Lost Air using Litchi

[Djurgarden]

Help!

I lost my Mavic Air while performing a Litchi mission.
Basically the drone lost connection almost 250 meters away, I couldn’t find it and it didn’t return home. 5 hours searching the mission area, and wasn’t able to find it. Of course I tried to use the Litchi ‘find my aircraft’ but it only shows the last known spot. As you can see in the picture, the drone didn’t even make it to the first point, and had almost full battery. The entire flight time should be around 13 minutes.
I am not an experienced pilot, so for you who have lost and found your drones before, could you please tell me what your best guesses are? What happened? Did it continue the mission and tried to return home landed/crashed somewhere? The flight attitude should be enough to fly over the trees(50 meters) and ‘avoiding obstacles’ was on.
Any suggestions on ‘how to think’ are appreciated!

 

[Exphantomflyer]

Help!

I lost my Mavic Air while performing a Litchi mission.
Basically the drone lost connection almost 250 meters away, I couldn’t find it and it didn’t return home. 5 hours searching the mission area, and wasn’t able to find it. Of course I tried to use the Litchi ‘find my aircraft’ but it only shows the last known spot. As you can see in the picture, the drone didn’t even make it to the first point, and had almost full battery. The entire flight time should be around 13 minutes.
I am not an experienced pilot, so for you who have lost and found your drones before, could you please tell me what your best guesses are? What happened? Did it continue the mission and tried to return home landed/crashed somewhere? The flight attitude should be enough to fly over the trees(50 meters) and ‘avoiding obstacles’ was on.
Any suggestions on ‘how to think’ are appreciated!

I’m sure Litchi produces flight logs and these may help in the understanding of what happened.

Can’t remember where they are located but the help page should say.

The fact it lost connection may be due to severe interference in the area or an issue with the quad itself after take off

Were there any error messages on the app before you lost connection

 

[Djurgarden]

Thx for the reply.
The only error message was the lost signal..latest picture was clear and flying a straight line to the first point. I managed even to control the gimbal. But when it lost signal, I tried to stay calm, and wait until it came back. When I couldn’t here it I got worried, and started searching.
I am wondering if the mission was too much... should it return when it lose battery? I read somewhere that it won’t return him if it lose signal..but it would continue the mission.
In that case it means it could be anywhere..around the entire mission arena and the possible way it work to return home...

 

[Exphantomflyer]

Thx for the reply.
The only error message was the lost signal..latest picture was clear and flying a straight line to the first point. I managed even to control the gimbal. But when it lost signal, I tried to stay calm, and wait until it came back. When I couldn’t here it I got worried, and started searching.
I am wondering if the mission was too much... should it return when it lose battery? I read somewhere that it won’t return him if it lose signal..but it would continue the mission.
In that case it means it could be anywhere..around the entire mission arena and the possible way it work to return home...

Yes it should have finished the mission and returned home, assuming that it had enough satellites locked and you set a home point, as i said you need to flnd the log file in the app, if its an android then hook it to your pc and search for CSV files, i think its that type, they usually reside in the application folder, its been a while since i used litchi, if its IOS you will need to use Itunes to find the files.

 

[Fhonda stech]

Thx for the reply.
The only error message was the lost signal..latest picture was clear and flying a straight line to the first point. I managed even to control the gimbal. But when it lost signal, I tried to stay calm, and wait until it came back. When I couldn’t here it I got worried, and started searching.
I am wondering if the mission was too much... should it return when it lose battery? I read somewhere that it won’t return him if it lose signal..but it would continue the mission.
In that case it means it could be anywhere..around the entire mission arena and the possible way it work to return home...

Not sure how your settings are, but I had created a mission just to test the return home with low battery. Granted it was only 1000ft away doing waypoints. Was 24min of flight(what litchi called for, wanted more than what the air could ever do.). At 20% mine auto returns home. Once it lands battery is about 9%. Tried this a couple times and similar results.

 

[Djurgarden]

Not sure how your settings are, but I had created a mission just to test the return home with low battery. Granted it was only 1000ft away doing waypoints. Was 24min of flight(what litchi called for, wanted more than what the air could ever do.). At 20% mine auto returns home. Once it lands battery is about 9%. Tried this a couple times and similar results.

Yes you are right. My settings were also to return home, I had a very constructive conversation with Litchi, they explained to me that the drone should have returned home. They couldn’t give a sure answer why it lost connection in such a close range..they hinted it might have been a hardware failure.

