Not impressed with the way the battery flies out the Avata on impact. This is not a case of user battery installation error, there is a definate design flaw with this drone and the way it holds the battery.

Flying in Normal mode, twice this afternoon my son hit a goal post side resulting in the drone going down and the battery self ejecting.

The first impact was at just 2m/s (5mph, 7kmh). Impact detected. Drone dropped about 1.5 metres on to grass. Battery self-ejected.

The second impact, on a different battery, at a speed of 6.7m/s (about 15mph, 24kmh). Impact detected. IMU error. Then GPS loss. Drone went nuts and flew itself randomly in all directions, including upside down, across the field while trying to regain itself. Impacted the ground at 13.9m/s (31mph, 50kmh), threw the battery out, and lost the on/off button for the battery. Meanwhile the drone somesaulted across the field. On inspection, it actually smashed the battery casing open on the corner where the button is. Have managed to close the casing but now it has no on/off button.

Makes 'find my drone' pointless if the battery is going to come out. Disappointing for a £1,300 spend.

i believe the find my drone function will provide the last known gps coordinates for the drone and those will be delivered to you even if the drone is powered off (which means you probably won't get the exact current location of the disabled drone).  after your crash, did you try to find my drone feature to see for yourself how it works when the battery pops off after a hard crash?

Thanks for the warning! Hope you get it fixed!

I had exactly this self-ejection problem with my one and only DJI FPV crash, during my second training flight in Manual mode. I  didn't run into a wall or anything, but I did end up flying backwards into a tree about 80 feet up, and then the aircraft fell through the tree, happily banging all the branches on the way.

The damage to the drone itself was trivial...I replaced one bent prop, and it was back in the air.

But the battery, which had self ejected, was mortally wounded. Punctured. I sent it to DJI to evaluate for a warranty replacement of the battery, but they declined to do that, and I didn't want to argue about it.

But the more I think about it, I dunno...maybe it was a defect in the battery latching mechanism. I was certainly shocked when I found the drone, basically uninjured, but not the battery! The battery had landed about 8 feet away, closer to the base of the tree than the drone itself.

But, maybe it was the ejection of the battery, that saved the rest of the drone. The physics of that could make sense.

Dunno.

Thx,

TCS

I think every accident is very different. There is no guarantee that a battery won't eject. My one and only accident (since the Phantom 3) was with the DJI FPV. Slammed into the trees 135' up going backwards. The battery came down in the aircraft. The battery was/is just fine and still flies well. The aircraft was replaced with Care Refresh. All four arms were hanging by wires. I have to say, it was entertaining to watch, to say the least.

Most DJI drones will lose the battery on impact and its nothing to do with design flaws, its the shear weight of the battery compared to the drone.

Hello there Altivu Ltd. I am sorry for the trouble this has caused and thank you for giving out these information. Since there we a crash that happened due to this issue. I would recommend for you to contact our DJI Support Team at https://www.dji.com/support?site=brandsite&from=nav for further assistance with regards to this matter. We will do our best to help you and give out the best resolution for the said issue. Again, I am sorry and thank you.

Take a look at this - Stewart & Alina on YouTube. Doing an evaluation pre-launch - completely lost the drone after hitting either grass or a twig at low level and the battery self-ejected. They couldn't find either. DJI had to send them a second one to evaluate.

Link to relevant section of video:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxYiwz7tSnKoEDfs8lrBBJ9wtZZlpWhHEa

Link to the whole video.



I am going to contact the support team as suggested by DJI Stephen, but this is not good. Renders find my drone and turtle mode ineffective.

Battery ejection is nothing new, I have a number of homebuilts and the battery departing from the drone is very common after a crash. The mass of the battery is quite considerable and even a 'minor' impact can result in this. Home built generally use a strap and some hi-tak tape to minimise.

The latching in of the battery on both DJI FPV drones is probably more secure than the strap method, the unlatching is more likely a deformation of the aircraft frame allowing it to unlatch along with the high dynamic forces at play. I'm sure there will be aftermarket Soloutions along very soon, as there was for the FPV drone.

Buzzyone Posted at 9-2 00:12
Battery ejection is nothing new, I have a number of homebuilts and the battery departing from the drone is very common after a crash. The mass of the battery is quite considerable and even a 'minor' impact can result in this. Home built generally use a strap and some hi-tak tape to minimise.

The latching in of the battery on both DJI FPV drones is probably more secure than the strap method, the unlatching is more likely a deformation of the aircraft frame allowing it to unlatch along with the high dynamic forces at play. I'm sure there will be aftermarket Soloutions along very soon, as there was for the FPV drone.

I agree on a high speed impact, but not low speed. Hitting a twig in a field as per the video link should not result in total loss of the drone. Just chatting with DJI and he has told me it should not eject in these situations. My experience with my son was at low speed.

DJI are going to replace everything as within 15 days of delivery of item. Am sure the issue will persist with the new unit.

This is my home-made solution for this, whit this Velcro stripes I feel more comfortable to fly it.
just for your information that stripe had 40 cm x 2 cm.

There is already 2 or 3 different battery holders on aliexpress, I'm sure they will show up on Amazon soon.