I've been testing external batteries on the Robomaster S1 some time ago, and they seemed to work fine, I remember testing the drive motors too without problem.
Now I've built a control board to remotely switch power to the S1, in order to be able to fit a large external battery and have it ready for use via remote activation. Well, imagine my surprise when I wired everything up and had the robot connect to the app (still waiting for that python SDK support)... it no longer works. The app throws an error stating that the "Intelligent Battery" failed to pass authentication checks.

Now you might say, this is all about safety because if the battery internal power controls (power button is on the battery after all) don't work, you might deep-discharge and ruin it. The problem with that line of thinking is that the robot does power on, gimbal and camera works, just the drive motors are disabled. Whether they are disabled inside the app and would work if controlled via the SDK I don't know.

But one thing I do know is that this is a terrible decision on behalf of DJI. Your best bet to get more sales with Robomaster is to be as open as possible. Locking in your customers to require an "official" battery is simply a bad decision. Releasing a new model with SDK while apparently forgetting your existing customers is another problem.

Remove the battery checks. Or at least, remove the drive lockout when the battery check fails.

I've been testing external batteries on the Robomaster S1 some time ago, and they seemed to work fine, I remember testing the drive motors too without problem.
Now I've built a control board to remotely switch power to the S1, in order to be able to fit a large external battery and have it ready for use via remote activation. Well, imagine my surprise when I wired everything up and had the robot connect to the app (still waiting for that python SDK support)... it no longer works. The app throws an error stating that the "Intelligent Battery" failed to pass authentication checks.

Now you might say, this is all about safety because if the battery internal power controls (power button is on the battery after all) don't work, you might deep-discharge and ruin it. The problem with that line of thinking is that the robot does power on, gimbal and camera works, just the drive motors are disabled. Whether they are disabled inside the app and would work if controlled via the SDK I don't know.

But one thing I do know is that this is a terrible decision on behalf of DJI. Your best bet to get more sales with Robomaster is to be as open as possible. Locking in your customers to require an "official" battery is simply a bad decision. Releasing a new model with SDK while apparently forgetting your existing customers is another problem.

Remove the battery checks. Or at least, remove the drive lockout when the battery check fails.