Flying Mavic Air without RC in Litchi

marckee · Jun 4, 2021

Hi All,

I am trying to fly my MA with Litchi over wifi, not using the RC. I can connect and move the gimbal, takeoff etc but not actually fly the drone. The icon I have for the RC seems different from the one shown in the manual to toggle to virtual remote. I am able to fly using the virtual controls in the DJI GO4 app. Perhaps I have a setting wrong somewhere? Thanks.

webvan · Jun 4, 2021

So when you tap on the icon no virtual sticks appear on the screen ?
What version of Litchi are you running ?

marckee · Jun 4, 2021

Thanks for replying webvan. Nothing happens when I click on the icon. I am running 4.18.0-g. I just bought Litchi yesterday to try and follow beyond 100ms.

webvan · Jun 4, 2021

Yes that's a good reason to get Litchi !
Is that the iOS version ? I'm not familiar with it is there maybe a hidden setting somewhere to activate virtual sticks on top of the toggle ?

marckee · Jun 4, 2021

No, it is the android version.

webvan · Jun 4, 2021

So it seems to think you're connected with the RC for some reason

For those who don't know what the icon should look like it's shown here Help - Litchi

Litchi are good at getting back, let us know what they say !

GFields · Jun 4, 2021

Thanks for sharing!

marckee · Jun 5, 2021

webvan said:
So it seems to think you're connected with the RC for some reason

For those who don't know what the icon should look like it's shown here Help - Litchi

Litchi are good at getting back, let us know what they say !

I have had a number of emails with Litchi support, checking the version number etc. I have tried everything suggested but still no luck.

The following advice from Litchi sums up where I am:

'The fact you see the icon means that Litchi knows the RC is not connected.
The only other condition for showing the joysticks is that there is no bluetooth controller connected.
If you have tried disabling bluetooth, I am not sure why you have this issue...
To be honest, we would highly recommend not using a remote controller though. Most of the flight modes will not work well in this mode because the range is severely limited and also because some modes are flat out disabled (by DJI) when using direct wifi connection.'

It looks like there is no reason for not getting the virtual joysticks, I have even tried turning off NFC and Bluetooth and tried a different phone and reinstalled the app numerous times. It can't be the aircraft because the virtual joystick works in DJI GO4. Looks like a dead end.

webvan · Jun 5, 2021

That's really strange ! The answer from Litchi is a bit confusing too :
"The fact you see the icon means that Litchi knows the RC is not connected"
Aren't you in fact seeing the wrong icon that shows that Litchi thinks the RC is connected ? Oh wait, you said you were able to move the gimbal...

"some modes are flat out disabled (by DJI) when using direct wifi connection."
Huh, like what ? I know that you can't upload waypoints via Litchi when there is no RC (not sure how the Drone knows they're not being sent by the RC but ok) and "Follow Me" does not work (not available in DJI Go) possibly because it needs the GPS position from the RC...but I've always found that strange that there would be a GPS receiver in the RC drones as has pretty much always been assumed (no indication of a fix for instance".

Anyway I'm not sure what else you could try, it seems you need to get a refund !

As for tracking for longer than 100 meters without the RC, I don't know if that would work for your use case but SmartCapture (using gestures) tracking has no such limitation, it is however limited in the height and distance (about 7 meters) it can track you from and it will default back to "trace" mode pretty quickly. There is a recent specific thread about tracking with that mode if you need more details.

marckee · Jun 5, 2021

webvan said:
That's really strange ! The answer from Litchi is a bit confusing too :
"The fact you see the icon means that Litchi knows the RC is not connected"
Aren't you in fact seeing the wrong icon that shows that Litchi thinks the RC is connected ? Oh wait, you said you were able to move the gimbal...

"some modes are flat out disabled (by DJI) when using direct wifi connection."
Huh, like what ? I know that you can't upload waypoints via Litchi when there is no RC (not sure how the Drone knows they're not being sent by the RC but ok) and "Follow Me" does not work (not available in DJI Go) possibly because it needs the GPS position from the RC...but I've always found that strange that there would be a GPS receiver in the RC drones as has pretty much always been assumed (no indication of a fix for instance".

Anyway I'm not sure what else you could try, it seems you need to get a refund !

As for tracking for longer than 100 meters without the RC, I don't know if that would work for your use case but SmartCapture (using gestures) tracking has no such limitation, it is however limited in the height and distance (about 7 meters) it can track you from and it will default back to "trace" mode pretty quickly. There is a recent specific thread about tracking with that mode if you need more details.

Thanks for your input which is really useful.

I have had a slight breakthrough by trying a third phone, this time a Pixel, previous two phones were Oneplus 7 and Oneplus 7 Pro. The Pixel works so it seems to be a software issue between Litchi and the Oneplus', bearing in mind that the Joystick is available on the Oneplus phones when using DJIGO4. It is a strange one.

webvan · Jun 5, 2021

Good news ! Odd isn't it when different phones running the same OS produce different results...

marckee · Jun 5, 2021

webvan said:
Good news ! Odd isn't it when different phones running the same OS produce different results...

It is very odd, must be something to do with the 'Oxygen' software overlay that Oneplus use or the version of Android? I need to try and work it out though as I own the Oneplus and my daughter's phone is the Pixel. I will post if I come up with a reason/solution. Thanks for the help.