Litchi or any other app?

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Is Litchi or any advanced app worth the money? I am mostly hobby flying, like to go long distances in the mountains and will be filming a golf course for a friend soon. How much better is Litchi or any other app than DJI GO?
 
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Yes. As a percentage of your total drone investment in the Phantom 4, Litchi is miniscule. OTOH, the value it brings is huge. The ability to design a waypoint mission at home on your computer, then fly it out in the field is easily worth the $20 to me. YMMV. Add in Follow Me, Magic Leash, Orbit, Panorama...well, I only use DJI GO for drone housekeeping and updates. Never fly with it anymore.
 
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Yes. As a percentage of your total drone investment in the Phantom 4, Litchi is miniscule. OTOH, the value it brings is huge. The ability to design a waypoint mission at home on your computer, then fly it out in the field is easily worth the $20 to me. YMMV. Add in Follow Me, Magic Leash, Orbit, Panorama...well, I only use DJI GO for drone housekeeping and updates. Never fly with it anymore.

Love the FPV Camera App.

Use it almost exclusively even when I do manual flying.
Tried the other Apps out there but decided to stick with FPV Camera using it regularily for industrial building and property inspections and of course all my private flying. Is very easy to use and absolutely stable and safe to fly with. Did not have a single issue in over 130 autonomous flights some of them with very complex waypoint missions and many long range flights.
 
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YMMV. Add in Follow Me, Magic Leash, Orbit, Panorama
Yes. As a percentage of your total drone investment in the Phantom 4, Litchi is miniscule. OTOH, the value it brings is huge. The ability to design a waypoint mission at home on your computer, then fly it out in the field is easily worth the $20 to me. YMMV. Add in Follow Me, Magic Leash, Orbit, Panorama...well, I only use DJI GO for drone housekeeping and updates. Never fly with it anymore.

Thank you for that. You think Litchi is best overall? I do not do any very complex jobs. What is YMMV?
 
Just be careful when flying by mountains, Litchi will not adjust height of the P4 as terrain rises . There is a way to do that by using google earth I believe .
 
Want to have more fun, go for it.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots
 
Can you play around with making a mission on the website before buying the software?
 
I love Litchi. I hear Autopilot is very good too but the learning curve is a little steeper. I wish Litchi would add live streaming.


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots
 
Just be careful when flying by mountains, Litchi will not adjust height of the P4 as terrain rises . There is a way to do that by using google earth I believe .

Second that!

Be careful in your offline planning in Google Earth. Sometimes it will not work right in mountainous areas.

Shown is an animated GIF that demonstrates how a KML/KMZ pre-planned flight in G.E. can go bad in steep terrain. You can download the GIF and play over again it on your Photo viewer and watch the red arrow, which is your drone, disappear into the inside of the mountain and reappear on top, whereas the G.E. path tools shows the flight pattern should be on top of the wall and clear of the mountain.

Flight Plan in Google Earth.gif


Just be ready to bail on an autonomous program in steep terrain.
 
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I've been using Litchi for about 6 months and love it, automated flights ROCK. My one piece of advise would be take great care when you are loading that pre-planned mission you don't accidently hit that device screen and ad a rogue waypoint. It's very easy to do in the bright sunlight working on a small screen. Just when your are expecting to return to your home location it suddenly climbs 75 feet and hit's a tree. It happened so fast I was not able to gain manual control quick enough. While it was not the fault of Litchi per say it would be nice if they had a feature that allowed you to LOCK in the mission on the hub so it could not be changed accidentally. It was a $150 learning lesson, it's could have been much worse. Just keep this in mind and it might save you some grief.
 
As yet I have only used the DJI go app, however having read this thread (as far as it has gone up to now) I have been inspired to investigate this "Litchi" alternative. I've just downloaded the "user manual" (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9SCOsPRhNjTdEE0QkplcVVfc2c) and am finding it most interesting. I (even at this early stage) feel at £20 it is a small price to pay for what looks like a very good piece of software (Yes, I've now downloaded that too). I don't think I will use it straight away, I would like to get a good understanding of it prior to sending my P4 aloft with a 'new to me' control system.

