and get it flying with my live video feed working as well.

I’m just now starting to mess with the map and waypoints and everything, but it looks intuitive so far, and there is good documentation provided.

If you have a 3DR Solo that’s dead in the water, this app gives you everything you need to get her back in the air. I *highly* recommend it.