I recently mapped my schools field. This was my first time using Litchi so I recognize I may be missing something obvious. But an issue I encountered was that as my Mini 3 was flying between the waypoints it would stop and search for the correct altitude. I generated my flight path using ancient.land originally with a z check of 1 but increased that to 11 to avoid the issue.
My question is: am I able to configure tolerances for how close the drone needs to get to a waypoint?
I’ve read that my sensors may have been out of calibration and that could have caused the issue. Although according to airdata nothing was abnormal about my GPS signal etc. There was a bit of wind that day but nothing too severe. My airport reported winds about 10kts and I would say that felt fairly accurate. Not too gusty.
When the drone stops (apparently without reason), it lost (temporary) connection with the controller and doesn’t know what to do.
This happened at points H & J, where the drone switched from Joystick mode to P-GPS mode and back to Joystick mode.
The Mini 3 is a so called VSC drone.
Have a look at this thread:
Also I would delete all waypoints halfway (3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27 & 30), they serve no purpose at all.
I find it unlikely that my controller lost signal. The places where the drone. At all points on my flight I had (according to airdata) full signal strength. Unless airdata isn’t collecting accurate data? Although the signal data seems realistic as I was close to the drone during the flight and had direct line of sight. What other ways could I ensure I keep perfect signal strength?
The intermediary points along each path are to test how ancient.land handles terrain following so they seem unnecessary but will be needed when I map more varied terrain and want to maintain a constant GSD.
At what point in the flight did you have any issues with the drone’s position/altitude being unstable? Can you describe in more details what happened?
In your flight log, we can see the drone seems to have stopped for 1mn30s+ at waypoint 24, is this where the issue happened? It looks like also the flight mode changed from Joystick to P-GPS at that point, was that you changing the RC mode?
Please keep in mind Litchi Pilot is a beta and as such there may be bugs.
The drone should not stop between waypoints. There is no such function that would cause the drone to stop and search for the correct altitude.
If you had “Z check” set to “1” it would cause the mission to place a waypoint at every location where a photo is captured. With straight-line missions, there will be a momentary pause at each waypoint. When you increase “Z check” to some larger value, the mission will only have waypoints at the limits of the mapping area and the drone will momentarily pause at those waypoints. Between those waypoints, the drone will fly smoothly while capture a photo an pre-defined intervals.
It is not clear from your description whether this flight had “Z check” set to 1 (a waypoint for every photo) or “Z check” set to something greater. However, the flight log suggests you were using the shared mission after you restarted flying it.
There is no such setting.
No. There is no sensor that would affect “closeness to a waypoint” or “closeness to a GPS coordinate”.
Your flight log shows you starting the mapping mission. The drone was stopping periodically, presumably to take photos. Then, you stopped the mission about 1/3 of the way across the mapping area. The mission was restarted and began again at the beginning. The second time, the drone only stopped once per span of the mapping area. This corresponds the the waypoint mission you shared.
What ancient.land does is set the “Altitude Mode” flag so that the height set at all waypoints is the above ground height according to the elevation data that Litchi uses. This will always occur at the turning points of the mapping mission. Unless the terrain is varying in height in the midst of the mapping area, having those intermediate waypoints is unnecessary.
Vico,
This issue I am describing is occuring at waypoints 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, and 30. It pauses briefly at the waypoint along the straight flight path. At no point did I intentionally change the flight mode.
The behavior I desire is for it to fly uninterrupted between each waypoint. From my understanding the intermediary waypoint is needed to allow the drone to follow the terrain unless Litchi follows the terrain to maintain consistent altitude AGL.
Wes,
If you look at the airdata flight log the drone is pausing at the waypoints mentioned above.
The Z Check was initially set to 1 but I noticed the drone was not flying continuously. I anticipated this problem and prepared another mission with a Z Check of 11 and that is the one I shared. This mitigated the issue but did not eliminate it.
The next mission I plan to map is a Butte where I will need intermediary z checks to ensure the drone maintains proper altitude AGL. I wanted to test this on smaller flat terrain. So in this case the extra points are not needed. But when I map the butte (about 50 hectares) I would like the drone to not stop at these z check points to save battery.
Set your Path Mode (Mission Settings) to Curved Turns. It won’t pause at each waypoint. You can even set the Curve Size for waypoints to zero. It will only pause long enough to change direction at the end of your long runs.
Litchi Pilot supports actions even with curved turns. If you have the path mode set to curved turns, the drone will stop at a waypoint if it has at least 2 actions or if it has a ‘Stay For’ action. If the waypoint has no action or if it has a single action that is not ‘Stay For’ then the drone won’t stop.
In the mission you linked, you could remove the gimbal pitch actions to prevent the stop/pause at waypoints
I don’t know if this helps any, but I wanted to mention that although 10 kts doesn’t seem like much, the maximum demonstrated crosswind capability of a Cessna 172 is only 15 kts. Also, the flight school I attended would not allow student pilots to fly solo with crosswinds greater than 5 kts. So from the ground, 10 kts doesn’t seem like much, but in the air, it can be a challenge for the drone to maintain its correct position, especially if the wind is not steady, and is instead gusting. Just my 2¢.