Flight Data tracking

[Jeff A]

For those of you that avidly track your flight data, what program or service do you use? How has your experience been with these products. I will do something to track my data but not sure what. I will start out my new drone using DJI Go 4 but I intend to use Litchi as well. I have ZERO drone experience but I am trying to take a professional approach to this, as I am a retired Professional Pilot. I flew both piston and jet aircraft for many years and I will take what I have learned and attempt to re-use my M2Z more than a few times.

 

[Fly Dawg]

See this thread:

Flight log retrieval and analysis guide

 

[The Editor]

For those of you that avidly track your flight data, what program or service do you use? How has your experience been with these products. I will do something to track my data but not sure what. I will start out my new drone using DJI Go 4 but I intend to use Litchi as well. I have ZERO drone experience but I am trying to take a professional approach to this, as I am a retired Professional Pilot. I flew both piston and jet aircraft for many years and I will take what I have learned and attempt to re-use my M2Z more than a few times.

+

 

[Jeff A]

Thank you Gentlemen but I would really like to hear from those that use the services that are commercially available. From those, I would like to hear what they think of the product they are using, ie an evaluation. I did not see any of that in the Flight Log retrieval and Analysis Guide.

 

[Fly Dawg]

but I would really like to hear from those that use the services that are commercially available.

In that instance, I think you should be more specific in your question. As far as I know there is not a "commercial" tracking service. Other than possibly Airdata if that is what you might be asking.

 

[Fred Garvin]

Give AirData UAV a try. Just enable it to sync with your DJI Cloud and it’ll take care of the rest. You can try a fee version to see if it’s what you want.

 

[MavicFlyer]

I use www.Airdata.com for telemetry data presentation and analysis. You can use the free version, or pay a bit to get some more features. I use DJI GO4, as well as Litchi, and both work with airdata. You can select auto upload of data from Litchi, and do so automatically with DJI Go4, if you sync your flight data to DJI servers. I don't want to uplink my flight data to DJI, so I manually uplink the data file to Airdata. Note also that if you fly with Litchi, those flights do NOT show up in the stats in DJI GO4, and vice versa.

Airdata also lets you export files that you can view in Google Earth Pro (free).

Litchi's claim to fame is the ability to program a mission, and upload to the drone for execution. It also includes a web portal where you can create/edit missions, and save missions for downloading to your device. The Mavic Air has no native programming, so I had to get Litchi (or something similar) to get waypoints. For your M2Z, GO4 may already include waypoints, so you may not need Litchi.

If you decide to get Litchi, and one of the Airdata paid plans, get Litchi first because they have a discount coupon for Airdata.

Good luck with your DJI adventures!

 

[Jeff A]

I use www.Airdata.com for telemetry data presentation and analysis. You can use the free version, or pay a bit to get some more features. I use DJI GO4, as well as Litchi, and both work with airdata. You can select auto upload of data from Litchi, and do so automatically with DJI Go4, if you sync your flight data to DJI servers. I don't want to uplink my flight data to DJI, so I manually uplink the data file to Airdata. Note also that if you fly with Litchi, those flights do NOT show up in the stats in DJI GO4, and vice versa.

Airdata also lets you export files that you can view in Google Earth Pro (free).

Litchi's claim to fame is the ability to program a mission, and upload to the drone for execution. It also includes a web portal where you can create/edit missions, and save missions for downloading to your device. The Mavic Air has no native programming, so I had to get Litchi (or something similar) to get waypoints. For your M2Z, GO4 may already include waypoints, so you may not need Litchi.

If you decide to get Litchi, and one of the Airdata paid plans, get Litchi first because they have a discount coupon for Airdata.

Good luck with your DJI adventures!

Thank you for the information. I have been reading like crazy trying to amass some knowledge before my M2Z gets here Tuesday. There is another product being advertised here called Flight Reader. Are you familiar with that one? I was hoping to get some user response for that product as well. There does not seem to be a lot of talk about that, at least I have not seen any.

 

[RadioFlyerMan]

For those of you that avidly track your flight data, what program or service do you use? How has your experience been with these products. I will do something to track my data but not sure what. I will start out my new drone using DJI Go 4 but I intend to use Litchi as well. I have ZERO drone experience but I am trying to take a professional approach to this, as I am a retired Professional Pilot. I flew both piston and jet aircraft for many years and I will take what I have learned and attempt to re-use my M2Z more than a few times.

Wrote my own VBA app in Excel. I choose not to upload to any site.

 

[Checki]

Airdata is free and easy to use. Great way to see some nice data, battery stats, and so on... Don't know if its really "useful" for me, but it's interesting at least.

 

[Jeff A]

Airdata is free and easy to use. Great way to see some nice data, battery stats, and so on... Don't know if its really "useful" for me, but it's interesting at least.

I am very interested in battery tracking but I read on the Airdata site last night that the later releases of DJI Go don't include battery data in their data collection. Is that true? What oif I used Litchi?

 

[Checki]

Dont know, i got some battery details, maybe it was more before? Why dont you just try the app and check yourself?
How can you use Litchi, isnt that just an app for waypoints and some other special stuff?

 

[Jeff A]

Dont know, i got some battery details, maybe it was more before? Why dont you just try the app and check yourself?
How can you use Litchi, isnt that just an app for waypoints and some other special stuff?

It also has a replacement for the flight controler software on your screen. I hear that some think its more user friendly than DJI Go 4. My drone arrives today. I'm hoping for a first flight tomorrow.

 

[MavicFlyer]

Thank you for the information. I have been reading like crazy trying to amass some knowledge before my M2Z gets here Tuesday. There is another product being advertised here called Flight Reader. Are you familiar with that one? I was hoping to get some user response for that product as well. There does not seem to be a lot of talk about that, at least I have not seen any.

Flight Reader is worth looking into. It is software that runs on your computer, and you do have to pay for it The author is a frequent presence on this forum, so I suggest searching for flight reader - you'll find some recent threads that discuss it.

Whichever way you go, keep in mind that either way you go, it all starts with the same data file from your device.

I strongly urge you to read this thread: Flight log retrieval and analysis guide
created by sar104 who is a gold mine of info on the DJI drones

 

[MavicFlyer]

Dont know, i got some battery details, maybe it was more before? Why dont you just try the app and check yourself?
How can you use Litchi, isnt that just an app for waypoints and some other special stuff?

While Litchi gets you waypoints on drones like Mavic Air, it can also be used to manually fly the drone - look at their web site to see the capabilities it provides. One nice feature is that you can set it to announce speed, altitude, distance, and battery level every few seconds. I don''t consider it a replacement for DJI Go4, but certainly a great supplement.

 

[Checki]

If it has something like course lock or terrain follow, I will look into it.
I sometimes need to use tap to fly, and I hate the fact that this mode doesn't use the stick's sensitivity settings I set for the normal flight mode. Smooth panning is not possible.

 

[TheWolfen]

I am very interested in battery tracking but I read on the Airdata site last night that the later releases of DJI Go don't include battery data in their data collection. Is that true? What oif I used Litchi?

Airdata does track individual battery details, but only if you have one of the paid plans. That's the main reason I have subscribed to their paid service for a couple of years now. I find it works well and I like having easy access to all of the flight data outside DJI's system.

 

[Checki]

For me it's enough what I see in the free version.
I can click on each battery and see if the cell voltage differs too much, that's all I want to know.