Waypoint Gimbal point to POI with Litchi

A viewer was having problems getting the camera gimbal pointing to a Point-of-Interest (POI), so I made this quick tutorial to help understand how the gimbal angle interacts with Waypoint Altitude, POI altitude and POI location when you change Gimbal Pitch Mode to Focus POI and vary the altitude of both Waypoint and POI.
The video was produced with Litchi running on an iPad Air 2 connected wirelessly to a Windows PC running Air Server. Editing was done with Corel Video Studio X9.

[@andrewap77]

I have watched most of your Litchi waypoint videos, and on this one the light in my head turned on, I have been trying my best to figure out the angle of my gimbal for different POI's in a mission. To the point i was over thinking the system......So thank you so much for turning on my light! And please keep them coming.

[@Tony-ow3if]

Brilliant...short and sweet and to the point...exactly

[@tomtomdawson]

Ok dude, I’m subscribed.... and I’m expecting some upcoming tutorials on waypoints for spark and mavic air. Your voice and mannerisms are conducive to learning so I thank you very much!

[@g.a.productions5353]

Hi!!! I want to tell you about my problem I had with Litchi today! I was shooting in Acropolis-Greece and I had my flight set to waypoint. All the waypoints are set first to "Focus POI" and then to "Interpolate" for smoother transition. When I started the flight ( notice that my Altitude was set to 1310) I 've realised that my gimbal pitch angle which was set to -77 degrees it was pointing to 0 degrees and I manually set it to show the POI. Another problem that I found was that when I set the flight path to waypoint and I was loaded the flight the unit stopped at every waypoint that I had set, even though that my speed was set manually at every waypoint to 15 miles per hour. You are a litchi app master and you have learned me a lot!! Without your videos I have never accomplished my waypoints even though that were not perfect by (I think ) my mistake or a bug from the app!!! So if you make any video for us (the newbies) explaining about the litchi Interpolation and how to make it right I will very appreciated!!! Post me and to my facebook page: G.A. Productions if you want

[@MontanaMonk]

I'll try to make another video explaining Interpolation in a little more detail. I know some of these settings can be rather confusing, since they do interact with each other a little. I'll also include the manual speed changes that were not available when I made the original videos. One thing you must do when making major changes in the flight mode, like changing Focus POI to Interpolate, is review each waypoint to be sure it changed as you expected. This is especially true when doing a batch edit of all waypoints to be sure you don't accidentally change parameters for all points that you only intended for one. I will discuss the batch edit mode, too, in the next video. Thanks for questions and comments and thank you for viewing.

[@g.a.productions5353]

I have reviewed one by one the waypoints before going to a mission but I' m pretty sure that something other is not done by me right or it was just a bug!!! Anyway, thanks for your reply and I am waiting for your video

[@Xaphoeous]

EXACTLY what I was looking for. Thank you!

[@michaelkaplan604]

Very clear explanation. Thank you.

[@davidgarton2387]

I agree very good explanation, cheers!

[@davidlynch8091]

Thanks so much for this Video

[@jharloe]

Well done! I've watched 3 of your videos re litchi and way points. The question is how important is getting the poi height correct? If you were taking videos of a 4 story building where would you set the height on point of interest? Top, midway, or bottom?

[@MontanaMonk]

The height you set for the POI depends a little on the altitude you are flying and the distance from the building. If you are above and fairly close to the building, the aircraft is closer to the top and your POI might be better closer to the top, maybe 1/3 of the way down. If your altitude is halfway up the building, the POI should be halfway up because the camera will be "seeing" equally above and below the aircraft altitude. If you are more distant from the building, putting the POI about 1/3 up from the bottom will probably provide good foreground and still cover the entire building. A lot of making the decision depends on the kind of image you want to end up with. The further you get from the building, the less critical is the POI. Thanks for viewing and for questions and comments.

[@dan6sixty]

Awesome

[@ianhuxstep211]

This is a very informative video, great work. How can I determine the height of my POI from the litchi app or Litchi mission hub. For instance my POI may be a church spire 200ft or a building 30ft high from the view on Litchi mission it appears flat.

[@MontanaMonk]

The is no way to determine the height of structures or other obstacles, like trees and power lines from the app or the hub. I use a laser range finder which has an angle measure and calculate the heights with triangles. There are other tools to do the same thing. While it seems like a waste of time, you can also just fly straight up to a point even with the top of a building with the gimbal angle 0 degrees and determine its height for future flight plans. Some larger buildings will also have their height available to look up on the Internet. You can also estimate the height if you can count the number of floors. While not perfect, the height of one floor willl be around 10 feet. For short buildings, especially if you're not too close, setting the POI at the default of 3 feet will be fine. As you get close to large buildings, the height becomes more critical. Thank you for questions and comments and thank you for viewing.

