Litchi users - question on failsafe

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I listed this on the Litchi forum but there is more activity here so I thought I would ask here also. Hope that ok. I am using Litchi on my P3P and have flown several mission. I am grounded now because I just had back surgery so I have had a lot of time to think.

In the manual under the Orbit topic it says if you lose connection the aircraft will continue to orbit until the battery reaches critical and then it will land even if you have it set to go home in the Go app. Does this seems strange to anyone else. It should do what the app says. No telling where it would land. Why does it keep orbiting until the critical? I would think it would do whatever you tell it to do when you reach the low level, specifically return.

Then I was looking at waypoint mode. This was my main interest. It says if you lose connection it continues the mission. I have had that happen and it's ok. But it doesn't say in the manual what it does once once the battery reaches low level. Does anyone know?

Thanks for any help.

Harold
 
I am not a Litchi expert but I would just shut my iPad or whatever off and simply use the RC in manual mode to fly my bird home. No app is necessary for manual flight control.
 
Paul,

I am not sure you understand my question. Using Litchi waypoints if you lose connection the quad will continue on the mission. I know that for sure because it happened to me. It made it back and landed. I did regain video and control once it was closer.

What I am trying to understand is if I lost control and while flying the rest of the mission, the battery went low, what would happen? What is the failsafe for the waypoint missions and FPV modes?

The Orbit failsafe, while strange, is defined in the manual but not for the other modes.

I am hoping it just defaults to what you have defined in the DJI GO app. If that's the case it leaves me wondering why they didn't do the same with the Orbit mode.
 
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For the litchi mission if battery gets to a low point it will cut the mission and head home. For orbit it won't do that as thats a shame
 
Paul,

I am not sure you understand my question. Using Litchi waypoints if you lose connection the quad will continue on the mission. I know that for sure because it happened to me. It made it back and landed. I did regain video and control once it was closer.

What I am trying to understand is if I lost control and while flying the rest of the mission, the battery went low, what would happen? What is the failsafe for the waypoint missions and FPV modes?

The Orbit failsafe, while strange, is defined in the manual but not for the other modes.

I am hoping it just defaults to what you have defined in the DJI GO app. If that's the case it leaves me wondering why they didn't do the same with the Orbit mode.

If you're running the Litchi app, by default, you cannot access anything having something to do with the DJI GO app. So whatever the settings are the DJI GO app, if you're *not* running that app......

My thought is to find a pretty wide, open area, away from water, design a "route" and then fly it and see what happens when the battery gets low. Other than that, anything else is just a guess. Thus far, the only Litchi routes I fly are the waypoint missions. There might be a few waypoints that describe a circle (with the focus on a specific area), but it is not specifically an orbit mode.

Good luck. I like Litchi - hate to discover some disastrous about it.

Art - N4PJ
Leesburg, FL
 
If you're running the Litchi app, by default, you cannot access anything having something to do with the DJI GO app. So whatever the settings are the DJI GO app, if you're *not* running that app......

My thought is to find a pretty wide, open area, away from water, design a "route" and then fly it and see what happens when the battery gets low. Other than that, anything else is just a guess. Thus far, the only Litchi routes I fly are the waypoint missions. There might be a few waypoints that describe a circle (with the focus on a specific area), but it is not specifically an orbit mode.

Good luck. I like Litchi - hate to discover some disastrous about it.

Art - N4PJ
Leesburg, FL
Not entirely true, a lot of the setting from the go app are set in the AC firmware and stay there whether the Go app is running or not. Critical battery level is one of those.
 
So I guess you all are saying on FPV and Waypoint Missions it will do what's set on the AC (from either app).

If that is so why do you think the reasoning is for just landing in the Orbit mode? You could be flying an orbit around a boat and land in the water.

I bought Litchi mainly for flying Missions so as low as it respects the normal rules of low and critical battery levels it will be ok in Mission mode.

I think I am going to have to set up a LOS mission, maybe a circle, and just see for myself what it does. Right now I have just kept my missions to 10 minutes.
 
These types of issues are not Litchi limitations, they are a part of the DJI API and there's nothing Litchi can do about it. If you want to know why orbit behaves that way you'd have to ask DJI.

If you want to retain Failsafe RTH during orbits you should program the route as a series of waypoints (meaning as a waypoint mission,)
 
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These types of issues are not Litchi limitations, they are a part of the DJI API and there's nothing Litchi can do about it. If you want to know why orbit behaves that way you'd have to ask DJI.

If you want to retain Failsafe RTH during orbits you should program the route as a series of waypoints (meaning as a waypoint mission,)



I hear what you are saying but I have sent a support request ti the Litchi folks. They don't have an Orbit function so I doubt they could help. They do have the circle arount a POI but it follows the failsafe rules stored in the AC that the pilot programed in the GO app. Maybe you have actually coded some routines through the API. I will admit I haven't so I don't know the limitations.

