Litchi waypoints gimbal is glitchy

[Dirty Bird]

Question. Is POI altitude relative to the ground (0' would point to the ground regardless of aircraft altitude) or relative to the aircraft's altitude (so if I wanted to focus on ground level while flying @ 300' I'd have to set the POI to -300')? Latter would seem kind of strange since if your WPs are various heights point at same POI it really wouldn't work properly.

Okay the POI auto focus will adjust the gimbal pitch itself depending on the waypoint altitude, all that matters is that you select the correct POI setting altitude, which in your case would be -100ft, try it, change a way points altitude now click to the next way point and back to the one who's altitude you just changed, and you will see the gimble pitch has changed. Thats why you noticed your POI auto focus worked like a charm.

The invisible wand on MP is a cool idea, personally I wouldn't trust it's topology, infact I wouldn't trust any topology, what if there has been some recent structure erected there, when I set up out of range autonomous missions I always fly too high the first time and work down from there, even if that means I run, review the video and adjust the mission 3x. I do run missions very very far away so the topology could be massively different from home point.

If you undershoot a WP altitude and said WP is over flat land you wont necessarily come crashing in to the floor, infact you have a good chance of the phantom landing!

 

[Ibmftw]

Question. Is POI altitude relative to the ground (0' would point to the ground regardless of aircraft altitude) or relative to the aircraft's altitude (so if I wanted to focus on ground level while flying @ 300' I'd have to set the POI to -300')? Latter would seem kind of strange since if your WPs are various heights point at same POI it really wouldn't work properly.

Your first example would be correct, if you set your POI to 0ft altitude that would be ground level. As you adjust the height of the waypoint you will,(as you have), see the gimbal pitch change at said waypoint, provided of coarse that waypoint is set to focus POI. The thing to remember here is this is all realivent to "take off point", so if you set a POI to 0ft, Litchi now presumes that POI is at the same level as what the A/C (Aircraft) took of from was, so if this POI happened to be at the bottom of a 1000ft Hill your gimble pitch would be completely wrong. You would have to set PO1 to -1000ft, the altitude you set for the wp at POI1 is irrelivent Litchi accounts for that, but it must be told that POI1 is 1000ft below our take off point.

If I hovered 40ft off the floor and then navigated to wp1 (set at 40 ft altitude) but wp1 happened to be over the edge of the grand canyon, as far as litchi or the phantom is concerned it's altitude is still 40 ft, in reality its 6040 ft, now if I wanted to focus on a car at the bottom of the grand canyon, and set that car as POI1 and set POI1 setting as 0ft, Litchi would set the gimble pitch to account for the car being 40ft below us, when infact to get the correct gimble pitch I would have to set POI1 to -6000ft, which is impossible, I'm just using extreme example for the sake of explanation.

 

[The Springs]

Interesting reading .I have bought Litchi but haven’t flown with it (too wet). I have a P3S so it will be out of range very quickly on almost any mission.

I have been thinking out a relatively simple mission and trying to get my head around the discussion on gimbal pitch angles. As I understand it you can manually set heading and gimbal pitch in the mission planning stage at each WP Does this info get uploaded to the P3 or does the gimbal angle stay the same throughout the flight? .So do you actually need a point of interest because it sounds like once out of range it’s not going to track it very well anyway.? I’m sure I will understand how it works when I finally get to try some missions

I am on a farm and want to send the P3 to check the water level in stock(sheep/cattle) water tanks .They are about 2.3m height with no roof so a fly by or a curved turn looking down at say- 45degrees or lower should give me a good idea of the water level. See map MAMSL House 448m (0 AGL)

Tank 1 477m (29m AGL)

Tank2 514m (66m AGL)

Tank 3 495m (47m AGL)

The round trip is about 4.5km and ideas? The red line is a reasonable big power line

 

[DonaldictTrumperbatch]

Your first example would be correct, if you set your POI to 0ft altitude that would be ground level. As you adjust the height of the waypoint you will,(as you have), see the gimbal pitch change at said waypoint, provided of coarse that waypoint is set to focus POI. The thing to remember here is this is all realivent to "take off point", so if you set a POI to 0ft, Litchi now presumes that POI is at the same level as what the A/C (Aircraft) took of from was, so if this POI happened to be at the bottom of a 1000ft Hill your gimble pitch would be completely wrong. You would have to set PO1 to -1000ft, the altitude you set for the wp at POI1 is irrelivent Litchi accounts for that, but it must be told that POI1 is 1000ft below our take off point.

If I hovered 40ft off the floor and then navigated to wp1 (set at 40 ft altitude) but wp1 happened to be over the edge of the grand canyon, as far as litchi or the phantom is concerned it's altitude is still 40 ft, in reality its 6040 ft, now if I wanted to focus on a car at the bottom of the grand canyon, and set that car as POI1 and set POI1 setting as 0ft, Litchi would set the gimble pitch to account for the car being 40ft below us, when infact to get the correct gimble pitch I would have to set POI1 to -6000ft, which is impossible, I'm just using extreme example for the sake of explanation.

