Company Says It Will Place Advance Tools In Developer's Hands To Simplify Aerial Photography

3DR is opening the source code for the Solo flight controller, the company said in a posting on its website. Solo is a consumer product, aimed at simplifying the process of getting great aerial footage, the company said.

Solo was developed not just by 3DR, but in concert with the ardupilot core development team and contributors around the world. The repository with full history is now available for download on GitHub, the first of many development doors that 3DR plans to open on Solo.

In addition to opening Solo source, the company is also publishing the set of guiding principles that went into developing all of Solo’s subsystems—3DR’s Open Source Policy. The policy, developed by the 3DR software engineering team in conjunction with the the community, addresses key questions, including how is development done and what is open. 3DR says the policy represents a set of guiding principles on how we plan on doing development, and they feel it important to, in turn, open to the broader community for clarity and accountability.

3DR says it also strives to put powerful tools in the hands of developers. In some cases this means source code, and they plan on opening other parts of Solo, including much of SoloLink. In all cases this means making Solo the number one development platform, which means great APIs and developer tools. "We plan on deepening DroneKit integration into Solo, so that developers can easily add new shots in Python and apps on Android, with new language bindings for other platforms coming soon," the company said on its website.

3DR has chosen to place the world’s leading autopilot development platform ... APM:Copter ... at the heart of Solo, running on the new Pixhawk 2. Connected to the flight controller it makes what they call "SoloLink," which brings the power and flexibility of Linux computing onboard a consumer vehicle for the first time and appeals to an even broader set of developers. "We also added an accessory port, 3DRBUS, on the bottom so that kickstarter projects, academics and businesses can easily integrate their own hardware. We developed DroneKit for use on Solo so that web and mobile developers can build businesses on top of this hardware and software. Most important, we know a great platform gets better with time, and we plan on supporting Solo for years to come," the company said.

(Images provided by 3D Robotics)

FMI: www.3drobotics.com