Is everyone doing battery deep charge cycles?

also how do you do it?

The more deep discharges you do, the shorter the battery life.

Nope in the end they are lipo batterys still file the 80-20 rule .... Maybe back in there p 3 days you had to because of the smart Electronics wasn't as advanced in the battery. I don't care what anyone says I think it's quite stupid taking a battery down to the Limit i Fly heli's and that's just a no no

$gambino$ Posted at 2017-10-14 08:25
Nope in the end they are lipo batterys still file the 80-20 rule .... Maybe back in there p 3 days you had to because of the smart Electronics wasn't as advanced in the battery. I don't care what anyone says I think it's quite stupid taking a battery down to the Limit i Fly heli's and that's just a no no

Yet, on page 5, under "Battery Maintenance" the DJI instructions tell you do exactly that.

marklyn59 Posted at 2017-10-14 10:21
Yet, on page 5, under "Battery Maintenance" the DJI instructions tell you do exactly that.

What amazes me is that the P3P, Mavic & P4P ( or all DJI drones that I am familiar with ) does not come with a digital charger? I charge 3 & 4S batteries for my race quads all the time, I use a Gemini 2000 dual 100W port charger, charging 2 batteries at the same time, digital readout for voltage per cell, charge, balance charge, balance discharge, storage mode, total mah readout during charge, for $89.99 USD. Been using it for 2 years with no problems. You would think for the money DJI would put out a much more sophisticated charger!

NOOO it will damage your cells

Take it down to 8% then fully recharge to 100% every 20 flights - thats the official line - one I don't do.

Yes it does state that what is specifically for the Smart Board in case it loses calibration I myself have never done this and have never had a problem I will also never ever do this. Believe me i have a lot of lipo batterys even if u let your cells get down to dangerous levels it messes with the chemistry if I took one of my lipos from one of my helicopters down past 20% it doesnt give the same punch or life it kills them. I am pretty sure DJI calibrates their batterys that when it says 0% its actually prob 10% but i do not ever go past 20 % yes it does cut down some flight time but I rather save my batteries and have them last a long time they are expensive after all!

I cringe when I watch people on YouTube take the batteries down to 5% or 2%! Crazy! Or when they storage charge them for a few months completely full or depleted lol. I sometimes don't fly for a few days and I always keep my batteries at about 30% which is 3.70v per cell about which is good for storage now if I was doing it for a long time like a couple months I would do 50% because the cells tend to go down a couple percent every week

Anecdotes, anecdotes, anecdotes.  Why no sources for your info?  I’ll just leave this here (again). FTR, I do this every 20 or so cycles.  After about 50 recharges on 4 batteries, GO4 still says my batteries are 97%

airdata.com (formerly healthydrones.com) recommends a period discharge down to about 8% to restore capacity or what the smart battery thinks is the true capacity but not everyone agrees this is a good idea. I'd love to see some hard data on that.

No , i dont do it and battery is fine.

Hey u guys do what u want just know that all of the batteries I have are in good healthy shape. I dont need any sources or what crap dji says... Yea lets discharge a lipo battery nearly to 0% ....nah not me. So far my p4 p4pro , spark, and mavic batteries are great

I charged the batteries, go fly back to charging then flying...been doing just that for months and they work flawlessly. Typically the batteries come down between 20-30% before I recharge them - again never an issue.

$gambino$ Posted at 2017-10-14 11:35
Yes it does state that what is specifically for the Smart Board in case it loses calibration I myself have never done this and have never had a problem I will also never ever do this. Believe me i have a lot of lipo batterys even if u let your cells get down to dangerous levels it messes with the chemistry if I took one of my lipos from one of my helicopters down past 20% it doesnt give the same punch or life it kills them. I am pretty sure DJI calibrates their batterys that when it says 0% its actually prob 10% but i do not ever go past 20 % yes it does cut down some flight time but I rather save my batteries and have them last a long time they are expensive after all!

Thank you for your advice, that's useful.

QuadKid Posted at 2017-10-14 10:38
What amazes me is that the P3P, Mavic & P4P ( or all DJI drones that I am familiar with ) does not come with a digital charger? I charge 3 & 4S batteries for my race quads all the time, I use a Gemini 2000 dual 100W port charger, charging 2 batteries at the same time, digital readout for voltage per cell, charge, balance charge, balance discharge, storage mode, total mah readout during charge, for $89.99 USD. Been using it for 2 years with no problems. You would think for the money DJI would put out a much more sophisticated charger!

Your racing quads batteries are not smart batteries like DJIs. All of the charging electronics are built into the batteries. Have you ever taken a DJI battery apart? The balance charger is built into the battery. The chargers that come with the Phantom and Mavic are just power supplies. I charge my Phantom batteries on my balance charger, the one I use for my racing quads batteries etc, I just switch it to output 17 volts then tap the power button on the battery twice like you would when you start up the quad. It will start charging and shut off when it is done. Just like with the power supply (charger) that it comes with.

marklyn59 Posted at 2017-10-14 10:21
Yet, on page 5, under "Battery Maintenance" the DJI instructions tell you do exactly that.

