Can Litchi waypoints be set with LAT/LON coordinates?

[BD0G]

Thats good! So now you have a taste for autonomous flights that result in no signal and your adrenaline levels will not peak when this happens.

 

[iowahill]

Thats good! So now you have a taste for autonomous flights that result in no signal and your adrenaline levels will not peak when this happens.

Yup! It's a whole new level of enjoying these remarkable and brilliantly designed birds! Now when my Titan Switch system arrives later this week, even MORE joy!

 

[mereflyer]

Well thats not exactly the case. DJIGO4 's version of RTH is not active as Lichti requires DJIGO4 to be shut down in order to function properly.

However, one can still press and hold the RTH button on the Remote Controller.

If communication with the Remote Controller is lost the Mission just continues as it would with communication. It is a real shocker the first time the signal is lost with the Remote Controller and one starts to freak out.

This illustrates why it is SUPER important to make sure that your last Waypoint of the Lichti Mission be very near your take off / Home Point Location. That way in the off chance that signal is lost then the Mavic flys back to a point near you so that one can take over control and fly manually if needed.

RTH is not initiated once signal is lost when running a Lichti Mission . It completes the Mission.

Is it true then, I could deliberately program a mission with way points beyond range of controller?
(behind a shed or building for example)
The drone could follow the route, obeying all programmed settings independently and autonomously. Could then return to the area of control. Continue preset track, Return to Home etc?
Of course it would break the LOS rule, so could not and should not be done... (Just sayin!)

 

[iowahill]

Is it true then, I could deliberately program a mission with way points beyond range of controller?
(behind a shed or building for example)
The drone could follow the route, obeying all programmed settings independently and autonomously. Could then return to the area of control. Continue preset track, Return to Home etc?
Of course it would break the LOS rule, so could not and should not be done... (Just sayin!)

Absolutely! You can run out to the deli and grab a sandwich and a cold beer just so long as you get back before your mission ends!

 

[iowahill]

I really like the comment that I just hit go and a few min later it came back, which brings me to my question, does the drone need to communicate with the remote or was it largely autonomous? If it has to communicate are you in limited range Wi-Fi control or the longer range RC control while using lictchi?

Once the mission is loaded into Litchi and launched you can read a book, watch TV, go fill up the car or truck, or anything else just so long as you're there for the touchdown! Of course, you should be watching the radar numbers to ensure that battery level is good, altitude, distance, etc. I've flown some local programmed Litchi missions in testing various antennas, and often would see controller and video signals drop to zero for lengths of time before the bird got back into range.

BTW, for my needs I find that the stock MP1 omni antennas do a fine job, though after trying the Itelite NanoSync (passive directional antenna panel) I've now gone with the Titan Switch system that allows quick changeover between omni or directional antennas as well as use with their +4 dB amplifier panel. I also use their +9 dB 14" whip antennas with the booster panel for superb omni operation where I mostly fly.

I used Litchi Mission Hub on my desktop to plan a personal mapping survey mission on my property in which I entered decimal GPS coordinates for each of 15 waypoints, saved the mission as a KML file (for pre-flight check using Google Earth Pro), then loaded the mission into Litchi on my iPad for the flight.

Note that Mission Hub requires internet connection to the web where missions are created, stored, and retrieved from Litchi's Cloud storage. Likewise, the mission(s) are retrieved and loaded into your tablet or phone only when it too is connected to the web.

The area I was surveying is mountainous forest in a rural/primitive region. And though we occasionally see forestry or CHP helicopters (mostly at or above 500' AGL, it's infrequent (unless fire season and nearby threat) and I kept my maximum altitude at 250' AGL as the bird would not be visible from HOME for most of the flight due to steep terrain that would often be 200' or more BELOW my HOME point. It was pretty unnerving to see NEGATIVE altitude on my tablet radar display, which caused me to panic and hit RTH before my first waypoint on my first flight.

Display altitude is referenced to the HOME position. Technically I was operating outside of the current LOS regs, but there is no one around who would be affected. I always fly with an abundance of caution.

 

[mereflyer]

Absolutely! You can run out to the deli and grab a sandwich and a cold beer just so long as you get back before your mission ends!

Thanks for that - had my first successful Litchi "waypointed" flight without a hitch Yesterday, looking forward to continuing the experiment when weather allows.

 

[HappyHours]

One cool thing - once you have everything set in the Litchi Hub, export to Google Earth as a KML then open it. If you tilt the view it will show you the elevation and if you hover over it gives you even more detail. See below. You can see the elevation changes I made to a couple points with the elevation slider. And, just reiterating that you should play with the Mission Hub, I made the path as a demo for you which took all of about 45 seconds (changing elevation added maybe another minute) , and exporting to Google Earth about another 10 seconds.

