Latest Litchi update has new features.

[Brojon]

Good to know - I certainly didn't know that.

 

[LarBear360]

Be careful with the "Reverse" option to end the mission.
You have to stop the mission manually for it to make the AC re-trace its waypoints.
If you don't, it will just hover until it runs low on power and will then likely land.
So don't use it if you plan to loose connection during a mission or else you won't be able to end the mission manually.
I found this out while testing a short straight out-and-back mission with Reverse selected as the end of mission action.
Just stayed there and hovered. I wound up turning around manually and commng home.

That happened to me. I just put it in reverse and reeled it in. I test all Litchi functions with short, no-brainer missions first learning from my mistakes.

 

[KDCypP4Adv]

Thanks for all your great info.
I am about to buy Litchi and wonder whether the flight logs in Go4 update for flights using Litchi or does Litchi have its own log so you have to add the 2 apps infos together to get total number of flights etc?

 

[LarBear360]

Thanks for all your great info.
I am about to buy Litchi and wonder whether the flight logs in Go4 update for flights using Litchi or does Litchi have its own log so you have to add the 2 apps infos together to get total number of flights etc?

Litchi has it's own logs. If you want to save both Litchi and Go, open a free account with airdata.com. You can upload and synch everything there.

 

[KDCypP4Adv]

Litchi has it's own logs. If you want to save both Litchi and Go, open a free account with airdata.com. You can upload and synch everything there.

Many thanks for your great advice!

 

[The Springs]

When you bring up a saved mission on your tablet always touch the add a waypoint icon to change it to add a point of interest (blue) This is like having the safety catch on and will stop you inadvertently placing a WP in a far off land .

 

[Chrislaf]

When you bring up a saved mission on your tablet always touch the add a waypoint icon to change it to add a point of interest (blue) This is like having the safety catch on and will stop you inadvertently placing a WP in a far off land .

That’s a great tip. Thanks for sharing it.

Chris

 

[CharlieU]

Just updated my Litchi app on IOS and noticed in the release notes that it has a couple of new features - RTH/Land button and Find My Aircraft. I checked after my update and indeed the Find my Aircraft is there now. Haven't been able to fly lately as it has been too windy but I am hoping there is now a RTH button available for the P3S. Won't know until I can fly because right now it only has the takeoff button. I'm assuming once the craft is in the air and far enough away the land button will become RTH. If this is so then that is a long awaited addition especially on a P3S. DJI GO has always had the onscreen RTH button but not Litchi. I prefer Litchi and use it 99.9% of the time to fly my P3S. Maybe tomorrow I'll get a chance to confirm whether or not there is now a RTH button since it is supposed to be less windy.

Chris

I have the Android version of Litchi. It has had the Find My Aircraft feature since I started using it over a year ago. I found my P4 two times with it. One pilot error (Signal Lost set to Hover instead of Return to Home). Nice hike up a mountain to retrive it. And then one equipment failure which DJI covered under warranty.

 

[CharlieU]

When you bring up a saved mission on your tablet always touch the add a waypoint icon to change it to add a point of interest (blue) This is like having the safety catch on and will stop you inadvertently placing a WP in a far off land .

Is that the POI icon?

 

[CharlieU]

Be careful with the "Reverse" option to end the mission.
You have to stop the mission manually for it to make the AC re-trace its waypoints.
If you don't, it will just hover until it runs low on power and will then likely land.
So don't use it if you plan to loose connection during a mission or else you won't be able to end the mission manually.
I found this out while testing a short straight out-and-back mission with Reverse selected as the end of mission action.
Just stayed there and hovered. I wound up turning around manually and commng home.

Oh WOW! Thank you, you saved my butt. I had a mission planned and had it set to reverse. I would have lost my phantom for sure. Good idea to read the updates.

 

[The Springs]

I am assuming it is still the same (I have an older version of Litchi )

 

[gingerbloke]

I the last few days I had to get a new (android) phone and installed Litchi - everything seemed fine but there were no missions to select/load, despite being logged in. I normally plan missions on the PC using hub and then select/load them on phone/tablet before heading out the door (I don't run internet on the phone when flying, always use it in airplane mode)

If I loaded them and then saved them (no changes) on the hub then they appeared as missions on the new phone. Solved, but confusing!

 

[Fester]

Tested Litchi (current release) with my P4 yesterday. The bird has been downgraded the the "official" July release which added Precision Landing to the P4, I've noticed some strange behaviors with Litchi and the latest P4 firmware betas and I'm not even sure if Litchi has made provision for those betas so back to the July release. I did try a short hop mission which seemed to go well, and also tried out the new buttons for auto takeoff and Home (GO 4's RTH button). Seemed to work fine with Precision Landing and no trouble setting the RTH altitude to my standard 76 meters. I'm going to check out the newest release of GO 4 to see if the RTH altitude and custom channel selection work now (usually use ch. 20 as this doesn't intermingle the video and control signal frequencies). I'll post later on to see how that test went.

