Bug in iOS Litchi orbit?

[B- Scene Films]

I made a little demo video of the orbit feature in iOS Litchi and in the video you can see how the point of interest is skewed to the left:

Here is a screenshot of the original mission that I made the video with:

As you can see, it's not off to the left as the video shows. Any insight as to why this happened? A bug in the app that the next update fixes maybe?

 

[TnHwyman]

Thank you for the demo. Weather looks great in your neck of the woods as well. Single digit cold snap here. Can't wait to get out and practice what I learned here.

 

[shockwave199]

Thanks for that video. Did you try adjusting yaw at all to recenter? Id be interested to see if doing that would hold the correction as well, as the orbit continues. I'm most interested in how it will do with manual stick input for speed, direction and height adjustment during flight. Personally I would choose to enter at nearest. Can an orbit flight be set before hand and saved at home? Can they be saved at all for future flights again? Personally I think the go app orbit is really good, however the fly over to set center stinks. But it's probably that very thing that makes it so accurate.

 

[2nd2non]

I made a little demo video of the orbit feature in iOS Litchi and in the video you can see how the point of interest is skewed to the left:

Here is a screenshot of the original mission that I made the video with:

As you can see, it's not off to the left as the video shows. Any insight as to why this happened? A bug in the app that the next update fixes maybe?

Looked more like an oval than a circular orbit. Maybe you should invest in learning Autopilot [emoji849]. It would place the object in the center of a circular orbit AND you would be able to change parameters on the fly.....

 

[dixter]

you should create a mission in AutoPilot and compare the two.... then show us the best solution...

 

[shockwave199]

Honestly, I watched your other two orbit videos and they all orbit poorly. I have to suspect something wrong with your phantom when all three examples you have- litchi, the go app and airnest all perform poorly for you. Either that or there is some kind of magnetic compass nightmare in that spot you choose.

 

[jiggyb21]

I've had it happen before. I had to move the POI on the map accordingly on later missions. I guess I wasn't that surprised really. I just chalked it up to consumer GPS coupled with an app that trusts Google Maps' accuracy. I can't tell you how many times Google Maps on my phone shows me driving down the wrong lane for example. I just think sometimes the coordinates of POI don't match in real life.

Edit- just watched your orbit again and it does seem weird. The case I was offering at least held the incorrect frame perfectly in view. Yours didn't. No idea.

 

[shockwave199]

I suppose it could be that at times. Here's a user with one video doing well and another kind of off. I actually don't mind if an orbit is imperfect, but not as off as the ops video.

 

[B- Scene Films]

I took it out again this morning, and ran a whole series of tests with the orbit feature trying every possible setting and the results are consistently placing the point of interest into the left side of the frame.

I was hoping another owner of this iOS version of glitchy, I mean Litchy, could chime in and say if they were seeing the same results. Using Go, the quad always faces the point of interest.

 

[B- Scene Films]

I ran another test at another location:

Same deal

 

[shockwave199]

Definitely looks like a problem. The bird icon even shows it not properly looking at the poi. You should post these finds at flylitchi.com Google group, where support can see this.

 

[happydays]

Yep, I'm getting exactly the same results.

 

[Davphys]

Me too. Please report the bug to Litchi:
[email protected].

 

[shockwave199]

Hopefully no other bugs as I updated to the latest version. Waypoints have been solid and actually do a great job doing waypoint orbits.

 

[B- Scene Films]

Yeah I had no issue with waypoints. Just this new orbit feature. I suspect the next update will be a fix for it. We'll see. Other than the fact that it had the offset issue, I thought the turns were very smooth.

 

[shockwave199]

Did you see the answer in the Google group from support?

"What radius and speed setting did you use?
Did you try bigger radius/slower speed or combination of both? I could see the center being off when the orbit is fast on a *small* radius.
Litchi uses the Orbit mode made by DJI, so this would not be something we can fix on our end.
Likewise, it is very likely that you will get exactly the same results in DJI Go."

 

[happydays]

Did you see the answer in the Google group from support?

"What radius and speed setting did you use?
Did you try bigger radius/slower speed or combination of both? I could see the center being off when the orbit is fast on a *small* radius.
Litchi uses the Orbit mode made by DJI, so this would not be something we can fix on our end.
Likewise, it is very likely that you will get exactly the same results in DJI Go."

I submitted my query to [email protected] and got the reply to look at the Google group for the orbit problem. They seem to be suggesting that the issue is with the settings used for the orbit.

Well, I have been using DJI Go for exactly the same POI / Orbit mission every fortnight since August. Height 40m, radius 40m speed 4 m/s. No issues, it flies perfectly. Replicating this with Litchi using 40m height, 6 deg/s which is exactly the same as using GO - and the Litchi app points towards the left of the picture.

 

[happydays]

I just got this reply.


"Litchit itself is not controlling the aircraft, so if the target isn't in the center perfectly, that means either

1) the target isn't where you think it is

2) the firmware isn't yawing the aircraft enough (which would be the same in DJI Go as the orbit controller is the same as the one we use)



For 1), I don't think it is the problem, because in the videos I have seen so far the center does not seem to be static.

Which leaves us with 2), meaning you will see the same in DJI Go, unless of course DJI wrote 2 orbit controllers, and aren't using the same for the SDK, but I seriously doubt that"

Then this;


"I actually double checked after reading the thread, and we are sending the exact coordinates that you tap with your finger on to the firmware.

That is all the firmware requires, so I am not sure what else we could do to improve it.

Have you tried with Gimbal Control on Manual? I doubt this is the issue but I am out of ideas.

We also can't exclude the possibility that the SDK has a bug with how it passes our coordinate to the firmware."


In fairness, the response from the guys at Litchi is great, lets just hope we can iron out this bug quickly.

 

[shockwave199]

You haven't mentioned your poi height. What is it? Does adjusting height at all help? Also, do you have any manual control of yaw during the orbit and if so, can you nudge it back to center? The go app orbit has a focus setting that refocuses center at the push of a button. What I'm getting at is can any manual adjustment to yaw or anything get it focus on center and make it hold at that point. I'd also be curious if offsetting the poi point a little further to the right than you would normally helps correct center. I haven't seen a long enough example to know if the orbit gets more out of whack the longer it orbits too. It's easy to see on the map during orbit that the bird nose is off target at times during the orbit. But, why?

 

[B- Scene Films]

Height makes no diff. I did this at 15 ft and at 62 ft. I used large radius and small. The exact same mission on Go works. So whatever Litchi is saying (blaming DJI) is, IMHO, complete BS.

They need to suck it up and fix it or they can F.O. and I will move on to Autopilot (after I give them an honest review).