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Hi everyone,
I am hoping that someone can give me an insight as to what happened to my drone.
I was flying the Mavic 2 Zoom in my neighborhood and when all of the sudden the controller and my phone (OnePlus 7 Pro) notified me that the aircraft was disconnected. There was no obstacle warning, no strong winds. I had eyes on the drone and when I got the notification I looked down and I tried adjusting the antennas and started moving closer to where the drone is (the home distance was 269 feet) thinking maybe just the feed got disconnected and I tried to fly it back using the map but it wasn’t going anywhere. I look up and I could not see the drone in the sky. I got in my car and drove 3 houses down to where the map was telling me the drone is and my neighbor hollered at me and asked me if this was mine and handed me back my drone all broken. The top of the battery case where the led indicators are had come off, and the battery was swollen and extremely hot to the touch. One arm and one propellor had broken off although the arm remained attached via the electrical wires. The sensors were still blinking and there was a hissing sound but I couldn’t figure out if it was the motors or the gimbal. I immediately disconnected the battery from the drone so that it doesn’t keep overheating. I go inside my house and put it on my desk and I start by pulling up the flight log. The battery was not getting cooler even though the inside temperature of my house was 75 degrees. All of the sudden I hear this hissing sound and I look over and the battery has caught on fire and it was releasing a disgusting amount of smoke that filled up my entire house. I went to get the fire extinguisher but by the time I got back there was no more fire and the smoke coming out from the battery was low by then so I just grabbed the trash can and used a Kleenex box lying nearby to shove the smoking battery inside the trash can and I took it outside. The trash can is plastic and the battery literally melted a rectangle shaped hole inside the trash can. Here’s the weird thing: flight log from AirData shows the last known location near a tree in the front yard of my neighbor’s house and the altitude was 146 feet. That tree is NOT 146 feet by any means. To be sure, I googled maximum height of a sycamore tree and their maximum height is 100 feet (I’ve also cut down many trees in my life, I myself live on over a half acre). While there is some probability that I may have hit that tree, what makes me doubt it is the behavior of the battery that was swollen after the “crash”. Unfortunately I wasn’t recording at the time and the feed didn’t show anything in front of me. When I pull up the flight log in the DJI app, the last location is several feet behind the tree and not on top of it. The drone also didn’t show any signs that it hit any leaves or branches, there wasn’t even dirt on the thing. It’s very bizarre. (I also confirmed that it didn't get shot with a bb gun or anything like that LOL) I definitely didn’t want to upload the entire flight log for the world to see but I uploaded screenshots of the pertinent information to see if maybe someone is able to help figure out what happened? The drone is my father in law’s drone, and he bought it used from Fry’s. I’m mainly trying to determine if it’s operator error or a battery issue and hopefully perhaps Fry’s or DJI can offer a decent discount on a new one or a replacement. I had been starting to see a drop in battery life and it’s funny because I was researching the issue before I took out the drone. I had been noticing that the battery the last 2-3 times I flew, even though I charged it fully, by the time I take off it would always start at 85% capacity. I always do a pre-flight check and double check the settings before every flight but not long enough for the battery to drop from 100 to 85% in the 2-3 minutes it takes me to perform a full pre-flight check. I uploaded the notification log to this post. Something happened between 2m26s to 2m57s. I got no obstacle avoidance error even though I was flying in P mode. As far as the rudder response is concerned, flight log data show that no delays longer than 0.4 seconds were found. I uploaded screenshots. Under “Sensors”, here comes the weird thing… On the signal map, the last known location does not show. The signal strength score was 100. On the GPS, it’s showing one “orange” GPS reception but that was at the initial take off and then it’s all Excellent GPS reception including at the last known location. The compass turn rate was 6.20 which is great. Under “Power”, it shows no major deviations of the batteries were found. Here’s the breakdown: Cell 1: 0.7
Cell 2: 0 Cell 3: 0 Cell 4: 2.4 Needless to say the smoke was in our bedroom and I have a pregnant wife and so we had to sleep on a blow up mattress in the living room yesterday night because even though I was able to get rid of the smoke in the house, our room was still a bit stinky so I didn't want her near those. Thankfully she wasn't here at the time of the incident.
Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated. If you'd like more information please let me know.
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lvl.1
Second Officer
DJI team
Core User of DJI
First Officer
lvl.2