Here's a primer on custom geofencing with Solo, which has never been easier. It has just been released in the new 3DR Solo app for iOS and will be coming to Android soon: (Correction: all the other features in the latest Solo iOS app, such as rewind, are coming to Android in the next month or so, but we do not have an Android ETA for geofencing yet. Sorry for the confusion on that -- I read the internal roadmap too fast and missed that)
On your map view, you can enable or disable geofencing. When it’s on, you will have four points (like dropped pins) that you use to make a virtual quadrilateral flight cage around your drone. Solo uses GPS to set and obey this boundary. You can move your four points to change the shape, size and location of your quadrilateral at any time in flight, blocking off any objects or areas you choose. This also means that if you want to fly in another area, simply move your pins on your screen and you’ll create a new safe zone — or you can turn the geofence off altogether.
Why this is important:
It works.
Safe: Because it’s a hard fence, it really does keep your drone away from objects, even power lines.
Customizable: If you don’t want that hard fence there, you can move it to where you want it, or easily disable or enable it.
Engaging: Perhaps the most important advantage. Instead of stopping you from thinking about the environment around you, like hardware sensors would do, geofencing keeps pilots engaged and aware. This level of interaction with your drone and with your environment is critical for any truly holistic approach to drone safety, as opposed to blindly trusting an imperfect technology.
Comments
John: Now that that FAA commercial regs are in place and the cloud side of our stack is out and performing well, we're accelerating our move to 100% enterprise. The plummeting price points and competition on the consumer side makes that market uneconomic for anything other than the biggest consumer electronics companies (and maybe even for them) so you won't see additional *consumer* vehicles from us directly. But from our partners, who knows? ;-)
a little more:
Does 3DR plan to keep selling consumer grade AP/AV quadcopters, or once existing stock is gone, Solo is done? I think many, including myself, would eventually like to see a version 2. Maybe larger, better flight times. Don't want to see the yearly release schedule, like some companies do, but after 2-3 years a version 2 with more/better hardware would be nice.
John:
1) More software features, especially on the enterprise/cloud side
2) I'm afraid not (it's too tightly integrated to break up), but we are working with Qualcomm on bringing similar functionality to Snapdragon Flight
3) Not for videography per se, but the new Sony R10C developed for Solo is amazing for still/scanning/surveying.
Chris A,
Thanks for the update, and I do hope all the features do make it to Android. but I do have a few questions, if you have some time.
1) What is the future of Solo? Myself and many others would like to know. not speakig for them, but I love the Solo, and the Smart Shots are second to none, but in a world where everyone is constantly looking for more features. Basically where do you see Solo going?
2) Are there any plans to release a stand alone solution? Something that can be mounted in a frame of our choice?
3) Are there any plans to offfer a new camera/gimbal for videography. Maybe an in house solution like the other manufacturers do?
thanks
John
Chris and all: my apologies (please see the correction in the post above). We absolutely are listening to our customers and bringing the Android app up to the iOS feature set in the next month or so, but I was wrong about this particular feature (geofencing). It's the one feature that's on a slower release path. Sorry for the confusion -- I was skimming an internal roadmap and missed that.
Hi Chris A,
"will be coming to Android soon" - Thank you so much for listening to your user base on the Android issue, I had faith that 3DR would come around on this. Its great to see companies listen and then act. Hopefully this will continue and we'll see some of the other items in the future once 3DR has time to hire some people. Well done a big thumbs up from me!
Another item I'd like to see is much of the functionality in the Dev toolkit is not yet ready (things like creating our own shots, true control of other gimbals and cameras - it should be abstracted so that we write our own modules for custom gimbals and cameras, etc)
Chris
I thought it had previously been stated that it was not coming to Android?
Hope that even the crippled version of 2.4 works better for Android than the iOS version is working for many!
....and will be coming to Android soon:
Thank you!
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