litchi waypoints issues - looking for help diagnosing what went wrong. Phantom pro 4 2.0

[kivi12k]

Hi guys. First let me start off by saying im very new to drones - less then a week with my Phantom.
I wanted to be able to fly my drone way past the reach of my controller to be able to record and snap some photos of the construction happening on my house on a daily basis.
Looking into it I found that the native dji app doesnt support this but with litchi it does. it will support waypoints that will complete the mission even if lost controller connection.
before I got this going I wanted to first test a long distance waypoints mission and see if it completes successfully. The mission was to fly from my home to my office - about a 6-7 min flight but outside the bounds of my controller.
Initially I set this to just be 1 long waypoint from my house to my office but litchi gave some error about a max distance allowed? anyways to fix this i broke it up into like 6 waypoints even thought it was a long straight line.
I attempted this yesterday. It was supposed to fly to my office and then i set a start action to record and take videos and stop recording and then return to home.
What happened was like 20 min later the drone came back to home and nothing was recorded. I assume it never made it to my office - and didnt record anything.
I figured today i would follow it with my car to see what actually happened. This time i set it to land at my office - not return to home.
unluckily for me as i started it and i started to drive i was met with bumper to bumper traffic and lost connection with the drone due to distance.
As i waited for the traffic to clear it reconnected as it was returning to home! This was never supposed to happen. So i stopped the Return to home and waited for traffic to clear up and the had ti continue the mission as i followed.
At some point i saw an alert about a possible flight restricted zone ( none that im aware of...i tried looking and couldnt see any) and a minte or so later my controller started beeping that it was returning to home. I stopped it and was able to get it to continue on the mission somehow.
It completed the mission....but again it did not record anything. I set it to take 2 pictures and record as it circled my office. Only the pictures were there.
Could it be that it didnt record bec of what the litchi documentation says on page 39?

https://cdn.website-editor.net/03245889a1eb408d99cdfe8da3b5c89d/files/uploaded/Litchi%2520Notes%2520Rev2.pdf

Note: Waypoint actions are ignored when the mission path mode is set to curved turns


Please if someone can help me figure this out - im very new to this and would love to be able to set a waypoints mission that will complete 100% as i want it.
Im going to attach the multiple flight logs (rem when it reconnected as i was waiting in traffic?) as well as other information that i can find. If there is other information please do ask!
Thanks for your time.
Akiva

 

[Jeff A]

The first problem I saw with your Mission is that you are using Curved Turns, which is fine except, you cannot assign Actions to a Waypoint if you are using Curved Turns, even if the turn is straight. That's one thing. You start Recording on Waypoint 7, on Waypoint 9 you have an Action to Take a Photo. You have to Stop Recording first, then insert an Action to Delay for 2 seconds (Approximately) then Take a Photo. In view of these ideas, take a look at the Actions on WP's 10 & 11.

Having said all this, you are risking the safety of your Drone, not mention any humans that are in the way if you have a mishap. You are starting off on a Big Mission and well beyound your capabilities and Experience level. Take the time to learn more about your Aircraft and realize as easy as Litchi looks, there are a lot of details to learn. Start small and work up.

BTW, is this proposed flight Legal??

 

[kivi12k]

The first problem I saw with your Mission is that you are using Curved Turns, which is fine except, you cannot assign Actions to a Waypoint if you are using Curved Turns, even if the turn is straight. That's one thing. You start Recording on Waypoint 7, on Waypoint 9 you have an Action to Take a Photo. You have to Stop Recording first, then insert an Action to Delay for 2 seconds (Approximately) then Take a Photo. In view of these ideas, take a look at the Actions on WP's 10 & 11.

Having said all this, you are risking the safety of your Drone, not mention any humans that are in the way if you have a mishap. You are starting off on a Big Mission and well beyound your capabilities and Experience level. Take the time to learn more about your Aircraft and realize as easy as Litchi looks, there are a lot of details to learn. Start small and work up.

BTW, is this proposed flight Legal??

thank you for responding.
Yes i believe the curved feature i need to disable...any ideas why they dont let you do actions when curved? if i wanted to do a nice orbit recording on a remote location what would be the best way?
As far as i know its legal..what would make you think otherwise?
Thanks!

 

[Jeff A]

thank you for responding.
Yes i believe the curved feature i need to disable...any ideas why they dont let you do actions when curved? if i wanted to do a nice orbit recording on a remote location what would be the best way?
As far as i know its legal..what would make you think otherwise?
Thanks!

