Flight Hub 2 to DJI Fly waypoint mission converter

[DJ Wes]

I have written a “Flight Hub 2 to DJI Fly waypoint mission” converter. Flight Hub 2 is DJI’s on-line waypoint mission planner for enterprise drones. DJI enterprise drones and DJI consumer drones both use KMZ files to store waypoint mission data. However, the information stored in those files differs between enterprise drones and consumer drones. This new utility can be used to convert from an enterprise KMZ file into a consumer KMZ file. This way, one can use the DJI Flight Hub 2 web application to design flights on a desktop computer then transfer those flights to a DJI Mavic 3, Air 3, or Mini 4 drone.

Before getting too excited about using DJI’s Flight Hub 2 to design waypoint flights for your drone, you should know that Flight Hub 2 is not as intuitive and user-friendly as applications such as Litchi’s Mission Hub or DroneLink. I find that tasks which are very easy to accomplish using Litchi, are overly complicated in Flight Hub 2. Nevertheless, if you are familiar with Flight Hub 2 or already have missions saved in an enterprise drone, this utility will allow you to convert those missions so that they can be flown with a DJI consumer drone.

I am familiar with DJI’s KMZ files and their contents. However, since I do not own a DJI Fly drone with on-board waypoints, I cannot test the output of this utility myself. So, I’m looking for testers. If you convert an enterprise KMZ file and then load and fly it using a consumer drone, I would be interested in hearing from you – whether it works or not. If the converted flight does not work in your consumer drone, I would especially like to hear from you so that I can make the proper adjustments to the software.

The converter may be found here with my other waypoint mission utilities:

Litchi Mission Utilities

Wes Barris

www.litchiutilities.com

 

[Crackerjam]

This is an incredible idea, and I'm happy to help test with my Mavic 3 Pro!

I just generated a test route and I'm having a few issues getting it converted.

1. When a route is exported from FlightHub it includes a 'wpmz\res' folder with 1 or more tif files, I think they might be elevation data? Either way this greatly increases the file size and causes the converter to throw a "File is too large." error. Even if I remove this res folder I end up with a 19KB file for my 15 minute flight, so the file upload size may be a bit too restricted here.
2. Using a smaller flight and file I'm able to upload it, but receive an error, "ERROR: executeHeightMode = WGS84 is not supported." I think this is a reference to the coordinate system FlightHub uses, but as far as I know there's no way to adjust that.

I've attached both my original 'large' mission here, as well as the smaller one without any image files. This is very cool and I'm happy to help with anything I can!

 

[DJ Wes]

The only "executeHeightMode" that DJI Fly supports is "relativeToStartPoint". Your files appear to be using "ASL" (EGM96). What you will need to do is change your "Flight Route Settings" in Flight Hub 2 to "ALT":


Also, the large KMZ file that you shared contains a DEM (Digital Elevation Model) file. This is the first time I have seen that in a Flight Hub 2 KMZ file. Did you load elevation data into Flight Hub 2 for this mission? If so, check to see whether or not it is still included after changing your height mode to ALT (relativeToStartPoint).

 

[Crackerjam]

Gotcha. My flight is actually set to AGL, but ALT is certainly usable too so no issue there.

There's no elevation data in Flight Hub, but after exporting with ALT it doesn't include that data, so it must be related to the AGL setting.

I do still have a problem with file size though, the file for a 20 minute mapping flight ends up being 17KB, which is too much for the tool. A smaller file uploads and processes successfully, so I'll be testing to see how well that works today!

 

[Crackerjam]

An update, I was able to open the converted file on my DJI RC controller, but the Fly app crashed when I tried to actually start the mission. I'm going to take this to DMs with you Wes, just because the files I'm using have my address in them, but I wanted to report for others viewing the thread.