Terrain Awareness waypoint limit

Is there a method to verify the number of waypoints in a terrain awareness flight plan before connecting a drone in the field?

It seems all TA missions are limited by the number of waypoints created from basemap data, but it would be helpful to monitor the waypoint count during planning so large areas could be dived into smaller ones if needed.

If a large area terrain-aware flight plan has more than DJI limit of 240(?) waypoints across steep and variable terrain, the pre-flight checklist can run and green-check all steps successfully but the blue-line flight route will be significantly shortened and the drone will not complete the intended flight.

Unfortunately, this limitation is not known until setting up to fly. And spontaneously replanning in the field, often remote and without cell service adds unnecessary challenges.

Tried running the simulation feature to test the flight routes in the office but they just run perfectly everytime no matter the waypoint count.

Thanks for your help!

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@MichaelL I’ve seen you address this topic on another post with the great insight to run these type of missions parallel to contours rather than perpendicular as I’ve planned in the sample photos here. Will adjust and look for improvement.
Makes a lot of sense to reduce the number of way points!
Still, with large areas to cover in TA is there a way you know to monitor the number of waypoints while planning. If it was known I could plan sequential missions per project folder then add each one to the queue once on site rather the surprise of automatically shortened flights.
Thanks!


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Hey @mdarter . Unfortunately we never found a way to tell how many waypoints would be generated. It varies greatly on each specific piece of terrain and we don’t know the sampling distance DroneDeploy is using. Perhaps @Adam_Carp could shed some light. You can tell from the graph that running with the contours creates a more linear graph and reduces the amount of steep ascents/descents but whether they are using a distance interval or elevation value would determine how many actual waypoints would be created.

@Adam_Carp Does the system still disallow a plan to start or did you ever get it to just automatically break the mission?

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@MichaelL thank you for the response!
Not being able to accurately count waypoints makes flight planning for TA missions over steep varied terrain of any size nearly impossible once the waypoint limit is reached.
Can’t tell when additional flights are needed to cover a given area.

@Adam_Carp you mentioned in another post the drone will rth once 100 waypoint limit is reached, then pickup the next 100 and continue.
Does this require the drone to land and restart before continuing on to the next 100?
Or can it hover at rth altitude, receive new points, display next section in blue flight lines, then continue?
If so, approx how much time is needed to load each 100 waypoint block?

Mine just hovered and displayed no new activity so mission was manually canceled.

Is this method of 100 waypoint blocks the best way to plan TA projects covering large areas of steep varied terrain? Are we still limited at 100 waypoints?

Thanks very much!

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@Jamespipe is the 100 max waypoint topic above the same as a few years ago?
Would be helpful to know best practices for planning TA projects with minimal interruption.
Please advise.
Much appreciated!

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