Another example of a Litchi mission...

[Ed Martin]

Following up on Brockrock's great video from Mystic Seaport, here is one from me of a sunset flight over Lake Norman in Mooresville, NC. The flight is 7.5 minutes long. And for just over 5 minutes of it, my RC is completely out of communication with my P4. There are a lot of tall, dense trees between my house and the lake. So this is a truly autonomous flight.

The process is as much fun as the result for this type of mission. I probably flew it more than 20 times before I got to the result I wanted. Because you can't view what the P4 is seeing until after it gets back, I had to start at a solid high altitude to perfect the path. Then I was able to edit in elevation changes. So I'm at 200 feet to clear all of the trees but I get as low as 30 feet at some points over the lake. Finally, I had to tweak the POI's so I could get the right mix of sunset and shoreline.

No, I didn't just wing it and suddenly do a mission where I'm out of communication for 5+ minutes. Trust me... it took a while to build up to it. But once you build the confidence, I am a die-hard Litchi fan.

Video below and also a link to the Litchi mission on Mission Hub: Mission Hub - Litchi

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[flyboy73]

That was fascinating. I watched the entire flight. You have renewed my interest in Litchi. But I wonder if in your programming if you can program to gimbal to shoot down a little more to keep the props out of the picture? If so, that would make it perfect. And do you know if Litchi requires the latest DJI firmware to be loaded in your P3 or P4 to work properly?

Nicely done.

 

[Ed Martin]

Thanks!

I can't say for sure if you have to have the latest firmware for this to work but I know that I do have it installed in my P4. That said, I have been playing with this mission off and on for a few weeks so it probably does pre-date the latest firmware release. But I'm not 100% sure.

As for the props, depending on wind, sometimes I see them, some times I do not when I fly this mission. But my goal was the horizon line, sunset and lens flare. So I'm OK with the tradeoff. For this particular mission, I am using Litchi's POI's to manage the camera/gimbal. But there are ways to do it with hard settings, too.

 

[macwylie]

I like seeing the props every now and again it adds to the amazement in my mind. One thing I've been wondering about lately with my own videos and now I'm convinced with no sound at all even prop noises the attention level drops off significantly no matter what's in the video. If there was sound I didn't hear it on my phone but I think that's paramount now--I've only had mine for a month so only discovering these things.


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