What if I start from a 100m building. Should I subtract 100m from all POIs ? I guess so, because if I set the flight altitude to 20m, litchi won't know that the phantom is actually 120m and set the angle for ground level all wrong...

 

[Ibmftw]

Litchi would have no problem with your mission requirement @The Springs, since you don't need footage for a film or to look pretty you can literally just fly over the tanks with your gimbal pointed down, you could place Waypoints straight over the top of the tanks and use the "stop" action so that it stops over each tank for a desired amount of time, I. e. 10 seconds.

Start with WP1 nearly directly above take off point, put WP2 above the powerline clearing it by 50ft altitude, then WP3 above tank 1 clearing it by 10 ft alt, with a "stop" action for 10 seconds, WP4 above tank 2 again clearing it by 10ft alt and a stop command, WP5 above the powerline again clearing it by 50ft altitude (alt), and then over to tank 3 setting up WP6 the same as you did WP3 and WP4 and finally set WP7 back at home with a "hover" at mission completed command.

What you want to do is run the mission manually first, using DJI GO for example, and take note of what alt you will want your to set your Waypoints, also take note of the latitude and longitude of the targets (in this case the water tanks) because Litchi let's you set Waypoints using Lat and Lon, manually executing the mission will also give you an idea of how your battery life is going to look.

Good Luck.

 

[The Springs]

Litchi would have no problem with your mission requirement @The Springs, since you don't need footage for a film or to look pretty you can literally just fly over the tanks with your gimbal pointed down, you could place Waypoints straight over the top of the tanks and use the "stop" action so that it stops over each tank for a desired amount of time, I. e. 10 seconds.

Start with WP1 nearly directly above take off point, put WP2 above the powerline clearing it by 50ft altitude, then WP3 above tank 1 clearing it by 10 ft alt, with a "stop" action for 10 seconds, WP4 above tank 2 again clearing it by 10ft alt and a stop command, WP5 above the powerline again clearing it by 50ft altitude (alt), and then over to tank 3 setting up WP6 the same as you did WP3 and WP4 and finally set WP7 back at home with a "hover" at mission completed command.

What you want to do is run the mission manually first, using DJI GO for example, and take note of what alt you will want your to set your Waypoints, also take note of the latitude and longitude of the targets (in this case the water tanks) because Litchi let's you set Waypoints using Lat and Lon, manually executing the mission will also give you an idea of how your battery life is going to look.

Good Luck.

Thanks for your input. To fly the distance manually (and keep the elevation relative to the home point ) I could stand on the back tray of one of our 4x4s while my son drives and follow the P3 thus being in range all the time.Although driving between T2 and T3 is not possible T3 to home is.I will post a few pictures of the location if your interested.

 

[Ibmftw]

Yeh post a couple pics I'll help all I can.

So what you should do is take off from home point and manually fly over the power lines taking note of the altitude over the lines, and then continue to manually fly to T1 and take note of the altitude and Lat and Lon coordinates, then over fly over to T2 and take note of the perimeters there, perhaps even back over the powerline and take note of that altitude, with that info you have frome take off point (house) to
T2 and back over the power line sorted. Now start a new manual flight take off from home and manually fly to T3 taking note of the altitude needed to get there, the altitude realitive to home point that you need to be at once over T3 to get a close view, and it's Lat and Lon. After this you will have everything you need except from after the powerlines at T2 to T3, which wouldn't be much of a problem just set an extra WP after the powerlines to raise altitude and an extra WP just before the T3 WP to start decending to desired altitude.

Ofcoarse not being able to fly the whole mission manually leaves you guestimating the battery situation but theres an easy work around. Create a Litchi mission from home point, over the power line to T1 on to T2, back over the power line and finally back to home, now check the mission distance in Litchi and take note how much battery you get home on, now modify the mission to include T3 (making sure your setting your WPs with the correct parameters(high enough alt)) and compare the new mission distance with the original distance, now you can roughly calculate if you will have enough battery to complete the mission, try setting the mission speed around 25mph.

To be honest, and I shouldnt say such things, but for a P3 a 5km Litchi mission would be a walk in the park, you will probably get home on 50% batt. You dont need no POI etc just set your gimbal pitch to interpolate in the mision settings and set it to interpolate at your waypoints and set every waypoints gimbal pitch paramater to -90, now you wont have to set your gimbal at the start of every mission, you where right when you read the phantom wont change gimbal pitch whilst out of range, the reason im advising you to set it up like that is incase one of your waypoints is in range and it has a random gimbal pitch set, the pitch will change and if the phantom then goes out of range again your gimbals pitch will be stuck at the wrong pitch, (its just bullet proofing the mission be cause it seems like a mission you will run alot).
On Litchi you can save and load missions so after reviewing the footage after a mission you can slightly change things until you feel is perfect. If I were you I would put a waypoint just before a tank, directly over the tank and directly after, I would, as I mentioned before, use a "stop for 10 second" action on the WP's directly above tanks like that you fly in a straight path directly over the tanks and also get to stop above them, so when reviewing the footage you wont even having to pause it etc, you will get a good glimpse of the tanks levels.

