My talk with DJI Support regarding Litchi

[Jeff A]

There have been many mentions about using Litchi vs DJI Go 4 and Warranty issue when something goes wrong. When I first started using Litchi, I soon stopped using it or u sing it rarely because of fear of having an incident that I was not covered for. Well, times have changed. I can't help but use Litchi all the time. It is just so good and so reliable, I feel I have to use it.

Recently I have a conversation about coverage while flying with Litchi instead of DJI Go 4. Here is the transcript of that conversation. I hope to hear your opinions regarding DJI's policy. Please see the attachment. My original question is at the top.

 

[BadWolf1]

Since I have a mini and so no Litchi support yet, I haven't needed to look at this .
However a some observations based on a career in tech companies.
1. Tech companies don't like unknowns. They do a lot of tests, and then a customer combines their product with someone else's product, and blames both parties when the two don't work together properly.
2. When companies release a Software Development Kit for other people to create add-ons (as DJI have done) it creates a massive grey area, because they can neither guarantee all software made with the SDK works as intended., nor can they say "if customers use software we encouraged 3rd parties to write, we will abandon them".
3. "We don't support" scares people. When I worked for one big company "supported" meant if it didn't work to spec, we fixed it. We couldn't fix 3rd party stuff, so that wasn't "supported", but using it didn't make customers "outlaws" they'd get help but that call all the way to developer - we couldn't fix what we didn't make. Don't confuse a message "We don't support X" with "Using X leaves you in the wilderness".
4. Customers will lie about what they were doing when things went wrong. Policies towards 3rd party products which make customers lie are best avoided. The drones have on-board flight-data recording so can DJI can establish the cause in all but the most destructive cases.
5. DJI make money from repairs, or selling replacements (with a discount), and it's bad for business to have damaged, or improperly repaired drones falling out of the sky. So I imagine they'd want you to come back to them if you crash your drone.

 

[Juggler]

I think you contacted your local member of parliment/congress.....He didnt answer a thing, just spoke in circles...

 

[Meta4]

Recently I have a conversation about coverage while flying with Litchi instead of DJI Go 4. Here is the transcript of that conversation. I hope to hear your opinions regarding DJI's policy. Please see the attachment. My original question is at the top.

Unfortunately when you talk to DJI's "help" people you are just as likely to get bad information as good.

DJI's policy is well known despite their best efforts to confuse you.
Here's a simplified version:
If using Litchi or other 3rd party software was the cause of an incident, DJI won't cover you.
But it would be a very rare incident that was caused by the flight software - I've never seen a case where it was.
But if you have an incident that results an unrecoverable drone, DJI will not accept a Litchi flight log and you'll be on your own.

 

[JAW]

That DJI rep is in the wrong profession. He should go into politics.

 

[dawgpilot]

I think the best solution here if you are concerned is to just buy something like a State Farm personal articles policy. They will end up covering you regardless of what happens to the drone or what software you were using at the time.

 

[Jeff A]

I think the best solution here if you are concerned is to just buy something like a State Farm personal articles policy. They will end up covering you regardless of what happens to the drone or what software you were using at the time.

If only State Farm sold thier Drone Policies in California!

 

[Haggar]

In my experience, the only warranty worth a jot is your legal entitlements under sale of goods legislation, and the deal is via a reputable retailer. After 30 days, your flying solo. I know that is sceptical, but I see too many folk getting tripped up by manufacturers nano print in 'warranty' contracts.

 

[Dave Maine]

An additional caution - make sure that any other drone software is not running in the background. There have been some inconclusive reports of Litchi and DJIgo conflicting on older DJI Drones. Stopping an app on iOS doesn’t completely kill it. Residual tasks from it are still running in the background.

 

[bushie]

Don't forget this is all very national specific. In Australia your supplier, not the manufacturer is responsible for warenty claims and the ACCC will define how long a warrenty should be for. Just using other software would not void warrenty

 

[Meta4]

In my experience, the only warranty worth a jot is your legal entitlements under sale of goods legislation, and the deal is via a reputable retailer. After 30 days, your flying solo. I know that is sceptical, but I see too many folk getting tripped up by manufacturers nano print in 'warranty' contracts.

Your cynicism is unnecessarily overdone.
Many members of this forum have had DJI replace faulty drones.

 

[dave canada]

i use litchi becuase it does what i need and it is dependable and dji just turns me away if and when i have an issue , so i do not spend any money on dji care refresh it,useless , i know over old lava flows i found magnetic interference and lost a mavic and a spark not in that order the mavic i used for search, some fifty flights where fine but i went back to the flight or mission i lost the spark on made some adjustments and took off the adjustments were not enough to overcome the interference Dji wouldn,t help just turned their heads and didn,t want to even study the issue , really know one is at fault , but if i built drones , i think i would study it abit i still fly in the area some times but i know where to adjust my missions and every flight i lose signal for a big part of the mission but other than two incidents litchi brings them back with all the footage , i did get to try out marco polo and they work very well had a drone out there for six days in below zero weather and walked right to it , or i should say climbed . I have three drones by dji and i use litchi ,but i pay for the repairs

 

[PeRo]

. . .
"But if you have an incident that results an unrecoverable drone, DJI will not accept a Litchi flight log and you'll be on your own."

This seems reasonable at a first glance.
However, I am still wondering whats behind the fact that the Litchi Android App writes .txt flight logs into the DJI directory: "DJI/com.aryuthere.visionplus/FlightRecord/DJIFlightRecord_XXX".
Would that not indicate some sort of agreement from DJI about reliability of the Litchi flight logs?

Anyone knows whether other Control apps also creating their flight logs under the DJI Directory?

 

[WithTheBirds]

This seems reasonable at a first glance.
However, I am still wondering whats behind the fact that the Litchi Android App writes .txt flight logs into the DJI directory: "DJI/com.aryuthere.visionplus/FlightRecord/DJIFlightRecord_XXX".
Would that not indicate some sort of agreement from DJI about reliability of the Litchi flight logs?

Anyone knows whether other Control apps also creating their flight logs under the DJI Directory?

Yes.

The point is DJI reserves the right not accept a third party log as evidence of a manufacturing defect. Fair enough. It would be a trivial exercise to manually alter a litchi log (plain text). Not simple for a DJI Log.