Any advise anyone can give the help with the transition from DJI go to Litchi would be most appreciated.

Yet again it looks like another great adventure for me and my P4.
 
As yet I have only used the DJI go app, however having read this thread (as far as it has gone up to now) I have been inspired to investigate this "Litchi" alternative. I've just downloaded the "user manual" (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9SCOsPRhNjTdEE0QkplcVVfc2c) and am finding it most interesting. I (even at this early stage) feel at £20 it is a small price to pay for what looks like a very good piece of software (Yes, I've now downloaded that too). I don't think I will use it straight away, I would like to get a good understanding of it prior to sending my P4 aloft with a 'new to me' control system.

Any advise anyone can give the help with the transition from DJI go to Litchi would be most appreciated.

Yet again it looks like another great adventure for me and my P4.
I'd start out by just flying FPV to get used to the screen. Once you accomplish that and are comfortable with the screen buttons, design a simple 2 or 3 waypoint mission at a good altitude (60-100 feet) in an open area where you have good visualization of the drone at all times. Watch the drone while it's flying and be ready to flip the switch from P to S then back to P, or hit the RTH button. Keep your eye on the drone for the first mission or two, then start watching the map progress alternating with the FPV inset. Switch back and forth between the two. When you're comfortable, start designing more complex missions. When you're comfortable with waypoints, start looking at the other flight modes, again in an open field.
 
I'd start out by just flying FPV to get used to the screen. Once you accomplish that and are comfortable with the screen buttons, design a simple 2 or 3 waypoint mission at a good altitude (60-100 feet) in an open area where you have good visualization of the drone at all times. Watch the drone while it's flying and be ready to flip the switch from P to S then back to P, or hit the RTH button. Keep your eye on the drone for the first mission or two, then start watching the map progress alternating with the FPV inset. Switch back and forth between the two. When you're comfortable, start designing more complex missions. When you're comfortable with waypoints, start looking at the other flight modes, again in an open field.


Thanks for this suggestion! I am a bit nervous using it for the first time.
 
Thanks for this suggestion! I am a bit nervous using it for the first time.
Don't be. I was like you, hesitant but able to recognize and take good advice. I'm hooked as will you be once you've flown a couple of missions, or just buzz around fpv.

NoCo Drones
 
Second that!

Be careful in your offline planning in Google Earth. Sometimes it will not work right in mountainous areas.

Mission Hub provides elevations for each waypoint you put on the map. It states the msl elevation, and it also provides the elevation difference versus the first waypoint. I've never had any problems when using their elevation data.

Are you saying the Litchi Mission Hub elevation data isn't always correct? Or are you using Google earth to plan missions, which is flawed sometimes? If so, why do you use Google earth to plan missions, when Mission Hub provides elevation data?
 
Depends if Mission Hub is using G.E. data which sometimes has a slight horizontal shift where the altitude may be in error and jump greatly. Odd altitude jumps sometime happen just moving a mouse pointer on a G.E. map.

In the above GIF, which generates 4 waypoints off the KML (i.e. The four vertical red bars in the green area), the third one at the cliff's edge puts you inside the mountain where the 4th is correct on top of the mountain. The terrain is slightly shifted when it goes through the calculation process for the mission verses what it draws for some bizarre reason.

I'd like to see the test flight icon reporting the altitude since we cannot really put the mission horizontal and see the z-axis or vertical height from the flight mission making. Might show things like trees and building clearances better too. A sharp cliff wall is another matter since the G.E. map should be accurate. Too bad these mission maps are only in 2D where we fly in 3D. Probably better off dropping your own waypoints and checking than using a KML generated G.E. file to do so.
 

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