P4P crashed while Litchi Mission (no relative to terrain altitude)

rge · Mar 8, 2017

I was not aware that Litchi supported changes in elevation from the home point. Where do you set that?

tevek · Mar 8, 2017

rge said:
I was not aware that Litchi supported changes in elevation from the home point. Where do you set that?

In the latest litchi 1.15.5:
Open up your mission
Select the spanner icon and hit the box shaped icon
Hit select all.
Hit edit and hit the Ground tab.
If you are happy with the altitude setting, hit apply and your waypoints will reflect the Google ground settings. I add an extra 10 mtrs to be safe and be aware of any man made structures in your flight path.

konidair · Mar 8, 2017

hi OP, sorry about your loss. Have you taken any photos of the tree/drone? If yes can you post one? I'm very curious to see how bad your situation is and ...who knows...the fellow phantompilots here might come up with ideas and help you get your baby back

Bigbells · Mar 8, 2017

A heavy string or light rope with a weight tied on one end... swing the weighted end around and fling it up, trying to get it to grab the branch that the bird is on. If you can get it to go up and over the branch and then drop back down, that's even better because you could now hold both ends of the rope.

microchips · Mar 8, 2017

Bow saw and under the cover of darkness obviously lol.

jofus · Mar 8, 2017

CanadaGoose said:
I'm curious. Why do so many folks use Litchi or similar products? I fly with a terrific hood on my iPad Air 2 and fly FPV. I can see the terrain, make adjustments on the fly, circle an interesting point control my altitude etc. Am I missing something? Definitely not knocking any such type of autonomous flight but just curious

If you can manually yaw the aircraft and work the gimbal tilt while maintaining a perfect vector and framing your point of interest, then you've got skills! I've found using Zipline and Focus mode on Autopilot have made my camera work so much smoother, and I have a lot more usable footage after flight.

Bigbells · Mar 8, 2017

Tennis racket and a bucket of tennis balls

Jlbourne · Mar 8, 2017

rdtex103 said:
ordered a new?? come on. slingshot with bocce balls, boomerang, baseballs, Frisbees, knock it lose...climb! do something.

Um... Where's this "three" at again?
I got dibs!

SRJ_Phantom_4_Pro · Mar 8, 2017

It's in between two and four....

Jlbourne · Mar 9, 2017

SRJ_Phantom_4_Pro said:
It's in between two and four....

Haha, quick with it.

Norweigan · Mar 10, 2017

Hi!
I do not know if you've gotten down your drone. Is there an access by car to the tree? What about to contact the local fire department and ask them. Maybe they can take it down for you. You have to find yourself in paying a few bucks for these job. The payment can goes to the fire department's sports teams, or other good causes.

Richard R · Mar 10, 2017

Neon Euc said:
I know what happened I think. Litchi programmed the altitude of the climb on the hill but didn't take the trees into the factor. Litchi only judges the height raised on the actual ground. It doesn't do it for trees as obviously trees grow so it will be different each time. Really sorry to hear about your loss. That's why I never trust the automatic terrain change on litchi. It did calculate for me a few times when I used it, but I still bottled out and decided to go at a set height then lower the height slightly for the next mission.

Don't give up tho mate. You can still get it back. It's not the trees stopping you from getting your drone back, it's your imagination stopping you getting it back. Think really carefully... Have a beer or two, try not to get to worked up and calmly think of a way of getting back, tree surgeon could get it? Can you get a ladder? No such thing as "impossible" only "puzzles"

Can you give us a google earth link or some kind of pic so we can see what the terrain is like? Then we can all pitch in and come up with a plan. Your not the first to be in this situation and their has been lots of rescue missions where the bird did get back to the owner. Don't give up mate. We will work this out [emoji4]

Nothin/nobody except for the pilot in command takes trees into account. Altitudes in maps like Google are DEMs that only report the 'derived' ground elevations. Even those need to be taken with a grain of salt (maybe on the rim of a margarita?). none of them are actually surveyed.

Neon Euc · Mar 10, 2017

Richard R said:
Nothin/nobody except for the pilot in command takes trees into account. Altitudes in maps like Google are DEMs that only report the 'derived' ground elevations. Even those need to be taken with a grain of salt (maybe on the rim of a margarita?). none of them are actually surveyed.

I always take trees into account. After all.. They do grow [emoji6]

SRJ_Phantom_4_Pro · Mar 10, 2017

But the OP issues were with threes not trees.....

mikesher · Mar 10, 2017

tevek said:
In the latest litchi 1.15.5:
Open up your mission
Select the spanner icon and hit the box shaped icon
Hit select all.
Hit edit and hit the Ground tab.
If you are happy with the altitude setting, hit apply and your waypoints will reflect the Google ground settings. I add an extra 10 mtrs to be safe and be aware of any man made structures in your flight path.

Does this also work from the mission hub?

Roamer105 · Mar 10, 2017

tevek said:
In the latest litchi 1.15.5:
Open up your mission
Select the spanner icon and hit the box shaped icon
Hit select all.
Hit edit and hit the Ground tab.
If you are happy with the altitude setting, hit apply and your waypoints will reflect the Google ground settings. I add an extra 10 mtrs to be safe and be aware of any man made structures in your flight path.

Make sure to carefully check the flight path between waypoints. There can be nasty surprises. Got me about 6 months ago. Also elevation data is not very accurate (interpolation between elevation points where the points have a much lower resolution than the image). Give it at least 50 meters of safety hight in addition.

MaxHam · Mar 10, 2017

Sorry for your loss, MAVICIAN!
I searched on Youtube and there are different approaches on recovering a drone in a tree:

The smart approach:

The Redneck approach:

The French approach (see at 2:30min how it releases a drone. I'm sure it could grab one as well

I'm not making fun of you but I admit I had to laugh, esp. when you wrote this:
"the P4P was crashed into a large three, the only one on the terrain, go figure"

Best MaxHam

SRJ_Phantom_4_Pro · Mar 10, 2017

Gotta love the goober redneck video!

tevek · Mar 10, 2017

mikesher said:
Does this also work from the mission hub?

I don't use mission hub but I watched a tutorial where it was set up using it, so that would be a yes.

Mainshipper · Mar 11, 2017

CanadaGoose said:
I'm curious. Why do so many folks use Litchi or similar products? I fly with a terrific hood on my iPad Air 2 and fly FPV. I can see the terrain, make adjustments on the fly, circle an interesting point control my altitude etc. Am I missing something? Definitely not knocking any such type of autonomous flight but just curious

I generally only use Litchi because I like to fly long touring flights. If the flight is planned properly you should avoid any terrain/trees and if in doubt just fly higher. The reason I use Litchi is because the bird will continue the planned mission even if the signal is lost which happens to me quite frequently.