I recently attempted a Litchi Waypoint Mission that I had already set up on my computer at home.
The first thing I noticed, but didn't realize, is that it's entirely possible to load up a mission and simply hit the Play button on the tablet, and watch the drone take off from the ground and begin its mission automatically. Not a cautionary observation, just a pretty cool feature that I wasn't aware of (although in hindsight I guess it's good to be aware of your surroundings to ensure that this type of automation won't lead to a collision, or just launch the drone manually first).
The second thing that happened was that once the drone got about 1.5 km away from me (not going to convert to miles, sorry), the signal became weak, and I lost the RC connection, which I wasn't expecting as I had a very clear line of sight (and normally I don't lose the connection until a fair bit further away in such conditions). I was already aware that in Litchi, the drone will complete its mission even if you lose the signal, and this freaked me out a bit as I wasn't 100% certain that I had set the altitude high enough to clear the ridges coming off the hill I had set as a Point of Interest.
So I opened up the DJO Go app, and for some reason, this app was able to get a (weak) connection, and thankfully I was able to activate RTH (not sure if I could have just done that regardless in the Litchi app?).
Once the drone returned home, I set up a very small and close mission to see how it behaves once you turn off the RC. Sure enough, it continues to complete the mission. I cannot understand why Litchi does not give you the option to abort the mission if the signal is lost, and RTH! It just seems incredibly stupid to me.
Another thing that was rather alarming during this test mission, was that the drone starting to hover erratically in place, and would not move, and it looked like it was caught in some weird turbulence. I panicked and aborted the mission. Much later, it occurred to me that it was doing this because the sun was quite low in the sky and was shining into it, which was perceived to be an obstacle and so the drone wouldn't move forward because its forward obstacle avoidance was switched on. According to the Litchi manual, if the drone's battery reaches the critical level during a mission and there is no RC connection, it will simply land right where it is at the time. It is therefore possible for the drone to get "stuck" with no RC connection when the sun is shining into it, reach its critical battery level, and descend into trees or other obstacles and get destroyed and/or completely lost.
So from now on I am going to be much more weary of how I use Waypoint Missions. I will not do them unless I can see the drone at all times, or I am 100% confident that it will clear all obstacles and the sun won't shine into it (and I don't think that switching off forward obstacle avoidance is a very good solution unless the drone remains in sight at all times).
Are there any other steps I can take to overcome these limitations?
The first thing I noticed, but didn't realize, is that it's entirely possible to load up a mission and simply hit the Play button on the tablet, and watch the drone take off from the ground and begin its mission automatically. Not a cautionary observation, just a pretty cool feature that I wasn't aware of (although in hindsight I guess it's good to be aware of your surroundings to ensure that this type of automation won't lead to a collision, or just launch the drone manually first).
The second thing that happened was that once the drone got about 1.5 km away from me (not going to convert to miles, sorry), the signal became weak, and I lost the RC connection, which I wasn't expecting as I had a very clear line of sight (and normally I don't lose the connection until a fair bit further away in such conditions). I was already aware that in Litchi, the drone will complete its mission even if you lose the signal, and this freaked me out a bit as I wasn't 100% certain that I had set the altitude high enough to clear the ridges coming off the hill I had set as a Point of Interest.
So I opened up the DJO Go app, and for some reason, this app was able to get a (weak) connection, and thankfully I was able to activate RTH (not sure if I could have just done that regardless in the Litchi app?).
Once the drone returned home, I set up a very small and close mission to see how it behaves once you turn off the RC. Sure enough, it continues to complete the mission. I cannot understand why Litchi does not give you the option to abort the mission if the signal is lost, and RTH! It just seems incredibly stupid to me.
Another thing that was rather alarming during this test mission, was that the drone starting to hover erratically in place, and would not move, and it looked like it was caught in some weird turbulence. I panicked and aborted the mission. Much later, it occurred to me that it was doing this because the sun was quite low in the sky and was shining into it, which was perceived to be an obstacle and so the drone wouldn't move forward because its forward obstacle avoidance was switched on. According to the Litchi manual, if the drone's battery reaches the critical level during a mission and there is no RC connection, it will simply land right where it is at the time. It is therefore possible for the drone to get "stuck" with no RC connection when the sun is shining into it, reach its critical battery level, and descend into trees or other obstacles and get destroyed and/or completely lost.
So from now on I am going to be much more weary of how I use Waypoint Missions. I will not do them unless I can see the drone at all times, or I am 100% confident that it will clear all obstacles and the sun won't shine into it (and I don't think that switching off forward obstacle avoidance is a very good solution unless the drone remains in sight at all times).
Are there any other steps I can take to overcome these limitations?