Litchi and Track Mode

[dmac1]

I want to see if Litchi Track will work better than Spotlight in DJIGO4, but haven't yet been able to get it to work. The instructions for Litchi include the following under Track Mode, but I am unable to control the flight of the aircraft while Track is operating. What am I missing??

You have the choice to either fly the aircraft manually while Litchi keeps the object in the frame,

Help - Litchi

What I'd like to do is have the aircraft track a moving object (dirt bike) with the gimbal, while I fly the aircraft. So far, I've just tried tracking myself while walking to try to see if it will work at all.

If you've gotten it to work and prefer one over the other, I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts.

Note - I have a Mavic Pro.

Thanks.

 

[ChakaCam]

Any Luck? I've been searching for a solution to track my dog.. DJi loses him all the time. Works pretty good for humans though. I just bought litchi for my mavic pro 2 and am off to try it out.

 

[dmac1]

Any Luck? I've been searching for a solution to track my dog.. DJi loses him all the time. Works pretty good for humans though. I just bought litchi for my mavic pro 2 and am off to try it out.

Not really. I reverted to DjiGo app for my trip and didnt get to try it as much as I wanted and have had too much going on since to be able to fly.

On my trip, I cemented the fact that, in DJI optical follow modes, the drone doesnt respond quickly enough to direction changes and thus its miinimally useful for dirtbiking.

I had a little success using spotlight mode with me flying and a friend riding an agreed to course and via that, I could pretty much keep the drone near him and if I did it right, the drone would keep the gimbal on him.

Lemme know what you learn if you can.

 

[dmac1]

Any Luck? I've been searching for a solution to track my dog.. DJi loses him all the time. Works pretty good for humans though. I just bought litchi for my mavic pro 2 and am off to try it out.

I took my drone out to some wide open country roads and tried out both Litchi Follow and DJI Follow Me. The latter should be called Hover. I got it to move a couple times when I'd walk, but prolly 18 out of 20 times , it never moved.

Litchi Follow, on the other hand, actually mostly worked! In both of these modes, the drone is supposed to follow the gps signal from the phone thats attached to to controller. The road I was testing on was hilly and with Follow, the drone would increase and decrease altitude while I rode my dirt bike. It did lose me a couple times, and I'm thinking it was because I had the controller/phone in a fanny back in front of me (for easy access) and sometimes the drone would get too far behind and then hover. At least that is my suspicion as to what was happening. It would hook back up to me when I'd come back to it, so that aspect was easy.

Bear in mind, I was only going back and forth on about a 1/2 mile stretch of wide open country roads, so this was a somewhat limited test.

Also, an issue with both of these modes is the drone is not optically locked onto me, so whether the camera was aimed at me will be a crap shoot. You'd think if you repeated the same section a few times, that one would get lucky and have some useful footage, but thats not really feasible on a real ride with others....unless you are just out makin movies.

 

[parkgt]

Neither of you mention what craft you are using, it might make a difference.

I used DJI GO4 Active Track for this one shortly after getting my M2P last fall.

 

[dmac1]

My drone is a Mavic Pro (see initial post).

"Spotlight mode is intended for a stationary target." I wonder if you aren't thinking of Point of Interest mode?

Spotlight will for sure follow a moving target. See my vid below that shows it beginning at about 1:11. All footage in that vid of the Kawasaki (green bike) was shot in Spotlight with me flying the drone. The vid of me riding on the KTM (orange bike) was shot via Profile with the drone flying autonomously.

Watched your vid. I think you will find the same as what I did, and that is that optical follow modes, like Active Track, are minimally useful for tracking a dirt bike in a real riding scenario. For one thing, the drone cant handle quick direction changes and it will not altitude adjust, so if ya ride in totally flat terrain and just go straight, ok, it may work, but thats not my reality.

I am confident that I could make a decent video of some spectacular riding via my Mavic Pro and DJI Go4, but at this point, I'd need to be flying and using Spotlight. The reason for Spotlight is so the drone keeps the gimbal on the subject while I strive to keep the drone in the desired position for optimal viewing. But, Sport mode is unavailable in Active Track modes, so the rider will likely hafta keep his/her speed down.