Litchi - Yes, no, or wait?

[imnotreallyscott]

I've been tempted to buy and try the Litchi app. I like the idea of plotting waypoints in advance and sending my Mavic out along the route. So I came here first and looked up Litchi...and most of what I've read is negative. 90M restrictions on height, not following route, stopping in the middle of a route, etc.

So is it just a bad app? Is this its first iteration and there may be fixes coming? Or do most people have great experiences and people with problems are posting. Thoughts?

FYI: I'm new to drones and the Mavic is my first one. I've had it for about two weeks. I use an iPhone and the last time I looked (yesterday) it said I had the latest firmware.

 

[Former Member]

Litchi will automate many of the flight controls of the Mavic for you, as long as you program it correctly. I bought Litchi within a few weeks of buying my first drone and I never looked back. It's been rock solid for me, lets me focus on the shot while it does the flying, and adds smoothness to my flights.

As I said, programming is vital to a safe and uneventful flight. You need to set your course to avoid obstacles, and make sure your altitudes are set up correctly. When starting out, try a 4 or 5 waypoint mission in a clear open area, and see how you do. I find it easier to to program missions on the app on my device vs. the Mission hub on my computer.

 

[adiru]

I've been tempted to buy and try the Litchi app. I like the idea of plotting waypoints in advance and sending my Mavic out along the route. So I came here first and looked up Litchi...and most of what I've read is negative. 90M restrictions on height, not following route, stopping in the middle of a route, etc.

So is it just a bad app? Is this its first iteration and there may be fixes coming? Or do most people have great experiences and people with problems are posting. Thoughts?

FYI: I'm new to drones and the Mavic is my first one. I've had it for about two weeks. I use an iPhone and the last time I looked (yesterday) it said I had the latest firmware.

I recommend Litchi. I haven't heard of the 90M restriction on height though. In the past I've used Litchi waypoints to go well above 1000feet.I haven't updated my apps in a long time so maybe they went the way of DJI lockdowns.... but the version I'm using they finally fixed the camera focus issue and has a convenient "infinite focus" option that can be mapped to the RC buttons.

The only annoyance is the height maps are not always accurate, I almost crashed a few times until I realized Litchi was getting its height info from Google terrain. So I got a laser range finder and got more accurate heights data info from the routes I preplanned in order to get as low as possible without striking anything.

I like the Litchi web browser hub ability to plan flights because it is just more convenient to do that on a large monitor than say the Autopilot app which forces you to do everything on ipad.

The limited cruise speed is a bit annoying, you have to remember to set it to max both in the litchi hub when planning on the web browser and when you actually load it in the tablet there is another speed limit you have to remove or set to max. Otherwise it will go only 16mph and your battery will drain fastly. Optimal cruise speed btw is 32 mph for max total distance.

Also if you don't do curved waypoints it will pause at each waypoint, almost in some cases doubling the time it takes to do a long distance flight if you programed a lot of individual way points.

But all in all, its well worth the money for just flying waypoint missions alone.

Here is a video example I filmed with Litchi and Mavic:

 

[SilicaStorm]

I have been operating drones for several years. Recently I purchased the Litchi app and as "Thunderdrones" mentioned I started creating simple Waypoint missions in a clear open area to understand the app. Programming on the app is much easier than on Mission Hub.
Once i migrated from simple 4-5 point missions I then started with 15-20 waypoints missions with multiple POIs. Variation in heights and speed between waypoints has been greatly satisfying with smooth cinematography shots that I could not operate both the drone and gimbal at the same time that now are achieved with Litchi.
Litchi is what I have been wanting for several years and now I am fully satisfied operating the drone for mostly real estate shots. I plot out the mission, view the video capture and then slightly modify the mission to enhance the video recorded on the second time by these adjustments in height or closer proximity to the object. Key is always to scout out the area before; to see any potential obstructions than may not be seen in the map.

 

[Former Member]

I have been operating drones for several years. Recently I purchased the Litchi app and as "Thunderdrones" mentioned I started creating simple Waypoint missions in a clear open area to understand the app. Programming on the app is much easier than on Mission Hub.
Once i migrated from simple 4-5 point missions I then started with 15-20 waypoints missions with multiple POIs. Variation in heights and speed between waypoints has been greatly satisfying with smooth cinematography shots that I could not operate both the drone and gimbal at the same time that now are achieved with Litchi.
Litchi is what I have been wanting for several years and now I am fully satisfied operating the drone for mostly real estate shots. I plot out the mission, view the video capture and then slightly modify the mission to enhance the video recorded on the second time by these adjustments in height or closer proximity to the object. Key is always to scout out the area before; to see any potential obstructions than may not be seen in the map.

I use a very similar approach. Practice makes perfect. Sometimes shooting the same mission 2 or 3 times with different filters makes a big difference.

 

[imnotreallyscott]

Thank you all. Glad to here there's some positive feedback out there.

 

[Jeromeo]

How accurate are your way points? I love Litchi and use it a lot. But I have been flying for 10 days now the same mission for work and the positioning if really all over the place. I almost crashed and I had to cancel one of the mission. I'm taking pictures at each points and they are so different than I cannot use them. I'm expecting to much?

 

[Former Member]

Are you making sure that you're compass is calibrated and that you have enough GPS satellites to give you correct positioning? I honestly have flown hundreds of missions with that software and the only potential crash i ever had was because of bad programming on my part.

 

[quick_dry]

When you capture a waypoint in Litchi using a button to do "waypoint at aircraft", does it capture the gimbal orientation too?

(I'm looking to get as close as I can to the Solo's multipoint cable cam which captures lat, lon, altitude, yaw and gimbal pitch then flies a smooth path between all of those)