Has anyone experienced their Ipad Pro shutting down at around 20 percent battery power left while flying their Mavic?     I had an interesting thing happen today while conducting a long distance flight along the shores of the Chesapeak Bay in Maryland.  I was nearly 2 miles out when my the screen went dark on my Ipad.  No; it was not that low when I started flying, it was nearly 50 percent and I had only flew about 30 percent of one battery when it started shutting down.  
I decided to not panic and looked at the screen of my controller and the Mavic was hovering in place at a resonable altitude just off shore.  I let it hover while I rebooted the Ipad and as soon as it booted up it shut down again-3 times I tried before I hit the return to home button and just waited.  
After I visually landed the Mavic I disconnected the Ipad and booted it up again and it remained powered on this time with battery power at around 20 percent. I switched to my Iphone and tried again and continued to fly 3 batteries with it with no problem.  My questions are: did it shut down at 20 percent primarily because it was connected to the app? Or, is there a particular setting in the Ipad that shuts it down when useing an app such as the Go4?  I have read posts where the app disconnects but I think this is different because the whole device shut down!  One thing for sure, its a dam good thing I had my home point set when it happened because the aircraft was much too far away to pilot it back visually.  Any assistance will be appreciated.   

Since it worked on your phone then it must be the Ipad. Also you should alwasy fly in LOS for the simple reason that you might loose connection on the APP but you would still be able to bring back the bird with just using the remote. SAFETY FIRST, FUN SECOND.

dronist Posted at 2017-3-23 19:09
Since it worked on your phone then it must be the Ipad. Also you should alwasy fly in LOS for the simple reason that you might loose connection on the APP but you would still be able to bring back the bird with just using the remote. SAFETY FIRST, FUN SECOND.

Thanks for the advice.  I knew this was coming when I pushed the button on my post but I am not annoyed by it.  Yet, if you always fly in LOS I commend you on this.  The Mavic is literally lost from line of sight in only a short distance.  Like you said though-safety first!  

The only thing I can add is that more than once I've had my iPad Mini 4 dip below 20% battery while flying with DJI Go 4 and never seen anything like what you described. So I'd tend to agree that it probably is a problem with the iPad.

I have an iPad Pro 9.7 have never had any problems with it, although before flying I would always have it fully charged, I don't use it with Mavic just p4p , but there is some guy over on P4 forum using it he has similar problems when he reaches 30% with his app crashing.
I will have a look an see if I can find the link..

I'm sure it's your iPad, mavic controller doesn't draw that much voltage, just make sure, like with any hobby that involves flight, make sure everything is charged up 100% before flight.

R&L Aerial  Posted at 2017-3-24 09:20
I'm sure it's your iPad, mavic controller doesn't draw that much voltage, just make sure, like with any hobby that involves flight, make sure everything is charged up 100% before flight.

Thanks; and 10-4 on charging the device fully before flights but with nearly 50 percent when I started and only a few minutes to get to 20 percent this is a mystery.  I also recall my Iphone did this exact same thing a couple of weeks ago.  I had been flying quite a while when it shut down so I assumed it was low battery so I did not even try to power it up again-just packed up and left.  Low and behold, I get home and power it up and it had shut down at 65 percent.  

I know you say that is not the app/controller but I am curious why "after disconnecting the ipad from the controller" it did not shut down any longer!

hallmark007 Posted at 2017-3-24 09:04
I have an iPad Pro 9.7 have never had any problems with it, although before flying I would always have it fully charged, I don't use it with Mavic just p4p , but there is some guy over on P4 forum using it he has similar problems when he reaches 30% with his app crashing.
I will have a look an see if I can find the link..

Thanks; that would be helpful.  Understandably I would like to find out what I need to do to keep it from happening again.  Other than keeping it fully charged; but as stated in the earlier post my iphone did this at 65 percent.  

M Stuart K Posted at 2017-3-24 09:34
Thanks; and 10-4 on charging the device fully before flights but with nearly 50 percent when I started and only a few minutes to get to 20 percent this is a mystery.  I also recall my Iphone did this exact same thing a couple of weeks ago.  I had been flying quite a while when it shut down so I assumed it was low battery so I did not even try to power it up again-just packed up and left.  Low and behold, I get home and power it up and it had shut down at 65 percent.  

