I was in the Nevada desert last week and went out for an MTB ride with a couple of Gopros and my Mini2 running Litchi. I only used it for one uninterrupted 20-minute run down a fairly tame but occasionally a bit rocky trail. The RC and phone were ON and carefully resting in my backpack while I was riding (control sticks removed on the RC). I could hear the voice prompts counting down the battery remaining the whole way, but occasionally when I hit a rough patch of trail I would hear the voice prompt say something like “Recording Stopped”. When I got home and checked the film, instead of one big file I found 5 separate files of very different lengths and sizes, anywhere from 10 secs to 10 mins, and often several seconds or even minutes apart when added to my Resolve timeline.
So is this normal? Does the control app react to trail shake via the phone’s accelerometers or something? Why would the drone stop recording onboard when the RC is getting slightly bumped around? Just wondering if this is normal, if it’s fixable, or if I need to mess with settings. I’ve never used the DJI Fly app for this (Mini2 has Follow Mode disabled), so I don’t know if this is a LItchi thing or a DJI RC issue.
I should add, towards the end of the run and despite being in the middle of the desert the drone lost its lock on my RC and flew away (RTH to the start point about 3 miles away)…luckily there was enough battery left after I noticed it was not following anymore, so I was able to force it back to me by recognizing landmarks (mountains!)…had 3 mins left when it landed! I have since changed the settings to Dynamic Homepoint but still very odd that it lost lock…I mean it was in a flimsy little backpack and ran fine for about 15 mins before. Based on this my first attempt in the open plain with no trees for 20 miles, it has very unreliable tracking.
What you describe is not normal. The only thing that I can think of is that DJI drones will capture video up to a maximum of 4GB in one file. Once 4GB is reached, the file counter is incremented and it continues recording in the next file. When these files are placed sequentially after each other in a video editor timeline, they will seamlessly play back with no apparent gap. This does not match what you describe. Were any of your files at the 4GB file size limit?
Thanks for your reply. None of the files were at the 4gb limit (see attached summary), and I only pressed Record once at the beginning!!! They are completely random sizes ranging in duration from a few seconds to about 10 mins, and file sizes ranging from 92mb to 2.4gb. So if you’ve never heard of this issue I guess I have a problem, very strange indeed. The voice prompt from the RC clearly stated “recording stopped” several times, not sure if this is DJI or Litchi…I’m assuming DJI? And even if there was built-in recording protection due to shocks or bouncing around, several files had several minutes between restarts, not like restarting 5 seconds after the shocks subsided. And I’m sure there’s no shock protection, makes no sense, the drone has onboard Recording and this is where I grabbed the files, not a phone transfer.
Plus, it occurred to me that there really weren’t any shocks, since I stand on my pedals and absorb with my legs on rocky descents, so at worst some minor movement in the backpack.
I just bought a Neo that should make my life much easier, not nearly such a pain to launch. But I’m still baffled by this recent experience!
This is behavior that I have not heard of before. As a result, I can only guess. Since the RC has a record button on the upper-right of the remote, is it possible that it was resting on that record button in your back pack and the button was bumped a few times while you were riding? That’s the only other thing I can think of that would explain what happened.
Hmmm that’s possible I suppose, it’s really the only viable possibility since otherwise there’s no real explanation! Too bad there isn’t a master lockout control for the hardware…
The only thing that remains unexplained is why it flew away at the end of the final clip: I spent hours today in post with the video, and for a couple minutes before it went rogue (RTH) I was at the far bottom of the frame, unlike middle-frame for the other clips…like I was slowly slipping out of view…for a few moments at the end you could see the video was still following me (camera turning) even though I was completely out of the bottom of the frame. There was nothing else in the backpack to mask the RC “beacon” so I have no idea. Anyway, fun experimenting with this shit, glad I was able to recover the drone.
Trying the Neo tomorrow, I expect it’ll make life easier. Litchi will still serve it’s purpose with the Mini 2 for other uses, I just won’t throw the whole mess in a backpack and ride blind with it behind me anymore
Most likely the screen of your phone got repeatedly activated at the position of the recording “button”.
Google “how does a capacitive touchscreen work” (or simular).
Although capacitive touchscreens don’t respond to inorganic inputs, they can still be accidentally activated by other conductive elements.
No !
It did NOT loose its lock.
The Mini 2 has a maximum flight time of about 30 minutes.
Because you were moving away from the Home Point, after about 10 to 15 minutes Low Batterie RTH was activated.
l did not know that the drone would automatically RTH when the battery level hit its halfway (or point at which it could safely RTH)…good to know, thanks. As for the phone screen getting tapped inside the backpack by some kind of organic object that I didn’t have, I’m doubtful because the RC-phone was sitting on top of whatever was in the bag, and something would have had to precisely tap Stop and Start and Stop repeatedly 5 times during a 20 minute session (5 clips of varying lengths, all less than 4gb))…and the phone screen times out after 2 mins (unless Litchi overrides timeout?). But who knows. I have it set to Dynamic Homepoint now so I’ll test the whole concept when I get the chance.
A capacitive “touch” screen can be activated without touching it.
The word “touch” is a legacy of the older pressure touchscreens.
That’s why I advised you to google how these screens work.
