This could easily lose you your quad

[jmagee]

This is a warning about Litchi - it's not a criticism of this program, which I think is amazing, just a warning about something you could easily do wrong.

Today I was about to begin a waypoint mission and was on the 'preflight report' screen. There were two messages on the screen in very tiny lettering and I sort of half took them in before pressing the Go button. With the bird just beginning its mission, I went through my mind to think of what one of the messages was - something about 'warning - a custom speed was set for at least one waypoint'. I knew I had used the cruising speed for all the wapoints in that mission, but alarm bells went off so I flicked the controller to 'P' and aborted the mission.

Good thing I had. When I looked at that warning again, it said that if the bird lost the signal when it was flying at the custom speed, it would finish the mission at that speed. I looked through the waypoints and sure enough, my finger had slipped for on waypoint, and instead of a 30mph cruising speed, it was just 1.8mph. And it was one of the most distant waypoints. If it had stuch at that speed, it would have taken over an hour to get back.

Would low battery RTH have saved me? I don't know.

So just to warn people: it's incredibly easy to select a custom speed accidentally. As I say, it's not a criticism of Litchi, just a warning to be careful.

 

[royster]

Nice Catch!,
It's good to know that Litchi will even give you such a warning

 

[smiller]

My understanding is that even during a waypoint mission the aircraft will failsafe RTH at 30% battery level. Also some advise making the 'end of mission' setting RTH, that way if you do lose signal when operating at a low speed it will only operate at the low speed until the last waypoint, at which time it will RTH at normal speed.

But as always, while RTH or OA or any other goodies may save your bacon one should never depend on them to do so, a properly planned flight is the proper way to do things and the above tip is a good one. It's very easy to inadvertently insert a bug into a Litchi mission so always review them very carefully.

 

[The Springs]

I have noticed this warning and others (in microscopic writing). This was ok since it was only a 7 minute mission and I had the speeds set much higher to get to and come back from the POI.
What I don't understand is every time I run this mission the speeds rarely correspond with what I have set.
I am using my Standard for this and I know it might be just on the limit of useful range at the POI but I never lose any bars for video or rc ?
The last time it stuck on the 8 km/hr set around the POI and didn't change back at all on the return legs.
I thought that if the signal was lost /disrupted momentarily that everything would revert to the plan once contact was restored.
Note .The other warnings I get are about one or more WP distance being 750m apart or 520m apart etc ?