No data KMZ to RC

[Cr8n]

Struggling with creating offline waypoint missions and uploading to the RC controller.
I have tried waypointmap.com and have also tried Litchi and the Litchiutilities.com to get the DJI kmz file.
When I open the kmz in notepad on the windows computer it looks like a dji kmz (jibberish and symbols)

I have no problem placing it into the sd card and moving and renaming it to the waypoint folder of the RC but when I open the flight there are no waypoints.

Has anyone else had this and how did you correct it? I suspect I am missing something simple along the way.

 

[DJ Wes]

When I open the kmz in notepad on the windows computer it looks like a dji kmz (jibberish and symbols)

This is because a KMZ file is not plain text file that can be viewed in Notepad. Instead, a KMZ file is a compressed archive. You could uncompress it with unzip but there should be no need to do that.

In my conversion utilities I include a link to this page that describes how to correctly place the KMZ file into the DJI RC:

DJI Fly KMZ Import

Wes Barris

www.litchiutilities.com

Waypointmap.com also included a tutorial. You should have a look at my instructions and view that tutorial to see how importing a KMZ file is done.

 

[Cr8n]

I understand the KMZ is supposed to be jibberish when viewed with a text editor I was only referencing because I used that to check and see that there was actually data in the file. The first one I exported was just two curly brackets with no data.

The tutorial from waypointmap.com is how I started and how I found the DJI path to the waypoints. I can get everything where it needs to be but then when I connect to the drone (Mavic 3 pro) and open the waypoint mission I saved it under there are no waypoints it shows as an empty file.

 

[Cr8n]

Here are a couple of the kmz files. "mission" was generated using Litchi and then litchiutilities.com. "output" was generated using wypointmaps.com. I had to change the extension to .txt to get it uploaded to here but it is actually a kmz. I didn't bother to rename them because that will get done in the RC remote anyway.

 

[Cr8n]

Previous reply only allowed one file.

 

[Cr8n]

UPDATE: I am working through this with small class of high school students. Today, one of them was able to upload and fly their mission. Not sure why theirs worked and no one else's does because they did the exact same thing as the rest of us.
If I figure it out I will post a solution here.

 

[Cr8n]

I think I have this solved as I was able to upload successfully again:

1. When copying and pasting to rename we originally had issues with the controller adding another extension so we had two kmz extensions (example.kmz.kmz). I tried removing one of the .kmz extensions. This resulted in no extension at all after moving the file so instead of reading "example.kmz" the file name on the RC was simply "example" I renamed to add .kmz back to the end of the file name and everything works fine.
**This sounds like a sloppy mistake but when we try to rename a file the text disappears so we are relying on the cursor and counting button presses for editing.**

2. Previous missions were created using meters successful missions were in feet. I suspect the problem was with the file extension and I have not tried repeating the process with a metric mission.

Thank you to everyone that reached out to help so quickly ,especially Wes.

 

[DJ Wes]

I understand the KMZ is supposed to be jibberish when viewed with a text editor I was only referencing because I used that to check and see that there was actually data in the file.

I think this is a clue to the problem. If you want to see if the file contains any data, just check the file size.

I had to change the extension to .txt to get it uploaded to here but it is actually a kmz.

In a private message to me you suggested that I open the file in Notepad and use that to change the extension. This is another clue to the problem.

The files that you are attaching are corrupt. They are not valid KMZ files. Are you opening and then saving them using Notepad? If so, that is corrupting the files. Notepad, like any plain text editor, works with 7-bit ASCII data. A KMZ file is a binary file containing 8-bit data. If you open a binary file and then save it using Notepad, the data contained within it will be corrupted in an unpredictable way.

This is just a guess based on what you've told me so far. Let us know if opening (and saving) the KMZ file with Notepad is a part of your workflow.

 

[DJ Wes]

When copying and pasting to rename we originally had issues with the controller adding another extension so we had two kmz extensions (example.kmz.kmz). I tried removing one of the .kmz extensions. This resulted in no extension at all after moving the file so instead of reading "example.kmz" the file name on the RC was simply "example" I renamed to add .kmz back to the end of the file name and everything works fine.
**This sounds like a sloppy mistake but when we try to rename a file the text disappears so we are relying on the cursor and counting button presses for editing.**

If you are doing this on a Windows computer you should simplify this by unchecking the "Hide extensions" option. Doing so will make the above task much easier.