Are you in the US? Not sure about other countries but here you are req

 

[kivi12k]

Are you in the US? Not sure about other countries but here you are req

yes im in the usa. required to what? im not understanding what is making you think the flight is illegal?
Thanks

 

[Jeff A]

Let me try again....
Are you in the US? Not sure about other countries but here you are required to maintain visual contact at all times. By your own statements, you were unable to do that. That's a start.

 

[kivi12k]

gotcha. like i said im new to this. also I was attempting following it the whole time but my dumb luck there was bumped to bumper traffic on my road for some construction. The idea was to maintain visual sight the entire time.

 

[Jeff A]

gotcha. like i said im new to this. also I was attempting following it the whole time but my dumb luck there was bumped to bumper traffic on my road for some construction. The idea was to maintain visual sight the entire time.

While driving. In a big city. with traffic. You are a lot more talented than I am. Dou you have your Registration number on your Drone? Is that Chicago? My geography sucks!

 

[kivi12k]

While driving. In a big city. with traffic. You are a lot more talented than I am. Dou you have your Registration number on your Drone? Is that Chicago? My geography sucks!

I think we are getting off topic. Was really just looking to see what went wrong and not get legal advise.
Thanks tho.
Besides for the 1 road traffic jam the roads are empty. And i wasnt the driver.
I appreciate your concern and advise.

 

[Meta4]

any ideas why they dont let you do actions when curved

Because curved turns never get to the waypoint .. they go around it.

As far as i know its legal..what would make you think otherwise?

It sounds like you are getting too adventurous, too early.
There are many things that can go wrong and you aren't aware of what they are or how to make sure they don't cause a problem for you or others.

If you want to learn Litchi, do it by setting up a small mission in a large, open area where you can see the drone at all times.

And it sounds like you aren't aware of what rules you might be breaking.
I'd suggest looking here:

Recreational Flyers & Modeler Community-Based Organizations

www.faa.gov

 

[Deleted member 62848]

I think we are getting off topic. Was really just looking to see what went wrong and not get legal advise.
Thanks tho.
Besides for the 1 road traffic jam the roads are empty. And i wasnt the driver.
I appreciate your concern and advise.

Yip just be cautious till you figure it out,,lucky it return first time and not hit nothing on return,,enjoy

 

[Earls Court]

Kivi12k, as a newby myself, I thought the replies you received were helpful and sensible. I also use Litchi and enrolled in the Phantomfilmschool.com to get to know Litchi well enough to fly comp-lex Waypoint missions. I suggest you look at their free introductory course and decide if you want to enrol in any of the pay courses. The advise to fly no-curves to activate the actions to stop the recording at the waypoint by your house, wait 5 sec for drone to stabilise on your POI (house), take photo, start recording, and RTH.

 

[DonWiley]

Glad to see the manual I wrote is being used and a little saddened that the cautions included are not being read. There is a new revision to the manual in the works, reorganized and with new and more complete graphics. Should be ready in about a month.
Now let’s tackle the flight problems. You are correct that in a curved flight path you cannot define a waypoint action. The reason for this is that there is already a waypoint action in progress- the curved flight path. The curved flight path is a 3 dimensional maneuver that can include 2 additional dimensions of movement- yaw and gimbal adjustments. These are very complex calculations and maneuvers for the onboard computer to calculate and execute, and unlike in a straight line flight the aircraft doesn’t stop at the waypoint. In a curved flight the term waypoint is a misnomer, it should be called a reference point as the aircraft rarely actually arrives at the waypoint and instead uses it as a reference point for flight path calculations.

while the straight line flight has great value in some instances, capturing the same photos at the same location every day, it can be cumbersome and it yields terrible video footage. My suggestion is to put one or more POIs at the location you want to record, enable the auto record function, and plan a curved flight. You can easily pull high quality stills out of the p4 video recorded in 4K.

as others have already said your flights are both illegal and dangerous. You should seriously rethink what you are doing. An accident could be fatal and do great harm to drone flying everywhere. The FAA will not accept a plea of ignorance, if nothing else, when you first registered your aircraft you took a quiz on the controller that pointed out all the ruleyou are violating, they know this.

send me a link to your mission and I’ll figure out what the problems are and fix it.

Crawl, walk, then run.