Try it.

View attachment 56297

Pretty cool

 

[HappyHours]

Pretty cool

I noticed DJI GS pro which appears to be a lot like litchi except it’s free? I have created a flight plan and plan to try it once it stops raining. It also uploads the flight to the drone. But they want you to subscribe to save them as kml files.

I live on a small hill and a lot of my yard is lower than where I launch from so I already notice the negative -altitude which was confusing as I could see the drone. I realized that altitude is referenced to the liftoff point, not the agl of the drones location, the other strange part it that if you enable terrain following it maintains that relative altitude from the ground regardless of the negative or positive altitude read out.

Personally I think that readout is a software issue that should be fixed, altitude should be agl, above the ground not above or below the liftoff point.

 

[HappyHours]

Another question, when you are doing a flight plan offline and you set the altitude of the waypoint, when the drone flys is the altitude it goes to for that waypoint agl or above the liftoff point, if the latter that could be a problem.

 

[iowahill]

Another question, when you are doing a flight plan offline and you set the altitude of the waypoint, when the drone flys is the altitude it goes to for that waypoint agl or above the liftoff point, if the latter that could be a problem.

You should select the AGL check box in your mission planning. The cost of Litchi is just a couple of bucks more than a set of props and doesn't (for now) seem to expire. Your missions are stored in Litchi's cloud for download and/or modification which then can be retrieved whenever you have internet connectivity.

A Litchi mission can be saved as a KML file which can then be imported into Google Earth Pro for a pre-flight test. That feature alone made my purchase of Litchi gold! The ground reference from HOME is what you want if you initiate RTH, or if the bird's battery level drops. Even if you switch to Sport mode on the controller you want to see where you're at elevation-wise to get back with what resources you have.

Lots to learn, and you won't get it all without some flights and questions answered on this and other forums. Fly safe and enjoy!

 

[iowahill]

Another question, when you are doing a flight plan offline and you set the altitude of the waypoint, when the drone flys is the altitude it goes to for that waypoint agl or above the liftoff point, if the latter that could be a problem.

It will fly AGL IF you select that option in your Mission Setup.

 

[HappyHours]

I recently watched a review of GSPro, litchi, autopilot and FPVCamera and he like litchi the least of all? He set up the same flight plan with all 4 and then flew them so you could see the results. I went online and downloaded GSPro.

 

[iowahill]

I recently watched a review of GSPro, litchi, autopilot and FPVCamera and he like litchi the least of all? He set up the same flight plan with all 4 and then flew them so you could see the results. I went online and downloaded GSPro.

Lots of choices out there. You just have to see what fits your needs.

 

[JakeRobinson]

Here is a video I put together some time ago to show how one can enter the same Latitude or Longitude Coordinates within Lichti to be able to true up thier straight flight path. Instead of trying to use the mouse to make perfectly straight lines.

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Hey BDog - can't get your YT vid to play... tried going straight to YT but no-go, can you reload it? cheers

 

[BD0G]

Plays fine for me and I have the sharing options for the video set as Public so it should be viewable.

 

[JakeRobinson]

Plays fine for me and I have the sharing options for the video set as Public so it should be viewable.

Try this direct link.

thanks, that one works...

 

[JakeRobinson]

Plays fine for me and I have the sharing options for the video set as Public so it should be viewable.

nice trick... I guess if you make a 90 you'd start on the long and do the same... cheers

 

[BD0G]

Exactly!

 

[JakeRobinson]

Lots of choices out there. You just have to see what fits your needs.

I know this thread is a bit old, I am learning Litchi and trying to figure out how to automate property inspections (for myself similar to your request)

I wonder if you'd like to test a method I have come up with. As a land-flipper for fun and profit, I pay for a tool that helps find property data the assessor's office has. It has one major feature - it spits out all the properties lat-longs for perimeter points. But, if you copy and paste you have to do some serious Excel-foo to get them into two columns in order to import them into Litchi. I figured it out. IF you want, if you could pm me the APN (Assessor's Property Number - every property has one) I can extract the bulk lat-longs and massage them in excel... save as CSV and you can then import them into Litchi OR Google Earth Pro... I won't be making waypoint adjustments in altitude or velocity etc... but you can then make those adjustments on your own. I'd like to see if this works for you... hit me up on PM... either way is ok with me... Cheers,