Did you get to try it a bit more? Any difference over the Amazon version?
Hi There
OK, I promised to follow up with impressions and here they are such as they are.
I returned yesterday late from a 8 day holiday on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. I took a
M2P with me along with a heap of batteries, my traditional control setup of the iPad mini 5 as well as the
smart controller. I took the iPad as I was still far from confident in the
smart controller. I had tried and tested in several configurations before my departure and it was a "mixed bag" to say the least. After my last post above I had a near loss of an aircraft while flying an extended way point mission under Litchi where I had a disconnection and the aircraft did NOT return home OR continue the mission. When I re established contact I was at 12% battery, 800ft up and 1.8km away over the ocean. I had to perform and emergency landing on a beachfront property some 600m from my location and recover the aircraft. My smart device registered a heart beat of 147 when later checked LOL.
I want to say that while unsure at first that now after examining the logs and more experimentation I do *NOT* think this situation was caused in any way by the
smart controller but considering the teething issues I had been having it rattled my already thin confidence. The issue was caused by the fact that settings when changed in the Go4 app are then stored in many cases on the aircraft and carry over on to Litchi and vice versa, in all the effort to debug the
Smart Controller this slipped my mind. If you forget to change them back you can be caught out with inappropriate settings for the software in use and situation. I was flying with obstacle avoidance and smart return to home enabled in Litchi 9which I do not advise) because I been using that when flying with Go4 previously (where I do advise it) and this caused the aircraft to go into RTH mode when disconnected and then while flying back into the sun have dozens of false "proximity warnings" (which is a known issue with DJI drones all of it's own) causing the aircraft to halt and attempt to climb over the non existing obstacle dozens of times during the return trip climbing and expending battery all the way.
OK, enough background.
I have now tried the
smart controller in three configurations with the following results and observations.
1. As it came out of the box with a 128Gb micro SD card and Go4 only.
The controller was somewhat flaky and had number of app crashes first time out. I followed various steps as suggested around the various forums including but not limited to a factory reset followed by downgrading the size of the micro SD card, limiting onboard video caching the 2GB of internal not sd storage and the unit became stable after these steps.
2. With Goole store, apps, maps etc all side loaded using the tutorials around the web in this forums and others.
You need to register you controller with Google to get access to the play store as a development device as it is not approved by them as a device. This is not hard however. As I've mentioned before I'm pretty tech savvy but even for those who are not It is quite doable and takes about half an hour (not including a reset) the first time around. Once again, it's a little flaky. Google services crashes almost every flight. It doesn't seem to affect the operation but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence either. Also it soon becomes obvious that the controller is working just that little bit hard for comfort. We all know that as far as it's processor/ram/android combination is concerned the
smart controller is hardly cutting edge and you can tell it's working. Especially so with Litchi where the video feed frame rate starts to drop on complex missions and starts to become a little choppy. I realise it shouldn't, once the flight plan is uploaded to the aircraft in theory very little is handled by the controller from that point but none the less it does happen. I was in this configuration I almost lost the aircraft while testing, as I said, I don't attribute this to the controller but I was still dissatisfied so I thought I'd best try the third and suggested method.
3. As in configuration 1 out of the box with the suggested stability tweaks and then loading Amazon store litchi.
This is undoubtedly the pick of the three configurations. There is obviously less going on in the background and far as process overheads. There are still occasions when it is obvious that the controller is working at full capacity when running missions under Litchi but it does it without issue or complaint and smoother than with the Goole play version. Although weather was not great on the Barrier reef I flew about 15 times all with the
smart controller using both Go4 and Litchi without a single incident. The most difficult day was flying from a vessel at Lady Musgrave Island Reef some 51 nautical miles out to sea. As you can imagine there is little margin for error but at the same time you need to limit equipment you carry aboard and I threw caution to the wind and left the iPad at home and took only the
smart controller. It didn't let me down in any way and even with 25 knot winds gusting higher and a very limited space on deck to operate from the aircraft came home with no close calls and some epic footage. The extra bright screen was a brilliant help in the bright sunlight at sea I must say. I flew a mixture of Litchi and manual missions with DJI Go4.
I am never ever going to totally replace my iPad Mini 5 control setup with the
smart controller. I admit that my use case scenario is probably more extreme that the average recreational drone pilot and as such there are always going to be situations where the extra power and versatility of the iPad setup is going to give me an edge in confidence while flying in front of the customer if nothing else BUT, the
smart controller has proven capable enough for me to use in lighter situations where other factors such as time to get into the air and light equipment load tell out. I went away expecting to sell the
smart controller when I returned, now I'm going to keep it as I realise it's not an "either/or" situation but rather a "both" as far as I am concerned.
Summary for power users with Litchi and the
smart controller from my experience
1. Factory reset your controller before use
2. Use a fast smaller micro sd card (32G was plenty for me as I'm not caching video there only maps and apps) limit video cache to 2Gb (or disable) and save on internal storage.
3. Use Amazon Litchi, while it is probably little different to the Google play version there are fewer background processes running which gives noticeable improvement to stability and performance.
4. Always be aware that if you change a setting in Go4 that setting is very likely to be changed in Litchi. Make sure of your important settings like smart return to home and obstacle avoidance before flying if you have changed from one software to the other
5. Always, always ALWAYS. Do a cold reboot of your controller when changing from one software package to the other. I.E. If you've been using one actually turn the controller totally off and restart before using the the other. Many people simply suggest force closing the app but in reality it only takes moments more to do the cold reboot and adds confidence (in my eyes anyway).
6. Load as few (if any) third party apps to the
smart controller.
7. Tethering range for wifi is substandard in my opinion also so keep your wifi source in your pocket (which of course introduces issues of it's own with RFI)
Personal observations
1. I feel the range of the
smart controller is slightly less than that of the one that came with the aircraft and that is more apparent in cluttered environments but there is little in it.
2. I feel I get better battery life (more flights) out of the standard controller but again there's not a lot in it and my
smart controller is new and battery life may improve with a few more charges.
Final comment. Don't let anyone tell you that Litchi can not be done with the
Smart Controller. It most certainly can and in both the Google store and Amazon flavour but my choice would always be the Amazon version even with the poorer maps and a little care in setup makes a large difference in use. That said, I can't help but think that with a more modern octa core processor, double the ram, a more up to date and debugged version of android, cellular onboard (and perhaps a slightly larger screen) the
Smart Controller would have indeed been worthy of the rest of it's undeniably excellent hardware build and have been "The One Controller to Rule Them All".
I would never buy a DJI aircraft that came packaged with the
Smart Controller stand alone, I would always buy the
smart controller as an add on but there is no denying with a bit of work and research you can make it work for you and well even with Litchi.
Finally, these are my experiences only, but I did register 3 copies of Litchi and spend many hours testing. I'm pretty happy that I am at the crux of where it's all at but of course your mileage may vary.
Please excuse the short story but if the feedback helps one person then it's good in my eyes.
Regards
Ari
