My first Litchi missions - meh...

[Brojon]

I created two Litchi missions to learn the program - nothing too challenging I thought.
The first mission was fly a simple path around a local school keeping the camera focused on POI's.
I setup 4 POI's - 3 on top of school buildings and one on a rec structure on the grounds.
Set mode to straight lines, height 98 ft, added waypoints one at a time manually setting the heading when I didn't want the POI's being looked at and focus on POI set on the ones I did.
Mission end action was RTH at end.
So I fired up the bird and got it aloft around the mission height. Started the camera recording manually.
This was apparently a mistake as the video actually stopped instead.
The Mavic flew the path - man what a pucker factor sending it out on auto pilot!
Around the corner at waypoint 7 the gimble swung straight down and stayed down the rest of the mission.
It reached the end waypoint and just sat there - no RTH.
I finally toggled the switch to get it back into manual and flew it back manually.

Second mission was shorter but a little more challenging in that I flew a pretty fine path only 10 feet up. The mission was set to curves and the first waypoint was straight to a fence, curve left down to the end of the field where the running track was, follow the running track then straight back between the trees.
It flew the mission but got to the waypoint at the end of the track where it should have flown straight ahead to the next waypoint beyond the trees and just stopped. I switched it to manual again and flew straight through the trees. When I got it back it seemed to be about 2 feet higher than when it left.

Third was to test Litchi behavior on low battery. At this point I had 30% left and it was beeping. Flew it around until it hit 17% and parked it 10 ft over the landing pad on tall grass
At 12% it said it was landing and threw up a box with two buttons "cancel" and "land".
I ignored it and finally at 5% I clicked land. It STILL just hovered so I used the stick to bring it down.

So can anyone comment on the things that went wrong?
Gimble pointed down and not at POI
Not executing mission end to RTH
Stopping at an intermediate waypoint and not progressing.
Not executing landing sequence on critical battery level.
Also - any way to keep the Mavic from pausing at each waypoint? Kinda messes up teh smooth flow of things...
Was going to upload teh CSV of teh mission but says not allowed type. Zip it? Yup - that worked
This is on a Mavic with all updates, iPhone 6S+ iOS 10.1.sumpin.sumpin everything up to date.

 

[PavicMilot]

Hi Brojon, I have flown several auto waypoint missions on Litchi and I found that the Mavic hesitates at each sharp corner when you don't add a curve. Like I can see from your example above your curve is basically non-existant. Next time, drag that to create a nice curve (shows up in blue). Then, you should see the drone hesitate less between points and be smoother.

Also, to address the RTH, have you tried going into the Litchi app (not mission hub, but on your device) - so you can edit each point there also and adjust settings. If you try that and it still ignores your end of mission command, then I don't know.

All I can suggest about the gimbal pointing down suddenly is...perhaps you accidentally hit the controller knob or the custom button?

 

[Brojon]

Problem with curves is you can't use actions. Not only that but it seems to pause with curves too. My second mission used curves and did thew same thing.
I'm not sure why you would suggest editing the mission on the device - not much point to using mission hub if that was necessary.
But perhaps I will try duplicating the mission on the device and see if that makes a difference.

 

[Brojon]

So here's what I found out; you shouldn't launch a mission while airborne.
I flew both missions plus a couple of new ones by allowing the Litchi app to launch from the ground pad. They worked flawlessly - including the gimbal.
Here's why I launched while airborne - I was testing the theory you could "chain" several missions together to overcome limitations in software such as no actions on curved flights. I have a spot in mind that I would like to film going in, do a circle while holding POI then fly out and do a panorama. So I figure make three missions and set the end actions to nothing. The way I saw it you should then be able to load and start a new mission based on that location. It apparently doesn't work that way. I'll keep experimenting.
Still waiting for Litchi to get back to me on this.

 

[dwallersv]

A few things:

• Mission Hub, while a powerful feature, is a subset of the full mission settings and parameters that can be set on the app itself. You always should review the mission from inside the app, examining the detailed settings of each waypoint, the overall mission settings, and general aircraft settings in Litchi, before a mission. My workflow is to create something in MH, then load it and review it in Litchi and make any minor changes/adjustments there.
• The stopping at a waypoint and not continuing: You were flying through trees, so this was likely Obstacle Avoidance. Try turning it off and running the mission again. It will likely not stop, but you may also crash.
• Starting missions in-flight: Do it all the time. Not sure why you're having issues when starting this way. However, when you do, remember that the mission has to be loaded while its hovering, and a good strong signal is needed. So, you will have problems with missions loading if you're far away when you start.
• Pausing at waypoints: Nothing you can do about this except fly with curved turns, and nice big radii. What you're looking for isn't physically possible, first of all -- instantly change heading at a waypoint -- so if the heading changes, it MUST stop briefly and rotate to the new heading. Otherwise, it would have a significant course error. Also, most of the things you do in WP Actions are things you want to be stopped for: Taking pictures, rotating, panoramas, etc. The smooth cinematic video effect is what curved turns are for.

 

[Brojon]

A few things:

• The stopping at a waypoint and not continuing: You were flying through trees, so this was likely Obstacle Avoidance. Try turning it off and running the mission again. It will likely not stop, but you may also crash.

Nope - the trees are 40 feet apart. Besides - it stopped two different missions on last and next to last waypoints - the first has no trees - I'm flying at 120ft. Also - as I mentioned it flew perfectly when I launched from ground.

• Starting missions in-flight: Do it all the time. Not sure why you're having issues when starting this way. However, when you do, remember that the mission has to be loaded while its hovering, and a good strong signal is needed. So, you will have problems with missions loading if you're far away when you start.

Literally standing right under it when they were started. This was an experiment to see how it would work. No way I'd try something like that out of sight. The Mavic was in fact hovering at about 8 feet when 1st mission was loaded.

• Pausing at waypoints: Nothing you can do about this except fly with curved turns, and nice big radii. What you're looking for isn't physically possible, first of all -- instantly change heading at a waypoint -- so if the heading changes, it MUST stop briefly and rotate to the new heading. Otherwise, it would have a significant course error. Also, most of the things you do in WP Actions are things you want to be stopped for: Taking pictures, rotating, panoramas, etc. The smooth cinematic video effect is what curved turns are for.

I think you missed the part that it was pausing on a mission made with curved setting. The only thing I can guess is that it was "remembering" the previous mission set for straight lines. As far as changing instantaneously - of course not. It is my understanding from teh docs that when a heading changes between waypoints the heading will change gradually from one into teh other as a smooth transition.- same as altitude changes, it doesn't stop and then climb - it rises or descends to the new height. Also same as maintaining focus on a POI - it doesn't stop and jerk to a new position - it transitions smoothly.

 

[kanefsky]

It is my understanding from teh docs that when a heading changes between waypoints the heading will change gradually from one into teh other as a smooth transition.- same as altitude changes, it doesn't stop and then climb - it rises or descends to the new height. Also same as maintaining focus on a POI - it doesn't stop and jerk to a new position - it transitions smoothly.

It seems like it would be impossible to do smooth heading changes without using a curve unless they're very small heading changes. If you have curves turned off and you want it to fly in one direction to an exact point and then head off in a substantially different direction then it's pretty much necessary to have a pause. Presumably if you had lots of waypoints with very small direction changes (essentially drawing the curve manually) then pauses could be avoided.