For the last couple of months, we have had customers reporting serious video issues while flying. Their screens become very strongly pixelated, especially in the lower half of the screen. At the same time, video delays of 1 second or more can appear, making it extremely challenging to frame the shot you want or even to avoid obstacles. This example is a screenshot off my Android Pixel XL shot in my living room.

This is an intermittent problem, sometimes getting so bad that it is impossible to see where you are flying. Obviously, this is more than annoying; it is dangerous and can make it impossible to fly your drone.

The problem is DJI’s software, which is so badly written that it is unable to decode the video screen from the drone in real time. There are two potential workarounds for this problem:

  1. If you are flying a Mavic Pro or a Mavic Air, you can fly directly from your phone without the remote controller. Obviously there are problems with this solution; limited range, difficulty of controlling the craft, etc. But in an emergency, this quick fix can save your bacon. By flying directly from the phone, you bypass the poorly written interface software.
  2. Switch to a different app, such as Litchi. Litchi is a third-party app which provides lots of additional features not found in the standard DJI app, including the ability to plan flights in advance, store the flight plans, and fly the same course repeatedly. Litchi is much better written than the standard DJI Go 4 app, and it does not suffer from the video decoding problem.

 

Litchi is NOT free. It’s $25 from the Google Play store or Apple App store.

[UPDATE: THIS WILL NOT WORK ON ANDROID PIE. Please see this article.]