Litchi not taking photos at all the waypoints

baddogtwo · Jan 9, 2021

Drone: P4P V2.0
Controller Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab A

So I am having a few issues with Litchi that I am hoping someone can shed a little light on.

So the mission I shot today was fairly simple. I had 1 POI and 8 orbiting shots at all the cardinal points. When the mission started it flew up to the 100 ft setting, proceeded to waypoint 1...

Path Mode: Straight Lines
Each waypoint has only one action: Take Photo

Issue #1: it took 2 photos, as it was flying out to waypoint 1 and the camera was pointed 180° from the POI.
Issue #2 it skipped waypoint 5 & 7 but it did stop at those way points.

On another mission today, same setup as mention previously...

Issue #1 it took only 1 photo, as it was flying out to waypoint 1 and the camera was pointed 180° from the POI.
Issue #2 It did not take the image at waypoint 1, while it was facing the POI
Issue #3 It skipped waypoint 7 but it did actually stop at that waypoint.

MapMaker53 · Jan 9, 2021

It's hard to guess what might be going wrong without seeing your actual Litchi mission setup. Was this the first time you had attempted Litchi for this type of mission? Did you happen to have the DJI Go app also running? Glitches can occur if the two are running at the same time. And have you tried creating your mission using the Litchi Mission Hub website first? Doing that and making that mission public would allow others to see your settings and troubleshoot the mission. Just a suggestion.

baddogtwo · Jan 9, 2021

Hey MapMaker53,

Thanks for the quick response. I know all to well about the interference with having DJI sitting idle in the background and trying to run Litchi or Dronedeploy at the same time. So I can say without a doubt, Litchi was the only app running while flying the mission. My start up process is as follows, I first start up DJI to check settings and compass calibration, then when all is right, I completely shut off the DJI Go 4 app and close it out. Then I un-cable the drone from my tablet, break the connections between controller and drone, then plug it back in, and when prompted, I start up Litchi to run the mission.

I did create my litchi mission in flylitchi.com's mission hub

Mission Hub - Litchi

Litchi's Mission Hub lets you plan waypoint flights and later execute them using the mobile Litchi app.

flylitchi.com

Billie Nelson · Jan 10, 2021

I may be wrong on this but just as Litchi cannot alter gimbal action once the craft is beyond signal range, I did read somewhere that picture taking is also disabled on during the phases of flight beyond signal range.

I've never bothered to take still pictures with any of my drones, because it is so easy to pause the video playback, and extract still photos as needed.

baddogtwo · Jan 10, 2021

Billie Nelson said:
I may be wrong on this but just as Litchi cannot alter gimbal action once the craft is beyond signal range, I did read somewhere that picture taking is also disabled on during the phases of flight beyond signal range.

I've never bothered to take still pictures with any of my drones, because it is so easy to pause the video playback, and extract still photos as needed.

I was definitely not beyond signal range, the drone at it greatest distance was under 650 ft away.

I cannot create stills from video. Client wants all Exif Data from photos DNG and JPG, of the cardinal points

t65d · Jan 10, 2021

Could export the mission to .csv and post for review.

baddogtwo · Jan 10, 2021

The mission is public, I posted it above.

GFields · Jan 10, 2021

Add the following actions
Wait 3 sec
Take photo
Wait 3 sec

MapMaker53 · Jan 10, 2021

Seems to me there is nothing wrong with the Mission Hub setting at each waypoint to cause it the drone to randomly take photos or take them in the wrong direction. I agree with gfielder that you should pause at each waypoint. The way you have it set up without a smooth turn at each waypoint may be too abrupt for the software to quickly calculate the gimbal and drone angles at that moment. That doesn't explain the random photos between the waypoints, but adding a pause may fix a glitchy mission.

Wavepilot · Jan 16, 2021

I agree with gfieldsr above regarding "Wait 3 Sec" before "Take Photo." I do so on all my photo missions yet I still stand poised to pause the mission and take the photo manually when it occasionally fails to do so automatically - about 2-3 percent of the time at different random waypoints for some undetermined reason. I also shut down all apps prior to each flight and open Litchi fresh by itself for each mission. A hard reboot of my iPad Air 2 before each flight further seemed to lesson mission glitches when flying multiple missions during the day. Perhaps recreating your mission from scratch will rid it of its gremlins.

tribar · Jan 16, 2021

Like gfieldsr wrote: insert a few seconds of waiting time before and after the action 'Take photo', especially when recording DNG.
Recording JPG & DNG photos takes a few seconds to be written to the SD-card. When this writing takes longer than rotating and starting to fly again, the writing will be interrupted.

Remote Pilots Australia · Jan 16, 2021

I don’t have access to mission hub to review your flight atm but just as a stab in the dark you don’t have curved turns enabled by any chance? Waypoint actions are not triggered with curved turns.

Regards
Ari

baddogtwo · Feb 7, 2021

gfieldsr said:
Add the following actions
Wait 3 sec
Take photo
Wait 3 sec

Hey gfieldsr,

I did exactly what you suggested today, and I got nothing this time, not one photo taken. I ended up just shooting it manually. I so... want to use this app, if i can just get it to work as expected. Below is link to the mission today

Mission Hub - Litchi

Litchi's Mission Hub lets you plan waypoint flights and later execute them using the mobile Litchi app.

flylitchi.com

tribar · Feb 8, 2021

The attached mission in post #13 should have resulted in 1 picture at WP1.
All other waypoints do not contain any actions.
Also:
1.Make sure Litchi is in Photo-mode
2.Capture Mode is set to 'Single Photo'
3.Auto Record is turned Off
4.Photo Format is either 'JPEG' or 'RAW', not 'J+R'

GFields · Feb 16, 2021

baddogtwo said:
Hey gfieldsr,

I did exactly what you suggested today, and I got nothing this time, not one photo taken. I ended up just shooting it manually. I so... want to use this app, if i can just get it to work as expected. Below is link to the mission today

Mission Hub - Litchi

Litchi's Mission Hub lets you plan waypoint flights and later execute them using the mobile Litchi app.

flylitchi.com

You also must have "straight lines" selected not curved.

GFields · Feb 16, 2021

If you have an IOS device to use, try the mission again on it. You can also try uninstalling the app and reinstalling it.

baddogtwo · Feb 27, 2021

I solved my issue by just adding an additional waypoint at the end of the loop. It is setup right next to Waypoint 1 so I at least have the image. The last 3 missions I flew yesterday worked with this technique. Sometimes at waypoint 1 it would take the image but pointing 180° away from the POI other times it just skipped it all together.

baddogtwo · Feb 27, 2021

Here are the last two missions with this band aid fix/hack mentioned above.

100ft Cardinal Points

350ft Cardinal Points

It's odd that I have to do this but I really don't see any other viable solutions. If anyone has any suggestion I open to other better/more reliable solutions.

Thanks

AndyAlex · Jul 22, 2021

It's been a while since this was started, but I'm having the exact same problem. The mission would actually only take one pic at WP1, facing the wrong direction.

But, I was able to get things to work with the above suggestions of turning off curves and adding a last WP near the first so I could get a pic of the actual POI.

I didn't have to have it wait 3 seconds, but did do another mission with it waiting, and that worked also.

Thanks for the tips. But it's strange to have to do that, as I used to have curves all the time before and it worked fine.

Andy