so ive been using litchi for probably 3 years now and its fine, does what i need, but a few people in my local club keep telling me to try dronelink and i finally made an account last week to poke around. honestly a bit overwhelmed by the interface at first but i can see why people like it for more complex missions.

main thing i care about is reliability on long linear missions, i do a lot of corridor mapping for a small survey company and litchi has been mostly solid but ive had a couple weird behavior things where the gimbal just... stops responding mid-mission and i have to take manual control. dont know if thats a litchi thing or my mini 3 pro being weird.

anyone actually switched from one to the other and have thoughts? not looking for a features list, more like real world 'this is where it fell apart for me' kind of stuff

switched to dronelink about 8 months ago after using litchi since like 2019. the learning curve is real but once it clicked for me i dont think i'd go back. the component-based mission structure is actually really powerful once you understand how it works ? you can do stuff with it that would be impossible in litchi without a bunch of workarounds.

that said, litchi's virtual flight thing is still better imo for quick visualization before you fly. dronelink's 3D preview is fine but it's a bit clunky. and the free tier on dronelink is genuinely usable which i appreciate, i had some friends try it without committing to the sub first.

the gimbal thing you're describing ? i had something similar with litchi on a mavic 2 pro years back and it turned out to be a firmware mismatch. might be worth checking if your mini 3 is on latest before blaming the app

i use dronelink for everything now. corridor mapping is actually where it shines because you can set up the path segments really precisely and tweak POI stuff without rebuilding the whole mission. took me a weekend to really get it but yeah.