Last-sell for many legacy 3DR product

Hello everyone,

As you know, 3DR released Solo nearly a year ago and since then has been firmly focused on extending its capabilities. While many of our legacy products, including IRIS+ and X8+, continue to serve customers well, their time in the 3DR store has come to an end.

At the end of January, we will officially sunset most of our legacy products; they will no longer be available for purchase from 3DR. As such, I invite you to visit our store today for your last orders of IRIS+, X8+ accessories, FPV equipment, cables and more!

After the end of January, we will continue to sell products in the Solo and Pixhawk families. We will also offer a small selection of IRIS+ accessories and consumables (batteries, propellers, and so forth) through the end of March. And, of course, we will continue to offer the same excellent customer and technical support (including replacement components) for our legacy products.

Thanks to you all for your constant support of 3DR. We continue to work to bring you the best drone experiences in the world and to enable you to get the shot every time.

Best wishes,

3DR

Piotr: I respect you and what you've done with Paparazzi, but your comments are factually incorrect. Let me put some facts on the table:

3DR is by no means pulling out of Open Source -- indeed, we are increasing our investment. We contribute more than $1 million per year to the APM, PX4 and Dronecode open source software projects, between direct support of Dronecode, financial support of APM and PX4 developers and internal developers who contribute open source code to those projects.
We have also invested millions of dollars into creating Open Source Hardware, including the APM and Pixhawk hardware, which we freely gave away to the community under terms that allowed both commercial and non-noncommercial use. We also provide 24/7 customer support for that hardware.
Our employees and contractors are not only part of the Dronecode community, they lead it (and I'm the Chairman of Dronecode)
We're actually focused on Commercial products rather than Consumer. Right now the market is focused on Consumer because of the clear use cases, low regulatory barriers and easy sales channels. But this is just part of a "consumerization of the enterprise" path, and what you'll see over the next few months is that our Solo platform and the others in the works are actually designed for expansion into more professional use, which is where we think UAVs will have their biggest impact.

There are definitely companies that live off our community without contributing to it, but I hope you can see that 3DR is a huge champion and sponsor of both Open Source and the communities that create it. (you are, after all, commenting on the community site I created and run, and I'm responding!) I don't think there's any company in the UAV world that has done more than us in this respect and we've only just begun.

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3D Robotics

Chris Anderson January 30, 2016 at 10:27pm

Laser: It seems like I have to retype this every week here, but I guess that's my lot so here goes: We're not releasing stand-alone PH2 because it is too tightly integrated into Solo to well work on its own without a lot of other parts that are in Solo, such as Sololink, the Sololink ground controller, "carrier" i/o boards for both copters and planes, the new GPS, software, etc. In short, just releasing the PH2 cube in Solo does little good, since without the other Solo elements it does no more than PH1, and the cost of producing and supporting those other parts from scratch is too high to justify for the likely volumes. That said, the PH2 design is open source and there are other teams within Dronecode that are hoping to produce PH2 themselves.

3DR itself will soon be releasing a smaller, cheaper version of PH1 with improved sensors, and then moving to next-generation autopilots with processors with an order of magnitude more power for functions such as computer vision and sense-and-avoid.
LightWare - Laser Developer January 30, 2016 at 10:11pm

@Chris - I'm a big fan of your open source work and there is no doubt about 3DR's commitment to continued support in this area. We're also planning to join Dronecode because we see the commercial value in supporting this effort. The real question seems to be why is 3DR not selling the PH2 on the open market? From a financial point of view the marginal cost of both manufacture and distribution is very low suggesting that this would be a good way to make profit from your loyal DIY community. Similarly, why has 3DR not licensed the EOL products to a low cost manufacturer? In investment terms, this is leaving money on the table so it doesn't make obvious sense, especially since 3DR is leaving the DIY hardware space anyway.
3D Robotics

