so ive been using litchi for like two years now and honestly its been fine, does what i need it to do for the waypoint stuff mostly. but ive heard a lot of people moving over to dronelink lately and im curious if theres actually a meaningful reason to switch or if its just the new shiny thing people gravitate toward.

main thing i use it for is doing semi-automated passes over farmland for a buddy who does some basic crop monitoring, nothing crazy, no fancy NDVI or anything like that. litchi handles it but the interface has always felt a bit clunky to me, especially when i need to adjust altitudes mid-mission plan or when im working off a laptop in the field. dronelink seems more polished from the videos ive seen but i dont know if thats just because the tutorial guys are good at making things look smooth.

also curious how dronelink handles the DJI Mini 3 Pro because thats what im running now, i know some apps have issues with the RC controller rather than a phone. anyone actually using it with that combo?

switched from litchi to dronelink about eight months ago and havent really looked back tbh. the mission hub on dronelink where you can plan everything on the web and then sync to the app is genuinely useful, especially if youre doing the same fields repeatedly and want to tweak stuff from your desk the night before instead of squinting at a tablet in the sun.

that said for really simple back and forth lawnmower passes litchi is honestly fine and i get why people stick with it. dronelink shines more if you want to do orbits, follows, more complex parameterized stuff. for straight agricultural transects its maybe overkill depending on how much you care about the workflow.

on the Mini 3 Pro with the RC controller ? yeah it works, had a few hiccups early on but they pushed an update and its been solid since. just make sure your dronelink app is updated before you go out, learned that the hard way when it couldnt connect and i wasted like 20 minutes troubleshooting in a field.

cant really speak to dronelink but one thing that bugged me about litchi for a long time was the altitude reference thing, like whether its AGL or absolute, it confused me on a hilly site once and that was a fun afternoon. just worth double checking whatever app you use that you understand how it handles terrain following because they all do it slightly differently and the defaults arent always what you expect.