No it does not. It is saying not to leave a battery idle for extended periods over three months. It needs to be charged and discharged.  In other words use the battery in your Mavic.
There is absolutely zero need to do a deep discharge on these batteries.

HWCM Posted at 2017-10-14 23:54
Your racing quads batteries are not smart batteries like DJIs. All of the charging electronics are built into the batteries. Have you ever taken a DJI battery apart? The balance charger is built into the battery. The chargers that come with the Phantom and Mavic are just power supplies. I charge my Phantom batteries on my balance charger, the one I use for my racing quads batteries etc, I just switch it to output 17 volts then tap the power button on the battery twice like you would when you start up the quad. It will start charging and shut off when it is done. Just like with the power supply (charger) that it comes with.

Exactly, what DJI > Banana adapter cable do you use?

WolfgangStiller Posted at 2017-10-14 12:26
airdata.com (formerly healthydrones.com) recommends a period discharge down to about 8% to restore capacity or what the smart battery thinks is the true capacity but not everyone agrees this is a good idea. I'd love to see some hard data on that.

I have read the same thing, did this with my P3P batteries 6 of them down to 8% after 44 charges each with no ill effect.

Not going to do it on the Mavic or P4P fly to 20-30% then recharge.

No have never done it. Just charge when need to have never had a problem

HWCM Posted at 2017-10-14 23:58
No it does not. It is saying not to leave a battery idle for extended periods over three months. It needs to be charged and discharged.  In other words use the battery in your Mavic.
There is absolutely zero need to do a deep discharge on these batteries.

Oh my. I posted the document straight from DJI's website and it's there in black and white, page 5.
I'm not saying I agree with it one way or another but why are you denying what is there for all to see?

QuadKid Posted at 2017-10-15 00:41
I have read the same thing, did this with my P3P batteries 6 of them down to 8% after 44 charges each with no ill effect.

Not going to do it on the Mavic or P4P fly to 20-30% then recharge.

I have done this once myself to supposedly "condition" the battery but I am not certain it's really needed.

"Fully charge and discharge the battery" doesn't necessarily mean "fully charge and fully discharge".  The language is vague.  I think we would need to see the original Chinese to figure out what they were trying to say.

rule of thumb is, stick what what you are comfortable with.. i do suggest having some routine to retrain the battery..  i recommend at the very least if you start running into lost battery run time, cell voltage deviation, sudden change in typical behavior like 500mAh loss off full charged battery out of nowhere, etc etc.. to do a charge cycle. 100-> 0% let it idle until it turns itself off safely..  then plug it in alone, let it charge uninterrupted fully, see if that helps.  your retrining the digital circuiot board inside.. not the actual cells, but rather whatever counters and things the board uses your retrining it letting it know ey here is the real values..basically..

i have a battery pack i am currently trying to destroy with over discharging and running it out of spec.   and its not going well, 100 cycles in and only lost 200-ish mAh off full charge.. and its been left in hot car, in freezer, rained on multiple times, dropped countless times and cracked housing and lost a piece of it after it cracked off, still works... my last runtime was 17:54, it wanted to land at 15:30something, but i didnt let it.. sport mode racing around my farm.. so pretty much same runtime as my other 3 batteries..

Irate Retro Posted at 2017-10-16 07:46
"Fully charge and discharge the battery" doesn't necessarily mean "fully charge and fully discharge".  The language is vague.  I think we would need to see the original Chinese to figure out what they were trying to say.

you can't fully discharge a protected pack like this.. layers of digital protection and a physical protection system..  

in theory, the digital system gives you a buffer.. 0% is not 0%.. 0mAh is not 0 mAh .. basically the digital system decided to hide some capacity away to protect itself from you.   if your abusive enough in theory yet again, it should be hiding more hidden capacity away to protect itself further so harder to damage the cells.. this doesnt always work, but there is a physical based system that once get below a certain voltage, power is just cut, that point is a fixed value not be programmable as its a set distance above the danger zone voltage.  so it wont get damaged..

but what this regularly discharge  cycle is doing is its retraining the electronics in the pack to know the real values..sometimes it drift, not a perfect world it can be wrong, so what it does is retrains it to actual end points.. full vs empty so it knows actual values and recalibrated and retrained

EDITED: made grammar errors that needed cleaning up because they made no sense for what i wanted to say.  

Tombolian Posted at 2017-10-14 12:18
Anecdotes, anecdotes, anecdotes.  Why no sources for your info?  I’ll just leave this here (again). FTR, I do this every 20 or so cycles.  After about 50 recharges on 4 batteries, GO4 still says my batteries are 97%

Thanks for this!

If it comes to how to maintain the battery life, we have a tutorial for your reference.

DJI Thor Posted at 2017-10-17 01:48
If it comes to how to maintain the battery life, we have a tutorial for your reference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siE2j6Ruj2k&list=PL8-vxWY64sBOmkQQJ2KWNL-uRBZsP43-r&index=7&t=66s

One persons perspective

I rarely go below 20%