But I was a bit chocked when I contacted DJI. I explained in details what happened and wanted to hear if they have got any complaint about MA losing connection in such close range. Their first answer was more like ‘sry you voided your warranty by using Litchi’. So I told them I am not claiming you should compensate me, I am just asking if this is normal..that time the reply was even worse ‘we need the flight data..to know..’

Then I made a research on the Internet, and it seemed very common that MA loses connection already at around 200-300 m. There is even a video on YouTube about it.

I have also seen a post from e Swedish guy(I live in Sweden) who claimed that the frequency changes automatically to ‘CE standard’ and range becomes very short..so regardless of what app we are using, we can’t be sure it won’t disconnect in 200-300 m.
To me the ‘up to 2000 m in optimal condition’ is unrealistic...

 

[queeg730]

On Android, the litchi logs are in; internalstorage/LitchiApp/flightlogs

 

[drz12345]

Bad Controllers This forum is great for blaming pilots and drones BUT everyone forgets the controller. I had an incident with my Mavic Air and had to have it replaced. I repeatedly told Tech support it was a controller problem. They would not hear of it and refused to take my controller back for a check assuring me it was fine. I continued to have problems and finally lost the drone. No flight data recorded BUT I had an AirData subscription and records. After many fights and complaints DJI agreed to replace my drone, a supervisor agreed to check the controller. Surprise bad controller. I am now fighting the replacement charges since they were an original warranty issue with the controller causing my problems. Take info on this forum with a grain of salt. Not everything is the pilot's fault

 

[DaJuice]

On Android, the litchi logs are in; internalstorage/LitchiApp/flightlogs

Hello there! The same thing happened to me today I lost my Mavic Air during a Litchi Waypoint Mission. Like Djurgarden, signal was lost at ~200-250M. 'Find my drone' just shows the last location prior to losing signal. That's pretty useless.

I have the log file. How do I make sense of it or use it to find the MIA Mavic Air?

Thanks!

 

[mutega]

Yes you are right. My settings were also to return home, I had a very constructive conversation with Litchi, they explained to me that the drone should have returned home. They couldn’t give a sure answer why it lost connection in such a close range..they hinted it might have been a hardware failure.

But I was a bit chocked when I contacted DJI. I explained in details what happened and wanted to hear if they have got any complaint about MA losing connection in such close range. Their first answer was more like ‘sry you voided your warranty by using Litchi’. So I told them I am not claiming you should compensate me, I am just asking if this is normal..that time the reply was even worse ‘we need the flight data..to know..’

Then I made a research on the Internet, and it seemed very common that MA loses connection already at around 200-300 m. There is even a video on YouTube about it.

I have also seen a post from e Swedish guy(I live in Sweden) who claimed that the frequency changes automatically to ‘CE standard’ and range becomes very short..so regardless of what app we are using, we can’t be sure it won’t disconnect in 200-300 m.
To me the ‘up to 2000 m in optimal condition’ is unrealistic...

Did you find your drone? I can feel or pain and sadness!
Yesterday I have lost my drone but found it the next day.

Cheers,
João Dias

I have the video and history about my crash and how I have lost my drone:

 

[BossBob]

Help!

I lost my Mavic Air while performing a Litchi mission.
Basically the drone lost connection almost 250 meters away, I couldn’t find it and it didn’t return home. 5 hours searching the mission area, and wasn’t able to find it. Of course I tried to use the Litchi ‘find my aircraft’ but it only shows the last known spot. As you can see in the picture, the drone didn’t even make it to the first point, and had almost full battery. The entire flight time should be around 13 minutes.
I am not an experienced pilot, so for you who have lost and found your drones before, could you please tell me what your best guesses are? What happened? Did it continue the mission and tried to return home landed/crashed somewhere? The flight attitude should be enough to fly over the trees(50 meters) and ‘avoiding obstacles’ was on.
Any suggestions on ‘how to think’ are appreciated!

A correctly set up mission for your Air in Litchi doesn’t use your controller to fly the mission. The drone doesn’t need a connection to fly the mission as all the parameters are uploaded to the drone and it carries out the mission automatically. I suggest you upload the mission parameters and any logs and someone from the forum will have a look and see what happened.

 

[bronze661]

That blue spot in the picture is where your mobile device is. Your home point is very far from that.

 

[Mossiback]

Like @BossBob stated, Litchi will continue the mission if contact is lost, at least it will attempt to. This is a nice feature but does not account for wind speed and direction aloft. It could have encountered a head wind strong enough to deplete the battery before the mission could complete. A review of the logs may show useful information but since the logs end at the disconnect the data needed to find it or diagnose what happened is probably not there.