Litchi glitch

[RobtheScot]

Hi Guys
I was out with my P3S and decided to try a Litchi mission I planned a small mission as I have been scared to use this feature before, anyway the short mission worked flawlessly.
So, I planned another mission and this time a bit longer, anyway, off I go but this time halfway through the mission the bird says mission complete and the bird just stops and hovers, I had already checked to make sure that I had set the mission end action to RTH, I flipped the panic switch and the bird came home and landed safely. I tried another longer mission with the same result, I am very new to both the phantom and Litchi so was hoping you experts could give me your opinion

 

[tevek]

Dumb question, but are you are creating and saving separate missions or building on the existing mission? Obviously it shouldn't suspend a mission mid way and the fact that you can bring it home on RTH is a good thing but Litchi missions are pretty much bullet proof.

 

[JxBx80]

Over the past week or 2 the Litchi app has been glitching up really bad for a lot of people. I'm seeing it a lot on the forum (including myself) which builds the case that we are not isolated instances. I would stop using it until we get an update pushed through (if possible).

 

[RodPad]

Over the past week or 2 the Litchi app has been glitching up really bad for a lot of people. I'm seeing it a lot on the forum (including myself) which builds the case that we are not isolated instances. I would stop using it until we get an update pushed through (if possible).

Huh?,
How about some glitching details or some links?

Rod

 

[BryanBTX]

Over the past week or 2 the Litchi app has been glitching up really bad for a lot of people. I'm seeing it a lot on the forum (including myself) which builds the case that we are not isolated instances. I would stop using it until we get an update pushed through (if possible).

Only Glitch I have heard of is with the P4 firmware not a P3S. I'm up to date and all is good. I use IOS what is the OP using?

 

[Indiana_pyro]

I'm interested in the latest glitches also. I've been using Litchi lately and didn't know of any problems. I'm using android with a standard and a pro.

 

[JxBx80]

I posted a video in this forum a few days back where I flew the mission twice and had 2 totally different results and the app actually shut down on me mid flight.

 

[Indiana_pyro]

I posted a video in this forum a few days back where I flew the mission twice and had 2 totally different results and the app actually shut down on me mid flight.

Are u using android ?

 

[RodPad]

@JxBx80,
Thanks for the link!
Litchi App Glitch, shutdown, and mind of its own

Rod

 

[RobtheScot]

Sorry guys work got in the way of pleasure for a while,
I am using ios on an iphone 5, was creating separate missions, the bird was out of sight when I heard the dreaded voice saying mission completed but the video was still there and the bird was approx. a third of the way through the mission.

 

[RobtheScot]

I was scared to let the mission continue as I was over water at the time, but I have seen on the forum other pilots have had a mission finish successfully even when they no longer have control, but as a newbie I didn't want to lose my precious Phantom

 

[tevek]

I was scared to let the mission continue as I was over water at the time, but I have seen on the forum other pilots have had a mission finish successfully even when they no longer have control, but as a newbie I didn't want to lose my precious Phantom

If you have the settings correct, particularly with the finishing action (RTH) and your WP heights, it will come back. I and many others have done missions where they lose signal for at least half the mission.

 

[bsartist]

While @tevek is generally correct, I unfortunately have seen the same things on a few occasions that happened in literally the same spot on a programmed mission. I created a thread on this which generated some discussion. What had happened was... for some strange reason the bird just switched to ATTI mode and then back to F-GPS and hovered. I don't think it was litchi. Best I can guess is some kind of interference or compass problem at that spot. Dropping to ATTI mode not only aborted the mission but had it hover. Very disconcerting. I can show you the lat/Lon of this happening on three missions and two were within feet of each other. The other maybe 20 feet away. All at an altitude of maybe 300ft AGL. The problem then went away. I noticed in the video that the heading was way off the POI near that spot. Like 20° off. I had run this mission weeks before and heading was good and mission ran to completion. So best I can guess is some off compass drift or something. Although NO compass errors were logged. At all. For giggles I recalibrated the compass the next day and the mission ran with perfect heading. I haven't seen the ATTI problem since. But even though I can't fully explain it, it happened three times and I had to bring the bird back myself. Of course I would hope that if I were unable to do so, lie battery failsafe RTH would have saved me.