Chris Anderson January 30, 2016 at 8:45pm

Just to give a bit more evidence about how serious we are about Open Source, here's a preview of the new Log Analyzer we just added to Dronekit, our full-featured drone SDK that we contributed to Dronecode. We release more open source code almost every day..
Piotr Esden-Tempski January 30, 2016 at 1:28pm

@Chris Anderson Sorry if I misunderstand the situation. I am just commenting on what I see as the trajectory of your company. You are not the first one to do this, many have had to pivot due to investor/market pressure and all I see here are the result of that again. I am looking forward to see where things will go for you and your company and I applaud your sincere intentions. :)
Piotr Esden-Tempski January 30, 2016 at 1:03pm

@Johnatan Our hardware also works with APM. We just have not put effort into porting APM to it. The reason is that we think that supporting the Paparazzi UAV framework is a higher priority for us at the moment. Our customers are asking for capabilities that are not yet part of APM but are provided by Paparazzi, like mission block based dynamic flight plans, strong, robust and tested multi aircraft operations, a vast library of meteorological sensor support on the autopilot for sensor data geolocation, and so on. But if the interest is large enough we will consider putting resources towards the porting of APM to our hardware, just like any other OpenSource UAV firmware out there. There are many candidates. :)
3D Robotics
Chris Anderson January 30, 2016 at 12:42pm
Piotr: I respect you and what you've done with Paparazzi, but your comments are factually incorrect. Let me put some facts on the table:
1. 3DR is by no means pulling out of Open Source -- indeed, we are increasing our investment. We contribute more than $1 million per year to the APM, PX4 and Dronecode open source software projects, between direct support of Dronecode, financial support of APM and PX4 developers and internal developers who contribute open source code to those projects.
2. We have also invested millions of dollars into creating Open Source Hardware, including the APM and Pixhawk hardware, which we freely gave away to the community under terms that allowed both commercial and non-noncommercial use. We also provide 24/7 customer support for that hardware.
3. Our employees and contractors are not only part of the Dronecode community, they lead it (and I'm the Chairman of Dronecode)
4. We're actually focused on Commercial products rather than Consumer. Right now the market is focused on Consumer because of the clear use cases, low regulatory barriers and easy sales channels. But this is just part of a "consumerization of the enterprise" path, and what you'll see over the next few months is that our Solo platform and the others in the works are actually designed for expansion into more professional use, which is where we think UAVs will have their biggest impact.
There are definitely companies that live off our community without contributing to it, but I hope you can see that 3DR is a huge champion and sponsor of both Open Source and the communities that create it. (you are, after all, commenting on the community site I created and run, and I'm responding!) I don't think there's any company in the UAV world that has done more than us in this respect and we've only just begun.
David Skipper January 30, 2016 at 12:26pm

Auvidea are working on a Mini Pixhawk Module and Edison Module which fit on a Mini Motherboard

This was based on the Pixhawk 2 Design. Mentioned Here.

Also A Modular Mother board to take Mini Pixhawk Module, Edison Module and a NVIDIA TX1 Carrier Board.

First Boards being produced over next two weeks.

The 38188 Carrier Boards will be on sale for Euro 199 + TAX + Shipping.

They are designed to work standalone or fit a Modular motherbooard as above.
Johnatan January 30, 2016 at 12:26pm

@Piotr Esden-Tempski But I couldn't see any APM compatible autopilot in your webstore.
Piotr Esden-Tempski January 30, 2016 at 12:13pm

Although 3DR is pulling out of the OpenSource, DIY UAV world, in favor of consumer products, many others are not.

For example,1BitSquared, a micro UAV hardware manufacturer will continue developing and producing OpenSource Autopilots. We are here to stay and support the hardware needs of the innovative tinkerers and system integrators. We don't just reproduce what someone put up on the internet, we put in serious effort developing, testing and documenting the hardware and software together with the community. We strive to be a part of the community, not just live off of it. :)
Mike T January 30, 2016 at 2:39am

no words to describe the disappointment of discontinuing support for the IRIS+, a very capable machine!

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