 

[Fester]

Put in 10 minutes or so of flight time testing the newest GO 4 release (inside connection test first...), and both the RTH Altitude and Custom Channel seem to be OK now. This was everything the latest including the latest iOS 11 public beta. The bird however I've left at the last July release because I'm not sure if Litchi has incorporated support for the last couple of DJI P4 firmware betas. Anybody know?

 

[ehrlgeo]

Best way is to plan your missions on the Litchi Mission Hub - www.flylitchi.com/hub
You can export your mission as 3d KML on the menu which can be imported into Google Earth (free) where you can see a "curtain" describing the path and height of your aircraft over terrain and buildings.
It's pretty cool and powerful stuff.

Bonus points: Litchi uploads flight logs to Airdata UAV if you have an account (free) that tracks your flights and details just about everything there was to know about it. Highly recommended!

So if I plan a mission in the mission hub, then export (doing this on my PC), can I then import the mission into the Litchi app on the iPad? Or is this simply mission planning to check terrain etc?

 

[yblocker]

When you save the mission on your PC, the file syncs to Litchi. Then when you are ready to fly the mission, the data file uploads to the AC.

 

[Fester]

As I use both GO 4 and Litchi, the best advice I could give you is to do a couple of very simple missions so you know how the bird will fly them. Also recheck the missions on the hub or your device before you fly, particularly waypoint altitudes. Litchi will try to execute every waypoint just the way you told it to, even if a 100' tree is below a certain waypoint and the waypoint was set to 0 altitude Litchi will try to arrive there at 0 feet despite the tree... Regarding altitude, Litchi gradually changes altitude between waypoints if they're set to different altitudes, it doesn't reach a waypoint then ascend or descend vertically to meet it.

 

[Brojon]

So if I plan a mission in the mission hub, then export (doing this on my PC), can I then import the mission into the Litchi app on the iPad? Or is this simply mission planning to check terrain etc?

When you save the mission from mission hub it becomes available to the Litchi app.
You load the mission, set parameters then run teh mission. At that point the mission is uploaded to teh aircraft and executed.

 

[Chrislaf]

Recently I updated Litchi again on my iPhone 7 to version 2 and there are even more new features. They indicate that there are speed improvements for panoramas shot with Pano mode. Well today, I was out flying and took a 360º three row pano of 26 shots and sure enough it went much faster. I initially thought something was wrong but it completed the 26 shot pano (RAW) in a fraction of the time it took before.

Also new, is the new auto pano mode. There is a separate button that you click to shoot a panorama. It tells you that it will optimize the camera settings and the number of images to shoot a 360º spherical panorama. On my P3S, it took a 3 row pano of 23 images in JPEG format. Once the pano is shot you can choose to create a low res pano on your device which you can view as a tiny planet or the sphere. If you choose the high res option you need to download the images from the SD card and likely assemble it yourself.

The new auto pano mode is still in beta, so hopefully they will improve upon it. I think it is a really cool feature and definitely automates the process of creating 360º panos. I took two panos from the exact same spot - one with the regular pano mode (3 rows of 26 images) in RAW format with the camera set to manual exposure, the second with the auto pano mode (3 rows 23 images JPEG format). I always shoot in RAW format and use manual exposure and adjust my exposure based on the histogram. I noticed right away that the images shot in auto pano mode were way off in terms of white balance. All the images were of a frozen lake with a coating of snow and had a pinkish hue. I can probably fix this in post but since there was some wind gusts there were some stitching errors in the Litchi auto pano image.

Overall, the auto pano mode is a cool new feature. I can see it coming in handy if you want a quick spherical pano that you do not have to spend lots of time stitching together or for trying out a spherical pano to see if it is a suitable way to capture an area you are photographing. For me, I will likely stick with the regular pano mode because I can shoot in RAW format and then edit the resulting image in post.

Chris

 

[ehrlgeo]

I have the Android version of Litchi. It has had the Find My Aircraft feature since I started using it over a year ago. I found my P4 two times with it. One pilot error (Signal Lost set to Hover instead of Return to Home). Nice hike up a mountain to retrive it. And then one equipment failure which DJI covered under warranty.

CharlieU,
Is there a good reason Litchi would need GPS? Im not even sure Im asking the correct question so let me explain a little. I had trouble with the "follow me" feature in DJI Go and someone here told me if the device doesnt have cellular it wont have GPS, which follow me needs. So my iPad doesnt have cellular (where I have Litchi installed), but I have a droid tablet that does have cellular that I might get Litchi for as its a bit smaller. (to clarify, I dont use the follow me much...right now, just wondering about the features of Litchi)