Litchi app huge camera focus issues for the Mavic

jimmybbq · Jun 16, 2017

I use Litchi waypoint missions all the time and I've not noticed this. There are tons of people using it and haven't noticed it. Being a Quality Control Manager, I'm always looking for all of the variables in play. In this case, the same software works for some and not others. Variables? Users, phones and settings. I would not blame it on the software. I've sent my mavic down a river 2 miles away on a waypoint mission with maybe 20 waypoints and 15 POI's, never lost a signal, watched video footage the entire time. If it makes any difference, I was using a Droid Turbo at the time. At the time I believe my camera was on "auto".. I run with it now on manual setting, but auto-focus.

Below is the very first waypoint mission I ever did on Litchi, takeoff was from my house about 1.2 miles away.

jimmybbq · Jun 16, 2017

In my line of work, if my customer is having trouble running the product I'm selling them, I'll tell them to try the material on a different machine. More often than not they find out the machine was setup incorrectly. As an experiment, if you're having trouble with Litchi, maybe try a different phone or tablet and see if the problem persists. In the end, we want to be able to turn the problem on and off. This way we know we've found the root cause.

Pol · Jun 16, 2017

That's a real bummer David. I hate something that's not reliable. And I hate it even more that I paid €25,- for this unreliable app. Wish those Litchy guys would work on this focus problem.

Pol · Jun 16, 2017

jimmybbq said:
In my line of work, if my customer is having trouble running the product I'm selling them, I'll tell them to try the material on a different machine. More often than not they find out the machine was setup incorrectly. As an experiment, if you're having trouble with Litchi, maybe try a different phone or tablet and see if the problem persists. In the end, we want to be able to turn the problem on and off. This way we know we've found the root cause.

What kind of settings can I change on my Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro to make the focus go right every time?
Wouldn't it be more easy to switch between autofocus and manual focus (during flight on the C1 button)?
And another thing: Why is there no focus issue in the DJI Go4 app running on my Xiaomi phone?
IMHO it looks like the Litchi app is responsible for the focussing issue.

Budmancan · Jun 16, 2017

Pol said:
What kind of settings can I change on my Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro to make the focus go right every time?
Wouldn't it be more easy to switch between autofocus and manual focus (during flight on the C1 button)?
And another thing: Why is there no focus issue in the DJI Go4 app running on my Xiaomi phone?
IMHO it looks like the Litchi app is responsible for the focussing issue.

I use Litchi on both IOS and Android and definitely find IOS more stable in general. I mainly use it for Waypoint flights and use DJIGo4 occasionally when free flying and in Active Track and Follow me modes.

In Litchi I use the Focus to Infinity setting most of the time when flying except for close in shots, say 20 meters or less. For close in shots I use the Center Focus setting. I have both options assigned to the C1 button. I assign Zoom-in/Zoom-out to the C2 button to get really close in shots. You just need to hit Center Focus again after zooming in.

I've had more focus issues using DJIGo. To get Focus to Infinity in Go, I always hover on takeoff at 30 meters for about 30 seconds and point the camera straight down and tap focus on the screen.

Using these approaches I'm consistently getting video and photos in focus.

dwallersv · Jun 16, 2017

mavic801 said:
I've also had the focus issues. I just recently bought the app for my IOS (I Phone7 Plus) thinking what a great way to use the drone. App would be very powerful if it would work properly but on the waypoint missions same focus problem everything is blurry and out of focus. I thought maybe my camera was screwed up but if i used DJI Go and don't have the focus problem.

Make sure you initiate an autofocus by tapping the screen before you upload the Litchi mission.

I always take off and ascend to WP1 altitude, point at something in the distance and tap-focus before I even upload the mission to the aircraft. I don't know if this is "the answer" to the problem, but I've had no focusing issues.

The other nice thing, would be if litchi could allow the user to set the altitude relative to the ground. As from user error on my part had a small crash yesterday because i didn't realize that the app wasn't allowing the mavic to correct for uneven terrain and also didn't realize the difference in elevation from where i took off to where it hit the ground from the eyes prospective it not much of a difference but i found out the hard way when i had to start my own recovery mission, lucky for me i used the app and it put me right on top of the drone.

Litchi does provide ground-relative waypoint altitude. I just made this little demonstration:

Workflow: Lay down you waypoints with no regard to altitude. Then, using the edit tool, select groups of waypoints and set them according to the desired altitude and reference.

Note that when you want to follow terrain contours, use LOTS of waypoints. Examine the path in Google Earth in 3D to make sure you're clearing everything, make sure there are waypoints on all the highest features along the path, and where you want to make sure you're following the contours faithfully, make sure there are waypoints in the low valleys as well.

Look at this thread to see this in action: Litchi Terrain-Following Workflow

dwallersv · Jun 16, 2017

Pol said:
That's a real bummer David. I hate something that's not reliable. And I hate it even more that I paid €25,- for this unreliable app. Wish those Litchy guys would work on this focus problem.

They can't fix it if they can't reproduce it.

Given the large numbers of people not having a problem, and the relative handful that are, it's seemingly difficult to cause the failure. I can't make it happen (mine focuses perfectly with Litchi), and the Litchi guys may be in the same situation -- unable to make it fail.

jimmybbq · Jun 17, 2017

it's kinda hard to blame the software if some folks use the exact same software with no problems. Kinda like you can't blame DJI because all tablets and phones don't work with the remote. Personally, I would put all settings on the Mavic back to default. Delete and re-download DJI GO 4 and Litchi . Then see if it works. If it does, change ONE THING AT A TIME until the failure pops up again. If it does not after everything is back at default, try on a different phone or tablet..

jimmybbq · Jun 17, 2017

Pol said:
What kind of settings can I change on my Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro to make the focus go right every time?
Wouldn't it be more easy to switch between autofocus and manual focus (during flight on the C1 button)?
And another thing: Why is there no focus issue in the DJI Go4 app running on my Xiaomi phone?
IMHO it looks like the Litchi app is responsible for the focussing issue.

