On a recent multispectral + RGB mission to map kelp offshore, I ran into what appears to be a size limit in DJI Pilot. We're flying an M210 V2 w/ X5S + Micasense Altum mounted. All firmware & software up to date. Flight area polygon was imported from kml. We're in the approach vector for a local airport so we've obtained clearance from ATC and a DJI Geozone unlock, but our max altitude is 200 ft / 61 m AGL, which makes our line spacing close and our estimated flight time rather long. DJI Pilot allows us to create the mission, but when we go to upload it to the aircraft we get "Failed to upload flight mission: the trace of waypoint is too long". Clicking Retry fails repeatedly.
The only way to get around it was to dramatically reduce the size of the polygon to be mapped, via trial and error. Needless to say, hand-adjusting flight areas in the field until you get something "doable" is not the preferred way to design a survey for best coverage/efficiency/accuracy. I'd like to avoid this in the fututre.

Does anyone know whether it is the total distance, number of waypoints, number of photos, or estimated flight time, or a combination of those factors that is causing Pilot to choke? If we knew that in advance we could try to design surveys that stay within those limits.
Thanks in advance! I like many things about Pilot but if we can't figure out a workaround for this issue it will be much less useful to us. Oh and it would be nice if Pilot had the X5S as a standard camera, rather than requiring the creation of a "custom" one...

Via SDK Documentation

The waypoint trace is too long. The maximum waypoint trace is 30km. The waypoint trace is the sum of all distances between waypoints in a mission.

hoss_ Posted at 4-5 16:11
Via SDK Documentation

The waypoint trace is too long. The maximum waypoint trace is 30km. The waypoint trace is the sum of all distances between waypoints in a mission.

Thanks @hoss_!!!
That's got to be one of the fastest, most on-point, and best-documented responses I can recall receiving for one of my questions here! That SDK reference is going in my library, good to have for sure.


Wonder why they capped it @ 30km? That's not nearly long enough IMO. But at least knowing it will help for planning purposes.


Cheers again, hope I can repay the favor someday!

Update- ran a 27 km total waypoint trace mission yesterday w/o issue. Still think this is an artificially low limit to enforce (yesterday's mission was about 1.5 hrs, 6 flights).