[@nmfireman]

I have had my Mavic for a few months and have all of your videos along with some very good ones from others. I don’t know if you can answer but let me give it a shot. All of my videos have a blur to them when the Mavic is moving when viewed on my 4K TV viewed using a Mac mini. I have shot in 4K and in 1080P both at 30 Fps. I have it set for 100 using ND filters 4,8, and 16. I’m sure it could be a refresh rate of my TV it is not one of the top of the line. So that’s pretty much it looking forward to your response

[@MontanaMonk]

At ISO 100 and with an ND filter, even the ND 4 filter, is going to reduce the shutter speed of the camera. With reduced shutter speed comes motion blur. Blur will increase with higher numbered filters, with higher speed of the aircraft and with nearness to the subject. Unless you really need the ND filter for some special effect, I would recommend leaving it off. Sometimes a graduated ND filter might be appropriate for keeping exposure balanced between the ground and sky, but with the aircraft moving, it might be a little tricky to balance. My main use of ND filters is to blur moving things, especially water. I don't think the refresh rate of the TV is a problem. A slow refresh rate would probably appear as a flicker rather than a blur. Thank you for questions a comments and thank you for viewing.

[@nmfireman]

I've had this issue even without the ND filters I just got the ND filters because everybody said that you need to use them to get closer to half of your ISO. I'm just a little account confused should I just shoot on auto I've been trying to do the manual shooting but ever since I've hadThe Mavic I've noticed this blurry as soon as it stops the blue and goes away of course anyway any suggestions on Settings would be appreciated thank you so much

[@nmfireman]

MontanaMonk I have to tell you I'm getting confused with the talk of shutter speed it's confusing me because of the difference between shooting with the still camera and shooting with a motion picture camera or that's an old sounding word I was told everything I've read to keep your aperture I guess half of what your ISO is and I'm shooting with an ISO 100 not sure how to control the shutter speed when shooting video thanks for all your help

[@MontanaMonk]

The rule for the relationship in video is between shutter speed and frame rate. The shutter speed should be two times the frame rate to produce the appearance of proper motion for moving subjects (people). So, if shooting 30fps, a shutter speed of 1/60th second would be right. I'm not sure this still applies to video shot with a camera moving at the speed of the Mavic. I would suggest trying Auto exposure mode and if you like what you get, just keep using it. You might also test Auto mode with the ND filters to see if it produces something more to you liking. I use mostly Auto exposure mode for my Phantom and am happy with the video. The only time I use manual is when I want the ground to be exposed properly when the sky dominates the video at the start of a clip and when I know I'll be lowering the angle of the camera during the clip. In those cases, overexposure of the sky isn't as important as underexposure of what is on the ground, which is the main subject, so I set exposure for the ground brightness.

[@nmfireman]

Ok so I'm shooting 30 DPS so 60

[@richardPalmisano]

I dont want the drone to stop at each waypoint and poi i want the flight to be continuous for smoother transaction to each waypoint and poi. what do my settings have to be on for that mission?

[@MontanaMonk]

You can't make the proper setting from the Mission Hub to avoid stopping at waypoints. The setting that will do what you want is setting Path Mode to Curved Turns. This must be done from the Litchi App Mission Settings on the mobile device. You can create missions on the Hub but you will have to make some changes on your mobile device for those things that can't be set on the Hub. Hope this helps. Thanks for questions and comments and thank you for viewing.

[@andrewap77]

What if my POI is the side of a building and you are not sure of the ht.?

[@MontanaMonk]

Even if you don't know the exact height of the building, you can estimate based on the number of floors in the building. Each floor will be about 11 feet (3.3 meters). If you keep the aircraft at about the height of the building or a little above, and a little further from the building than the height of the building and set the POI about half the height of the building, the building will cover most of the height of the frame. This method doesn't require too many calculations, so is fairly easy to do. Even if you aren't at the site when creating the mission plan, the internet might provide you with information on the number of floors in many buildings or even their height.

[@andrewap77]

MontanaMonk Thanks that is a good rule of thumb use in haveing a estimate

[@gregnlemke]

Using Litchi I can set the flight plan correctly but the camera rotates 180 degrees and points away from the wayooint at the time of flight. On the return to home the camera re-orients and points in the direction of flight. I'm missing something dumb I'm sure.......

[@MontanaMonk]

Be sure that the Mission Settings are Heading - Custom, Gimbal Pitch Mode - Focus POI and Rotations Direction - Managed before creating either points-of-interest or waypoints. Then create the points-of-interest and finally the waypoints. This should produce a good mission with the camera pointing at the waypoints. Using this method, the camera will default to point at the nearest point-of-interest for each waypoint and will rotate to the point-of-interest with the least rotation. lf the nearest point-of-interest for a waypoint is not what you want, just edit the waypoint and change the POI to which it is to point. For the smoothest video, also set Path Mode to Curved Turns. While you can always edit waypoints and points-of-interest, it is easiest to set mission settings first, since you know your intent for the mission. Thank you for questions and thank you for viewing.

[@gregnlemke]

@@MontanaMonk Thanks for the very quick reply. Your tutorials have saved me a lot of time getting up and running with Litchi. I was going crazy trying to figure this out but then recognized the gimble settings in the "master settings" area. Once I set the gimble to "yaw/follow" the mystery was solved. Now I can do the job I sold!