On a separate note I have also had litchi report "mission ended" but kept flying the mission till the end. Only thing is that gimbal changes were no longer being executed. Same as if I had lost RC/AC link. But I never did. Litchi just thought the mission ended. I contacted litchi and they said this happens sometimes as a result of the DJI API reporting to them that the mission ended. No explanation why.

Check your flight logs and see if there was any switch into ATTI or F-GPS mode. (Note, not P-GPS. F-GPS. Which means the switch is in the F position (on a P3S anyway)

Here was my thread:
Very Disconcerting During Litchi Waypoint Mission

 

[tevek]

While @tevek is generally correct, I unfortunately have seen the same things on a few occasions that happened in literally the same spot on a programmed mission. I created a thread on this which generated some discussion. What had happened was... for some strange reason the bird just switched to ATTI mode and then back to F-GPS and hovered. I don't think it was litchi. Best I can guess is some kind of interference or compass problem at that spot. Dropping to ATTI mode not only aborted the mission but had it hover. Very disconcerting. I can show you the lat/Lon of this happening on three missions and two were within feet of each other. The other maybe 20 feet away. All at an altitude of maybe 300ft AGL. The problem then went away. I noticed in the video that the heading was way off the POI near that spot. Like 20° off. I had run this mission weeks before and heading was good and mission ran to completion. So best I can guess is some off compass drift or something. Although NO compass errors were logged. At all. For giggles I recalibrated the compass the next day and the mission ran with perfect heading. I haven't seen the ATTI problem since. But even though I can't fully explain it, it happened three times and I had to bring the bird back myself. Of course I would hope that if I were unable to do so, lie battery failsafe RTH would have saved me.

On a separate note I have also had litchi report "mission ended" but kept flying the mission till the end. Only thing is that gimbal changes were no longer being executed. Same as if I had lost RC/AC link. But I never did. Litchi just thought the mission ended. I contacted litchi and they said this happens sometimes as a result of the DJI API reporting to them that the mission ended. No explanation why.

Check your flight logs and see if there was any switch into ATTI or F-GPS mode. (Note, not P-GPS. F-GPS. Which means the switch is in the F position (on a P3S anyway)

Interesting problem with the switch to atti mode, I have never experienced that, but I have found that the litchi flight logs report differently to those found in the dji go app for exactly the same flight. I have had a number of mode switches recorded that I have never witnessed during flight in Litchi FPV when viewing the app. No idea why as it doesn't flag those mode changes in GO4 when reviewing the flight later. One thing that Litchi advised me during my ongoing pano mode problems was to switch my iOS device to airplane mode to stop the app reporting back to dji as there are issues with this extra 'traffic' compromising some of the flight modes. I wonder if this may be affecting your missions in addition to the compass calibration you performed.

 

[BourgeoisSJC]

On a separate note I have also had litchi report "mission ended" but kept flying the mission till the end. Only thing is that gimbal changes were no longer being executed.

Interesting.. I just created a thread regarding a missions I ran yesterday where the camera no longer focussed on POI:
Litchi Mission: Focus on POI Fails

Your comments above reminded me that in fact at or very near the start of each mission I got the mission ended warning. I have ignored it as I have been getting this message all the time over the past month and because the mission continued I wasnt overly concerned. Last night was different than in the past. Previously I got the warning well into the mission. Last night the warning came just before starting WP1. That may explain why my video appeared way out of whack.