Why doesn't my Samsung Tab A work with the remote and my Google Nexus and Nvidia Shield work perfectly? All three of them run Android.. I tried for hours to get that Samsung to work because others said that model worked fine for them. In the end, I just bought a different tablet (or two). It's going to be hard to get a company to fix something that works fine for the majority of its users. Maybe they can suggest a workaround with your equipment, If they can't, there is other software out there. Maybe look at Drone Harmony, its in beta so it might be buggy.

BrooklynFlyer · Jun 18, 2017

Budmancan said:
I use Litchi on both IOS and Android and definitely find IOS more stable in general. I mainly use it for Waypoint flights and use DJIGo4 occasionally when free flying and in Active Track and Follow me modes.

In Litchi I use the Focus to Infinity setting most of the time when flying except for close in shots, say 20 meters or less. For close in shots I use the Center Focus setting. I have both options assigned to the C1 button. I assign Zoom-in/Zoom-out to the C2 button to get really close in shots. You just need to hit Center Focus again after zooming in.

I've had more focus issues using DJIGo. To get Focus to Infinity in Go, I always hover on takeoff at 30 meters for about 30 seconds and point the camera straight down and tap focus on the screen.

Using these approaches I'm consistently getting video and photos in focus.

This is good advice.
I have same setup after having some trouble with focus and it works great

sprtbkrydr · Jun 18, 2017

Budmancan said:
In Litchi I use the Focus to Infinity setting most of the time when flying except for close in shots

Where is this setting at in Litchi?

Budmancan · Jun 18, 2017

sprtbkrydr said:
Where is this setting at in Litchi?

On the main screen tap the 3 dots in the upper right corner and scroll down. This is for Litchi on IOS.

sprtbkrydr · Jun 18, 2017

Budmancan said:
On the main screen tap the 3 dots in the upper right corner and scroll down. This is for Litchi on IOS.

Oh ok I'm running Android. Thanks anyway.

guest112 · Jun 19, 2017

jimmybbq said:
Why doesn't my Samsung Tab A work with the remote and my Google Nexus and Nvidia Shield work perfectly? All three of them run Android.. I tried for hours to get that Samsung to work because others said that model worked fine for them. In the end, I just bought a different tablet (or two). It's going to be hard to get a company to fix something that works fine for the majority of its users. Maybe they can suggest a workaround with your equipment, If they can't, there is other software out there. Maybe look at Drone Harmony, its in beta so it might be buggy.

Since the DJI auto focus is not reliably working with their latest firmware we decided to add different focus options to our planner. It will be available with the next update (release should be during this week). A sneak peek (not final):

Mitch · Jan 26, 2018

Has the focus issue with Litchi/Mavic (waypoint mission) been resolved? Wondering when the afc feature came out last year if it fixed the issue.

jbuy41 · Feb 10, 2018

Just did a shoot yesterday. update to latest versions. till have an issue with autofocus using lithi.

ftttu · Feb 10, 2018

I wasn't happy my first Litchi waypoint missions were out of focus. I thought something was wrong when I would focus during those flights and it would only stay focused about a second or two.

I searched this forum, and as always, I quickly learned to focus first before starting my video recording. I would like it to not be that way, but I can live with it.

JRP3 · Jul 1, 2018

Alas, this is not simply a Litchi issue, it is a Mavic issue. One runs into the exact same issue when one flies without a smart device attached to the controller. DJI picked the wrong defaults, and there's no reason why they couldn't have used some of the plethora of dials and buttons on the remote to set the focus to infinity and the exposure and apperature to some sort of reasonable compromise.

ZeroDrone · Jul 1, 2018

Having the same issue. Been flying since the Mavik came out, and have shot hundreds of hours of footage and thousands of photos with no focus issue (or any issue, for that matter)in GO4...I think I've had maybe one app crash, which resulted in nothing happening to the drone.

Bought Litchi the other day. I always focus before flying,and all my Litchi videos are coming out like absolute garbage no matter what I do. Use GO4, and everything's fine. Litchi also randomly started adjusting the manual exposure while I was flying today, and I wasn't touching the control for it.(?!)

Really frustrating after paying for it, I'm bout to just go back to GO4, as I've personally never had any of the issues everyone else seems to have on it, let alone blurry and noisy videos..

ftttu · Jul 2, 2018

ZeroDrone said:
Having the same issue. Been flying since the Mavik came out, and have shot hundreds of hours of footage and thousands of photos with no focus issue (or any issue, for that matter)in GO4...I think I've had maybe one app crash, which resulted in nothing happening to the drone.

Bought Litchi the other day. I always focus before flying,and all my Litchi videos are coming out like absolute garbage no matter what I do. Use GO4, and everything's fine. Litchi also randomly started adjusting the manual exposure while I was flying today, and I wasn't touching the control for it.(?!)

Really frustrating after paying for it, I'm bout to just go back to GO4, as I've personally never had any of the issues everyone else seems to have on it, let alone blurry and noisy videos..

Again, for those of you having focus problems with Litchi waypoint missions - take off, hit focus soon afterward when stable and then hit record. My first couple of flights were terrible where I had terrible out of focus footage, and I didn't understand why it wouldn't stay in focus during a mission after pushing the focus button. How this is even a problem, I don't understand since it appears to be something easy for the software guys to fix.