I know you say that is not the app/controller but I am curious why "after disconnecting the ipad from the controller" it did not shut down any longer!

I have an iPad pro 9.7 and an iPhone 6s plus and they both drop voltage very fast when it's cold out, what temperature was it at the time of your issues?

R&L Aerial  Posted at 2017-3-24 09:48
I have an iPad pro 9.7 and an iPhone 6s plus and they both drop voltage very fast when it's cold out, what temperature was it at the time of your issues?

Cold; I would say on the water it was between 32 and 35.  Are you saying that the device anticipated continual battery loss when it got to 20 percent and shut down.  I did have the screen wide open brightness when it happened.  What about my 6 Plus when it shut down at 65 percent.  Thanks for your comment on temperature because I had not considered that yet, but I do remember flying longer in colder temperatures with my ipad but it was with the P4.  

M Stuart K Posted at 2017-3-24 10:18
Cold; I would say on the water it was between 32 and 35.  Are you saying that the device anticipated continual battery loss when it got to 20 percent and shut down.  I did have the screen wide open brightness when it happened.  What about my 6 Plus when it shut down at 65 percent.  Thanks for your comment on temperature because I had not considered that yet, but I do remember flying longer in colder temperatures with my ipad but it was with the P4.

With lion, there's a point when running them in series where the voltage sags. On a microcontroller, you have something called a adc you can check voltage with. Resolutions differ chip to chip, and sometimes you need to design in a voltage divider for high voltage monitoring. But basically it converts the voltage into a 8 or 16 bit number. Like in custom lights that pull a lot of amperage, you hit a point usually around 3.1~3.3v per cell where the cells can become a bit unbalanced. When this happens, the cell that's lower than the others will act like a vampire and the demand gets higher on the other cells.

In the adc, you will see a dip in voltage lower than the safe cut off. What I do is, every 62ms interrupt is check the adc for voltage but it must trip low 6 or 7 times to make sure it's not a sag. What's probably happening in the ipad is one cell has lost capacity and when it hit's around 20%, the sag is showing shutdown voltages to the adc.

You can recover some capacity by discharging slowly to shutdown and recharge fully 3 times.

Also should note, in litchi, you can set one of the buttons like c1 or c2 to home lock on hold or set the home point at rc. If that ever happens you can still fly it back without rth with the home lock or if you've moved, set the new home point and rth (haven't tried that one myself, not sure if it would set without phone gps or not). Least with older version.

thehippoz Posted at 2017-3-24 11:22
With lion, there's a point when running them in series where the voltage sags. On a microcontroller, you have something called a adc you can check voltage with. Resolutions differ chip to chip, and sometimes you need to design in a voltage divider for high voltage monitoring. But basically it converts the voltage into a 8 or 16 bit number. Like in custom lights that pull a lot of amperage, you hit a point usually around 3.1~3.3v per cell where the cells can become a bit unbalanced. When this happens, the cell that's lower than the others will act like a vampire and the demand gets higher on the other cells.

In the adc, you will see a dip in voltage lower than the safe cut off. What I do is, every 62ms interrupt is check the adc for voltage but it must trip low 6 or 7 times to make sure it's not a sag. What's probably happening in the ipad is one cell has lost capacity and when it hit's around 20%, the sag is showing shutdown voltages to the adc.

In the adc, you will see a dip in voltage lower than the safe cut off. What I do is, every 62ms interrupt is check the adc for voltage but it must trip low 6 or 7 times to make sure it's not a sag. What's probably happening in the ipad is one cell has lost capacity and when it hit's around 20%, the sag is showing shutdown voltages to the adc.
You can recover some capacity by discharging slowly to shutdown and recharge fully 3 times.

I will try your suggestion on the ipad and see what happens-thanks!

I had similar Experience this summer (90 degrees) & today 01/1/20. My Ipad Pro mysteriously shutoff with 75% battery while flying my Mavic 2 Pro. Good thing I have my Iphone with me to switch. What's the deal?  

I am having the exact same issue with my ipad mini4, when I am flying my mavic air 2 it randomly shuts off even when the battery of the ipad is 90%. I hope you found a resolution to this issue you can share with me.   thanks

I think you will just have to trouble shoot this problem your self and try with a full battery and different devices if available and keep an eye on it for now and obviously if anyone has a similar problem I'm sure they will comment