Should point out though that even though I get this warning the log file does not show anything unusual. It shows the actual start mode (F-WP) and actual end with no indication anywhere of the mission ended warning

 

[kissmyace]

I wasn't flying a mission, but yesterday Litchi wouldn't even connect for me. Go did just fine. Never had that happen, before

 

[JxBx80]

They need to push a fix update out asap

 

[Pharm]

Litchi support says that the "Mission Ended" statement can be ignored. It's an issue with the DJI SDK. I've had it happen many times but the mission always continues as planned. I've had it happen even close by with full connection. ("Mission Ended" does NOT mean the same as "Warning - Disconnected". If flying a waypoint mission, BOTH can be ignored as the bird will continue the mission (assuming GPS is functioning properly) rather than RTH kicking in. If flying manually, you should never hear "Mission Ended" anyway. If flying manually and you hear "Warning - Disconnected", then RTH should kick in).

As far as the POI issue, the programmed gimbal/camera movements and different speeds per waypoint will only work if the RC has connection to the AC. If connection is lost, the bird will continue at the speed it was traveling when connection was lost. Similarly, the gimbal angle will remain at the same angle that it was when connection was lost. This too, is a limitation of the DJI SDK and not a problem that Litchi can fix until/unless DJI allows it.

 

[bsartist]

Litchi support says that the "Mission Ended" statement can be ignored. It's an issue with the DJI SDK. I've had it happen many times but the mission always continues as planned. I've had it happen even close by with full connection. ("Mission Ended" does NOT mean the same as "Warning - Disconnected". If flying a waypoint mission, BOTH can be ignored as the bird will continue the mission (assuming GPS is functioning properly) rather than RTH kicking in. If flying manually, you should never hear "Mission Ended" anyway. If flying manually and you hear "Warning - Disconnected", then RTH should kick in).

As far as the POI issue, the programmed gimbal/camera movements and different speeds per waypoint will only work if the RC has connection to the AC. If connection is lost, the bird will continue at the speed it was traveling when connection was lost. Similarly, the gimbal angle will remain at the same angle that it was when connection was lost. This too, is a limitation of the DJI SDK and not a problem that Litchi can fix until/unless DJI allows it.

Here is why "mission ended" may (and does) lead to loss of gimbal and speed changes. This is from Litchi Support:

"The mission ended is a bug from the DJI dev kit which we already reported to DJI. Litchi will announce “mission ended” whenever it is told that the mission has ended, which wasn’t the case here. It should be rare however as we have not received a lot of similar reports, the reports we did receive in the past were all for the P3 Standard however and would happen when signal is lost (even if just for a split second). It is possible that after the DJI dev kit reports that the mission has ended, it will also stop reporting other changes to Litchi such as when the drone reaches a waypoint for example, this kind of information is required for the gimbal control to work.
We’re not sure when (or if) DJI will fix this bug, we reported it a long time ago for the P3 Standard."

 

[BourgeoisSJC]

Here is why "mission ended" may (and does) lead to loss of gimbal and speed changes. This is from Litchi Support:

"The mission ended is a bug from the DJI dev kit which we already reported to DJI. Litchi will announce “mission ended” whenever it is told that the mission has ended, which wasn’t the case here. It should be rare however as we have not received a lot of similar reports, the reports we did receive in the past were all for the P3 Standard however and would happen when signal is lost (even if just for a split second). It is possible that after the DJI dev kit reports that the mission has ended, it will also stop reporting other changes to Litchi such as when the drone reaches a waypoint for example, this kind of information is required for the gimbal control to work.
We’re not sure when (or if) DJI will fix this bug, we reported it a long time ago for the P3 Standard."

I wonder if this DJI bug is related to the current FW? I never used to get this "mission ended" warning in the past (last fall early winter, same mission as recent). Now that the weather is warm enough to fly and at least one FW upgrade I get this message constantly. (I think) It does not always cause gimbal and/or speed problem though . Looking at recent videos the gimbal does appear to focus on POI. Only last night, immediate at the start of a mission with the mission ended warning did my speed and gimbal problems start.