Firmware update - should I stay or should I go

I’m collecting pro and cons regarding updating to the new firmware. While most of the things are great their is a downside for people using QGC. I’m only writing this from a mapping perspective. Solex is not yet suitable for mapping. For people doing videos etc. Solex is far better and this does not apply.

Please add pros and cons if you have real life experience with the new firmware.

  • You (temporarily, until the next? update) loose all but 5 sbus channels and the 5th channel is the wheel. You loose the cam switch totally and you can assign the other buttons incl. the home buttons to one flight mode. Within Solex you can assign much more stuff to the buttons and destinct functions for short and long press - that is great and as soon as this also works within QGC this issue is solved. But if you depend on SBUS output you should wait for another update.

  • con: if qgc crashes you can no longer switch flight modes because this is done by Mavlink commands send by qgc. You are then left with youre sticks as control device only. This might be bad if it happens in a moment where you want to aboard a mission or a automatic landing/RTL.

  • small con is that it is no possible to boot directly into QGC (please correct me if that is not true).

  • biggest pro might be the removal of the possible dangerous behavior that the PWM outputs are resetted to standard after reboot. So if the unit reboots during flight the UAV might change from Loiter to Stabilize if you have assigned Stabilize as standard flight mode (work around use Loiter as standard flight mode).

  • another pro: flight mode changes are every time possible by single button press and no longer connected to PWM output changes as before. That might be good for new users which are not used to the previous behavior.

  • pro: newer QGC version. Less crashes?

  • pro: Google maps is working again (not sure if that is true but I got the impression that Google maps stopped working).

  • pro: cleaner interface

  • big pro: updates without flashing but on the device itself (but not for the air unit).

Please add further arguments!

2 Likes

I decided to go for the update and I hope a new update (which does not include an airunit update and does not delete the settings incl. binding) will follow soon.

2 Likes

I can report that I did 3 hours test flying with different vehicles and do not regret the update. The only problem is that now the vehicle starts up in Stabilize which I don’t want. I think I will use a lua script to set the flight mode to Loiter at startup.

Qgroundcontrol ist still very unstable and had problems at least every third flight. A workaround seems to be to restart the app before every single flight. Not nice but not a major problem either. Problems are freezing and strange messages such as IMU missfits which disapear after restart. I also notice that the compass display goes nuts if you connect Mission Planner via the Herelink. In Mission Planner everything is ok but the Herelink display has a jumping ~ 130 degree offset as long as Mission Planner is connected and also after that when MP is no longer connected until the restart of the RC. If MP was never connected the compass display works as expected.

I don’t know if it is possible to arm the vehicle without having started either qgroundcontrol or Solex. But I think that is the case and I’m not sure if I like that. I think an automated boot into qgroundcontrol (or Solex) as before would be better.