Litchi follows the "rules" of the FPV mode in their FPV mode according to comments here, I just don't understand why they deviated in the Orbit. I won't be using that mode. Too risky.

So far I have kept my missions to 10 minutes and it makes it back fine. I think I am going to find a big field and fly around it a bunch until the battery goes below 30 percent and see if it starts a RTH. I guess that's the only way for me to know for sure.

If anyone has actually had the battery go below the low set level before I would enjoy your comments in what it did. If not I'll report back when I can. Just had back surgery 10 days ago and still hurting so it may be a couple of weeks:)
 
I hear what you are saying but I have sent a support request ti the Litchi folks. They don't have an Orbit function so I doubt they could help. They do have the circle arount a POI but it follows the failsafe rules stored in the AC that the pilot programed in the GO app. Maybe you have actually coded some routines through the API. I will admit I haven't so I don't know the limitations.

Litchi follows the "rules" of the FPV mode in their FPV mode according to comments here, I just don't understand why they deviated in the Orbit. I won't be using that mode. Too risky.

So far I have kept my missions to 10 minutes and it makes it back fine. I think I am going to find a big field and fly around it a bunch until the battery goes below 30 percent and see if it starts a RTH. I guess that's the only way for me to know for sure.

If anyone has actually had the battery go below the low set level before I would enjoy your comments in what it did. If not I'll report back when I can. Just had back surgery 10 days ago and still hurting so it may be a couple of weeks:)
I've used orbit mode in Litchi a number of times for specific flights and given they only last 5 or so minutes ( you can only do so many laps of a subject) and either bring it back or change over to a WP mission. My battery thresholds/warnings are set at 30 and 10% and it won't return home unless I do so manually. I also turn off smart RTH so I don't get halfway through a mission and the drone decides it needs to come home due to battery constraints.
At 10% it will auto land regardless of what app I'm using and I have done that in the past and its not a good experience.
 
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I've used orbit mode in Litchi a number of times for specific flights and given they only last 5 or so minutes ( you can only do so many laps of a subject) and either bring it back or change over to a WP mission. My battery thresholds/warnings are set at 30 and 10% and it won't return home unless I do so manually. I also turn off smart RTH so I don't get halfway through a mission and the drone decides it needs to come home due to battery constraints.
At 10% it will auto land regardless of what app I'm using and I have done that in the past and its not a good experience.


On Orbits does it give you any kind of warning at the 30 percent (low battery)? In the manual it says it just lands at 10 percent. I hear you on how many circles you need to do so you may not have every gone down that far.
 
On Orbits does it give you any kind of warning at the 30 percent (low battery)? In the manual it says it just lands at 10 percent. I hear you on how many circles you need to do so you may not have every gone down that far.
I have never reached 30% whilst in orbit mode as it's usually the first thing I do with a fresh battery. Regardless of what mode or app I'm using I'm fairly sure that I get the warning either verbally or with the alarm coming from the app. You can continue flying but generally I'm almost done at that stage and close to home.
 
Not entirely true, a lot of the setting from the go app are set in the AC firmware and stay there whether the Go app is running or not. Critical battery level is one of those.

I stand corrected. You're absolutely right. Unfortunately, that means that even if you're running Litchi more-or-less exclusively, once in a while you need to fire up the DJI GO app and make certain your "key" settings are still okay. Some of the calibration routines are available on the DJI GO app and *not* available with Litchi - calibrating the IMU immediately comes to mind. Calibrating the gimbal is another DJI-only function (could be wrong here, but I feel pretty confident).
 
I received a reply from Litchi support today.

They say the fail-safes for low battery in Litchi work as set in DJI Go so that tells me that the Orbit mode in Litchi works the same as Point of Interest mode in DJI GO. At least that's the way I read it. I looked and looked at the DJI go documentation and cannot find anywhere where it says how the fail-safes work in POI mode. I always assumed POI followed the same rules as manual flying in the DJI Go app.

Anyway here is their reply:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JUL 31, 2017 | 09:39AM UTC
Litchi replied:


Hi,

This behavior is defined by the DJI firmware, it is not our decision. It is a special case for Orbit/POI mode (same applies in DJI Go’s poi mode which essentially is the same mode).
In FPV/VR mode, it is like flying manually so all rules which normally apply while flying manually in DJI Go apply also in FPV/VR modes in Litchi. Failsafe will be whatever is set in the “signal lost behavior” Litchi setting.

Kind Regards,
Litchi
Online help at Help - Litchi
 

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