Air 2S and Litchi.

[MavicKhan]

I quite a number of stored missions in Litchi’s Mission Hub from my Mavic Pro days.

Now that I finally have my Air 2S, I wanted to fly them, so I tried one out.

One observation and 2 questions question:

The filmed turning transitions that used to be quite smooth with the Mavic Pro are now jerky on the 2S, with the drone making small but very frequent snaps to either the left or the right that ruin every take during a turn. Is that your experience also?

If point #1 of a waypoint mission starts at, say, a height of 15 meters, the height of the location from where the drone starts to fly to that position, ascending or descending after pressing “play”, is irrelevant, right? I mean, the mission will it always start at the geodesic height contained in the mission for that first point?

Thank you for any input.

MK

 

[DJ Wes]

The filmed turning transitions that used to be quite smooth with the Mavic Pro are now jerky on the 2S, with the drone making small but very frequent snaps to either the left or the right that ruin every take during a turn. Is that your experience also?

Your Mavic Pro had native waypoint support. The newer, "DJI Fly" drones, such as the Air 2s, do not. As a result, 3rd party apps such as Litchi have no choice but to implement waypoints using the inferior "Virtual Sticks" method. Drones with native waypoint support execute waypoint missions much more smoothly than those drones without native waypoint support.

If point #1 of a waypoint mission starts at, say, a height of 15 meters, the height of the location from where the drone starts to fly to that position, ascending or descending after pressing “play”, is irrelevant, right? I mean, the mission will it always start at the geodesic height contained in the mission for that first point?

This is not correct. All of your specified waypoint heights are relative to the height at your take-off location. The drone uses barometric pressure do determine its height above the take-off location.

If you check the "Above Ground" option, Litchi will incorporate the terrain's height data so that your specified heights are above ground at the locations of those waypoints. However, this only works if the above ground height of waypoint 1 is the same (or close to) the height of your take-off location.

 

[karlblessing]

Far as leveling out the smoothness in litchi waypoints, due to the SDK perhaps purposely being too aggressive about it, it helps a lot to slow down the speed in the waypoint mission quite a bit.

And as said above due to being virtual stick you need to retain a strong connection with the mobile device.

 

[MavicKhan]

Thank you so much for your replies.

...a bit of a bummer though...

I guess the solution will be to wait for an affordable drone with native waypoint support + SDK out + Litchi work on it.

Meanwhile, I am getting great photo results






MK

 

[karlblessing]

Thank you so much for your replies.

...a bit of a bummer though...

I guess the solution will be to wait for an affordable drone with native waypoint support + SDK out + Litchi work on it.

Meanwhile, I am getting great photo results

View attachment 156785


View attachment 156786

MK

Your chances of native waypoints are going to be witn their enterprises level Drone. DJI is no longer doing native waypoints (ie that can operate beyond the rc control) except in enterprise level ones. I think the Mavic 2 pro is the last to do it of the Mavic line (as even the Mavic 3 enterprise doesn't have it I don't think and no third party options as no SDK planned for the Mavic 3)

 

[MavicKhan]

"Virtual sticks" correlate to a software sub-routine doing what an operator would do approaching a waypoint and transitioning to the next flight leg.

There are human operators that can do this quite smoothly (...not me, for sure...).

Should I place some hope that Litchi will eventually refine the "virtual sticks" to smooth and dampen things out?

MK

 

[PHZ]

Would it help the virtual stick situation to dramatically increase yaw smoothness and exponential in yaw?

 

[MavicKhan]

I will be trying that, for sure.

 

[karlblessing]

Should I place some hope that Litchi will eventually refine the "virtual sticks" to smooth and dampen things out?

MK

If you do some searching you'll see this is the fault of the SDK and not litchi, though I suppose litchi could do the same as the end user and limit waypoint speeds much lower.

 

[Bsnyder]

Nice photos thanks for sharing!

 

[Peio64270]

Everything is said in previous answers about this disastrous "virtual stick" feature imposed by DJI since they move from DJI-Go to Fly app.
I recently complained about it in the DJI forum and I had encouraging answers from a certain "Tony", a DJI's administrator. I think that if enough customers of drones flying with Fly app were complaining maybe DJI would do something, either in fixing this awful behaviour during "virtual sticks" drive or in restoring something ressembling the previous autonomous flights. Till now we are too few.

Waypoints and Fly app

I renew the wish expressed by many others you add TRUE waypoints, i.e really autonomous (uploaded) missions, to Fly app. That's a pity the excellent video capabalities of my Air2 S are compltely ruined by the "virtual stick" feature and the jerky footage obtained as soon as the wind overcomes 5...

forum.dji.com

 

[karlblessing]

Everything is said in previous answers about this disastrous "virtual stick" feature imposed by DJI since they move from DJI-Go to Fly app.
I recently complained about it in the DJI forum and I had encouraging answers from a certain "Tony", a DJI's administrator. I think that if enough customers of drones flying with Fly app were complaining maybe DJI would do something, either in fixing this awful behaviour during "virtual sticks" drive or in restoring something ressembling the previous autonomous flights. Till now we are too few.

Waypoints and Fly app

I renew the wish expressed by many others you add TRUE waypoints, i.e really autonomous (uploaded) missions, to Fly app. That's a pity the excellent video capabalities of my Air2 S are compltely ruined by the "virtual stick" feature and the jerky footage obtained as soon as the wind overcomes 5...

forum.dji.com

They're not going to give true way points for as long as they make enterprise drones and vlos rules exist in most countries.

 

[DJ Wes]

I had encouraging answers from a certain "Tony", a DJI's administrator.

Sorry to sound so negative, but...

I wouldn't hold my breath. The "DJI Administrators" on that forum are totally clueless. You know more about DJI and their software then they do.

First, he asked you to describe the "Virtual Stick" feature. Really? He has no idea what you are talking about.

Second, he asked you to calibrate everything (RC, IMU, compass). That is their standard answer for any issue with which they are not familiar (which is a lot).

Third, he said they he would forward your information to their engineers. Do you really think that their engineers would respond with: "Oh yeah, we forgot to add waypoints. We'll get on that right away!"?

The ONLY thing DJI has officially said about on-board waypoints is that it was a marketing decision to only support them on their Enterprise drones. We don't know what went into that "marketing decision". Many will try to say that they have removed waypoints for this reason or that reason (VLOS, rules in various countries, governments, etc.), but those are just guesses and most likely wrong.

 

[MavicKhan]

I don't think DJI will revert their marketing/commercial decision.

All my hopes lay with someone with the appropriate skill set squeezing a miracle out of the available SDK.

On a side note, I would say that if we add up all the regulators restrictions (like the new UK's CAA ideas) and these kind of shots in the foot by DJI, soon they will have horrendous modern wars as their main client base.

MK