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

@Chris A. I feel kind of foolish not calling 3DR more for tech support. Kind of thought that doing it yourself was the point of the whole Do It Yourself Drone thing. :-) I find it very hard to believe that the do it yourself drone community was the source of all those customer support calls.

As a Do It Yourself Drone supporter, I have four 3DR autopilots in four fixed wing drones. These are drones that I have built and fly regularly. I have found that the 3DR autopilots and supporting hardware to be reliable. I like 3DR.

However 3DR has spent a year making their website a punishing experience for the do it your self drone supporter. It was so miserably difficult to order a autopilot and supporting hardware that I finally gave up and ordered a Pixhawk clone kit from HK. It flew for the first time last Saturday evening.

I wanted to order this Pixhawk from the 3DR web store but the do it your selfer is so neglected that it is a punishing experience to try to order a do it yourself drone kit(3DR radios are no longer sold at 3DR?). Really it has been a year of this abuse. I finally get the message. I will buy my do it yourself drone parts somewhere else.

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3D Robotics

Chris Anderson January 31, 2016 at 8:44am

Sigitas: Sololink will only be available with Solo itself and our next-generation autopilots later this year.
Andreas Gazis January 31, 2016 at 2:39am

Chris, the post about non DIYers buying DIY stuff put a smile on my face, thanks for brightening up a dull Sunday morning. As for the rest, can't wait for you to give me a reason to give you my money. The way your shop looks now, if 3DR didn't have its history and community involvement, I wouldn't even be looking at it.

Have you considered that perhaps it's time to make two companies? The barely staying afloat 3DR, involved in the cool, tinkering end of the business (and most definitely without the expensive and extensive customer support) with a loyal but limited customer base and the polished 4DS (4D Systems, you can use the name, I 'm releasing it under a creative commons license it ;-) ). The aim of 4DS will be the out-of-the-box market and it will be a bulk buyer of whatever it is 3DR churns out and has proven its worth at the hands of the DIY geeks worldwide.
James masterman January 31, 2016 at 1:05am

You are doing an admirable job of explaining the reasoning behind 3DRs new path, Chris. Many other companies would not have taken the time. Running a business (especially one that is profitable) is really hard and I suspect many people do not have that experience. I kinda see this as 3DR growing up rather than abandoning your roots.

I was wondering if there are any long term plans for fixed wing? While this may be a smaller market than copters, the growth in agricultural work may see increased demand for easy to use, ready to fly fixed wings for survey use. Something like a Sensefly ebee but with more modern camera and connectivity options. Would that ever be something 3DR would consider?
100KM

DavidJames January 31, 2016 at 1:02am

@Chris A.   I feel kind of foolish not calling 3DR more for tech support. Kind of thought that doing it yourself was the point of the whole Do It Yourself Drone thing.   :-) I find it very hard to believe that the do it yourself drone community was the source of all those customer support calls.

As a Do It Yourself Drone supporter, I have four 3DR autopilots in four fixed wing drones. These are drones that I have built and fly regularly. I have found that the 3DR autopilots and supporting hardware to be reliable.   I like 3DR.

However 3DR has spent a year making their website a punishing experience for the do it your self drone supporter.   It was so miserably difficult to order a autopilot and supporting hardware that I finally gave up and ordered a Pixhawk clone kit from HK.   It flew for the first time last Saturday evening.

I wanted to order this Pixhawk from the 3DR web store but the do it your selfer is so neglected that it is a punishing experience to try to order a do it yourself drone kit(3DR radios are no longer sold at 3DR?). Really it has been a year of this abuse.   I finally get the message. I will buy my do it yourself drone parts somewhere else.
Sigitas Ciapas January 31, 2016 at 12:23am

I've read all posts in this article, but sorry for my english I still didn't understood everything completely about standalone Solo parts.

My question is:Will be sololink in other form (video transmition to the app) available to use with IRIS+ and X8+ or it will be with the newer version of Pixhawk?
LightWare - Laser Developer January 30, 2016 at 11:51pm

Yes, I'm with you 100% on that Chris. My last business was bought by a Fortune 100 company turning over more than $35B at the time and the transition from "niche player" to "big money" was all about trying to stop little problems from becoming huge problems. I don't envy you the task that you have undertaken and whoever decides to fill the gap in the DIY market is going to have great fun facing exactly the same problems all over again :). If I remember correctly, someone said "drones are hard" and I think that making a profitable business is even harder...
Developer

Philip January 30, 2016 at 11:41pm

Well said!
3D Robotics

Chris Anderson January 30, 2016 at 11:40pm

We don't make DIY products anymore (I wrote a whole post on that), since plenty of other companies do that and we're moving upstream. The tech support costs are absolutely crippling (we run a 30-person support team) if you produce products that don't just work out of the box, something we know better than anyone.

I wish it were true that "by definition people expect to have to make or modify something in order to get it to work", but once you're on the receiving end of upwards of 300 tech support calls per day, many by people who didn't read the manual or even follow the quick-start guide that's in the box, you realize that the problem with selling DIY parts is that they can be bought by non-DIY customers. (Sadly there is no competence test we can force people to take before selling them things ;-)

So all our products have to be plug-and-play now, including autopilots.
LightWare - Laser Developer January 30, 2016 at 10:49pm

Sorry Chris, I'm not following your answer. This is a DIY community and by definition people expect to have to make or modify something in order to get it to work. The community has demonstrated admirably that it is able to create interface boards and other accessories so there doesn't seem to be a specific barrier there. I'm also not clear why adding more sophisticated products to the pipeline negates the DIY demand for existing products, especially since the new products are not targeted at the DIY market ;).
JB January 30, 2016 at 10:28pm

+1 Laser Dev. Good question.

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