 

[JCFP]

To amplify: what you're doing is illegal. Regs say you must maintain VLOS for the entire flight. Riding in a car COULD be an effective and legal way of addressing this, but Regs also state you can only operate from a moving vehicle in unpopulated areas. You have no way of knowing whether your drone is flying over people- whether it be 1 farmer, 1 maintenance worker, or a crowd, and if you're not able to maintain control of your drone for the entire flight, you're also breaking the law, you're putting other's lives at risk, and your actions are putting the public trust and the ability for those of us trying to make livings from flying at risk. If you f**k up, we are all going to pay for it, too, with stricter regulation, with less goodwill from the public, with greater requirements and restrictions (and their costs) forced on us. Please consider all of this going forward, and unless you can secure waivers (in which case, let 'er rip!), shelve this project.

 

[Osmosis]

Was the Litchi link removed?

 

[Osmosis]

To amplify: what you're doing is illegal. Regs say you must maintain VLOS for the entire flight. Riding in a car COULD be an effective and legal way of addressing this, but Regs also state you can only operate from a moving vehicle in unpopulated areas. You have no way of knowing whether your drone is flying over people- whether it be 1 farmer, 1 maintenance worker, or a crowd, and if you're not able to maintain control of your drone for the entire flight, you're also breaking the law, you're putting other's lives at risk, and your actions are putting the public trust and the ability for those of us trying to make livings from flying at risk. If you f**k up, we are all going to pay for it, too, with stricter regulation, with less goodwill from the public, with greater requirements and restrictions (and their costs) forced on us. Please consider all of this going forward, and unless you can secure waivers (in which case, let 'er rip!), shelve this project.

Good for you for pointing this out! and its nice to start seeing these types of responses here. Not too long ago posting something like this would stir the live free or die fellows who would brow beat anyone who attempted to point out illegal activities, these activities of course affecting all pilots reputations.

 

[kivi12k]

Glad to see the manual I wrote is being used and a little saddened that the cautions included are not being read. There is a new revision to the manual in the works, reorganized and with new and more complete graphics. Should be ready in about a month.
Now let’s tackle the flight problems. You are correct that in a curved flight path you cannot define a waypoint action. The reason for this is that there is already a waypoint action in progress- the curved flight path. The curved flight path is a 3 dimensional maneuver that can include 2 additional dimensions of movement- yaw and gimbal adjustments. These are very complex calculations and maneuvers for the onboard computer to calculate and execute, and unlike in a straight line flight the aircraft doesn’t stop at the waypoint. In a curved flight the term waypoint is a misnomer, it should be called a reference point as the aircraft rarely actually arrives at the waypoint and instead uses it as a reference point for flight path calculations.

while the straight line flight has great value in some instances, capturing the same photos at the same location every day, it can be cumbersome and it yields terrible video footage. My suggestion is to put one or more POIs at the location you want to record, enable the auto record function, and plan a curved flight. You can easily pull high quality stills out of the p4 video recorded in 4K.

as others have already said your flights are both illegal and dangerous. You should seriously rethink what you are doing. An accident could be fatal and do great harm to drone flying everywhere. The FAA will not accept a plea of ignorance, if nothing else, when you first registered your aircraft you took a quiz on the controller that pointed out all the ruleyou are violating, they know this.

send me a link to your mission and I’ll figure out what the problems are and fix it.

Crawl, walk, then run.

You wrote that manual? very cool indeed.
So there is a way to record and do curved? Ive been looking and couldnt figure that out using waypoints missons. I would love to figure out how to do that as Im having an issue with straight lines...seems to stop by every waypoint and not smoothly pass through them.I made a new topic here if you could look and check out the video and files i sent.
Thanks so much.

Can someone help me optimize my waypoints flight?

Hey guys, Im trying to make a waypoints mission to circle a property that is having some construction done to it. I plan on doing a daily recording. As far as i know there isnt an orbit option when using waypoints so i manually made a bunch of waypoints around the POI and set it to record. The...

phantompilots.com

 

[Jeff A]

Litchi has a Menu setting to start recording on take off & stop recording on landing.

 

[kivi12k]

Litchi has a Menu setting to start recording on take off & stop recording on landing.

Gotcha. So if I have a long waypoints mission and just want to record one portion of it then there won’t be a good way? Unless I record it all and then in post production I delete what I don’t want? Or is there some way you can think of to accomplish this ?

 

[DonWiley]

Gotcha. So if I have a long waypoints mission and just want to record one portion of it then there won’t be a good way? Unless I record it all and then in post production I delete what I don’t want? Or is there some way you can think of to accomplish this ?

Post productions is the best way to do it or you can manually start recording during the flight. Record the entire flight, you never know what you will capture, besides, digital film is cheap and reusable.