Just remember fly high you can always alter the mission to fly a little lower and closer the next time round. Good Luck

 

[The Springs]

A bit longer than I thought .Whats the optimum speed for a mission ? Anything below 25km/hr starts to take it over the 20 minutes mark and I'm not sure that takes into account the time to stop look /turn etc
See crop inspection I'm working on for a neighbor ! Getting ambitious and I haven't even flown a mission yet .Ill get some photos tomorrow .

 

[Ibmftw]

I think most people feel somewhere around around the 30mph figure is best for longer flights, I feel like Litchi already factor in a 10-20% safety buffer, in most of my experience for example a 17 minute Litchi mission will usually be closer to 14 minutes, also remember Litchi flies very effeciently so is very economical, as I said before do a few simple test for example half of the grid mission you just posted and see what your battery looks like on returning home, dont forget that take off and landing use a fair bit of battery also so you can deduct 5% in favour of the total mission when you execute it. Also make sure in DJI GO you set your critical and low battery warnings to the lowest possible, so the phantom dont do anything silly like try to autoland at 40%, also set your smart return home "off" in DJI GO, and make sure any settings that may interfer with autonomous missions off in DJI GO and in LITCHI i.e. maximum heights and distance etc etc, some settings in DJI GO overide 3rd party apps so deal with them before executing any missions.

Run the mission faster than 25km for sure, film in a higher frame rate and you can slow the playback down and things will still look fine.

 

[mortenp]

Now I feel pressured to deliver on the entertainment. Here's the link to the collision avoidance in Litchi (short video, three close calls):

That was a cool flight, I love how the phantom is jumping around to avoid crashing. Nice landscape too!

Isn't there a mode yet where you can set the phantom to stay a few metres over ground, using the sonars? That would be very useful for this kind of flight.

 

[The Springs]

That was a cool flight, I love how the phantom is jumping around to avoid crashing. Nice landscape too!

Isn't there a mode yet where you can set the phantom to stay a few metres over ground, using the sonars? That would be very useful for this kind of flight.[/QUOTE

That was a cool flight, I love how the phantom is jumping around to avoid crashing. Nice landscape too!

Isn't there a mode yet where you can set the phantom to stay a few metres over ground, using the sonars? That would be very useful for this kind of flight.

I haven't forgotten ,making a living just gets in the way. I was going to get some footage at each tank with the Phantom and due to the chronic range problems with this thing my son and I replaced one of the pigtail leads for the DBS now we have a range of 5 m even when reverting to the old one and I can't set the home point . I have some previous footage that shows the location I will just edit a few bit together.

 

[The Springs]

I have finally take an early video and cut and spliced it to show the tanks and their locations It may be still a bit long but you can move it forward .Tank 1 and 2 can be seen mid top and far top left early in and tank 3 is right behind me (sorry about the sun) You can also see the power poles.

 

[Samuraiz]

FWIW I always do a complicated mission on the mission hub because it's easier for set and/or modify the way point and POI parameters with my mouse then trying to fat finger them on my Ipad mini.

 

[jogforfitness]

It would be helpful to all if you could post a link to your Litchi mission for the community to analyze. Off the cuff I don't know how to do that without digging.

Keep in mind this for the gimbal :

Gimbal Pitch Mode Litchi can control the gimbal pitch (i.e. camera up/down tilt) automatically during a mission, as long as the aircraft is within range of the remote controller.

If you are losing signal, I not sure what Litchi does with the Gimbal angle setting.

Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots

 

[The Springs]

If it's causing too much apprehension and stress you should sell it and buy a few cats much less stress .Technology it makes life easier or does it .
I asked my wife if she would prefer going down to the river and washing the cloths on a rock just to see .No dinner that night .Conclusion .Yes it does mostly

 

[mtmilam]

I just got the Litchi app...Phantom 4....I To am losing gimbal pitch on missions....I swore it would follow the POI when I first started using it...I thought How Cool....and mission was out of range of RC controller.....I could drop down over my mom's pool, about 1 miles away, Lots of trees...it would hover 10 seconds and fly back......but lately, the gimbal pitch stays 90.....or whatever it was when it lost range.......Is this Normal....did I just get lucky sometimes when it would work right even though out of range.

also....I had action to stop recording, which it did.....Take a picture, which it did not...and start recording again..which it Did NOT......all this was when it was behind her house, 10' off the ground and I was 1 mile away...lots of tress........It Did Stop recording, according to mission, but never started back. Is this Normal?
Thanks
Mark