I've read on this forum about how it's important to fully charge your battery the day you're going to be flying.

However, what should one do if you fully charged your batteries 2 days ago for a flight, but never used the batteries...and now you want to fly today, and the batteries are all ready fully charged?  Is it suggested to bring the battery down a bit (say to 95%, just turn the quad on for a few minutes, without flying it), then fully charge it back up to 100%?

Thanks!

How do you discharge a batterie mine is ful now but i know I will not be out flying again till the weekend so should I drain it fully now?

http://forum.dji.com/thread-38174-1-1.html

I quite often use batteries that were charged and have been sitting around for a number of days.  If button is pressed and I get four green lights the batteries are good to go for me.

This is a distortion of the rule, the correct thing is NOT to recharge your battery soon after you use it, then leave it lying around for a week or so. You SHOULD charge the battery shortly before you intend to use it, and having it lying around waiting for a couple of days will not adversely affect it.

Ditto on what hummingbird.uav says.

Unsure what caused my bird to power off and fall out the sky . I keep my batts full  or so I thought. Waiting to hear back from Dji  on what caused my bird to power off and fall from the sky . I have four batteries and p3p which were all less than a wk old. . I fly everyday or try to. Until the crash happened . No with Dji "s 8-10 wk return time , how do I go about discharging my 3 fully charged batteries in waiting for my p3p to get back from Dji 2-3months from now ?

hummingbird.uav Posted at 2016-1-4 04:38
I quite often use batteries that were charged and have been sitting around for a number of days.  If ...

+ 1
I do the same with no risk.

hummingbird.uav Posted at 2016-1-4 04:38
I quite often use batteries that were charged and have been sitting around for a number of days.  If ...

Me too, as a matter of interest what firmware are you on?

mike.wildlight Posted at 2016-1-4 13:04
Me too, as a matter of interest what firmware are you on?

I am on the latest firmware.  (beta tested it)

e.affonso@orang Posted at 2016-1-3 19:59
+ 1
I do the same with no risk.

I wouldn't be over confident with 100% charged batteries sitting around for a few days, at least power the battery on and top it off before you fly.

IMI193 Posted at 2016-1-4 07:58
I wouldn't be over confident with 100% charged batteries sitting around for a few days, at least p ...

If you are not confident that your batteries are full even though they give you 4 lights and that ill confidence is because it's been a few days since you charged them, then trust in the RC indicators. They will give you a real-time assessment of the percentage of power left and how many approximate minutes are left.

Your bird will not "fall out of the sky" with batteries that were charged only a few days ago if you watch the RC indicators and be sure to have all of the low battery and critical battery-level indicators set for a) warnings and b) RTH at a certain level.

The only time my batteries were questionable were after leaving them packed away for at least 2 months, and then of course, they did not give me 4 lights. At that time, your RC and Tablet also need charging.

But a few days? Nah.

Chris

Not A Speck Of  Posted at 2016-1-4 11:16
If you are not confident that your batteries are full even though they give you 4 lights and that  ...

4 lights with no load appears to quickly turn into 2-3 lights  under load and 1 light when you least expect it. Enough can go wrong, why encourage people to ignore a potential problem when it's simple enough to at least top off before they fly ?

I always charge my batteries after I fly just in case I need to fly later that day or the next. I have my discharge set to 2 days just in case I won't be flying again for a while. And if I fly the 3rd day I just power the batteries on and charge them.

IMI193 Posted at 2016-1-4 10:07
4 lights with no load appears to quickly turn into 2-3 lights  under load and 1 light when you lea ...

Because in my experience, 4 lights after only a few days of sitting there after a charge still means 4 lights under load (or at least 85-90%), not 2-3 quickly under load.

If you're experiencing 2-3 lights under load only a few days past a full charge, then that battery is probably near end-of-life.

Not A Speck Of  Posted at 2016-1-4 17:23
Because in my experience, 4 lights after only a few days of sitting there after a charge still mea ...

Thinking about this more, I would just like to add: if you're pre-planning / -conceiving your shoot and have the time, by all means, top off your batteries before you go.

But this doesn't cover all reasonable scenarios.

"Oh my, look at the morning: this would be a good time to go out and capture <fabulous object> in the early light!"

"Sorry, no can do. The batteries haven't been topped off for a couple of days, so we have to wait at least an hour or two."

I don't know about the rest of you, but I travel with 5 batteries, so if a few are one bar down under load, I still have plenty of juice. If I can only put a load on each for 15 minutes, that's still over an hour of flying time.

I also have a large (car-sized battery) charger, which can charge batteries in the car while I'm out flying with other batteries.

Don't be grounded because you're scared to go out with anything short of "newly topped off" batteries!

Not A Speck Of  Posted at 2016-1-4 17:16
If you are not confident that your batteries are full even though they give you 4 lights and that  ...

" trust in the RC indicators. They will give you a real-time assessment of the percentage of power left and how many approximate minutes are left"

Nope you cant trust the %
I lost mine with the RC telling me I had 51% left.

It is really quite simple, LiPo batteries do not have a high rate of self-discharge, if you charged them two days ago and want to fly, it should be fine. There is more myth being propagated on forums about batteries than anything else.

DJI-Ken Posted at 2016-1-5 04:15
I always charge my batteries after I fly just in case I need to fly later that day or the next. I ha ...

Sounds like a good system Ken, be good if the process of topping off batteries was included in the official DJI manual/tutorials.

mike.wildlight Posted at 2016-1-7 13:30
Sounds like a good system Ken, be good if the process of topping off batteries was included in the ...

I suggested it to management

[RCG]Balthazar Posted at 2016-1-6 14:53
" trust in the RC indicators. They will give you a real-time assessment of the percentage of power ...

"Nope you cant trust the %
I lost mine with the RC telling me I had 51% left."

Do you definitely know that you lost yours because of low batteries? Are you absolutely sure that it wasn't for some other reason?

What is your critical battery RTH level set at? I find it hard to believe that it would go from 51% to a level too low to return to home.

Also, it would not be good policy to send yours a 1,000 meters out if it only had a 1/2 battery in it.

TO ALL: Batteries don't last forever. If yours is near or at end-of-life, it won't hold a full charge for long and the battery should be replaced. See the P3P User Manual section titled "Battery Life" for the procedure to use to determine if your battery left is at an end.

DJI-Ken Posted at 2016-1-5 02:15
I always charge my batteries after I fly just in case I need to fly later that day or the next. I ha ...

Is there a reason to power on the batteries before charging? I've always left them off - the lights show the charge progress and then turn off when done charging.

dreinh Posted at 2016-1-8 00:33
Is there a reason to power on the batteries before charging? I've always left them off - the light ...

If your batteries are at 90% or more they will not charge unless you power them on first.
Normally just connect to the charger with the battery off. This is ONLY if you want to charge a nearly full battery.

Not A Speck Of  Posted at 2016-1-7 17:13
"Do you definitely know that you lost yours because of low batteries? Are you absolutely sure that it wasn't for some other reason? "

And as a RC Freak for decades I would not send my drone on any kind of long journey without a fully charged battery.
Here's The log.



Here's the temperature
(Battery update would have prevented the flight as it was 0.05c below the new treshold in FW1.6)


And here's the bad cell balancing (also adressed in FW 1.6)

Hopefully DJI will introduce a cell deviation alarm/ takeoff limit now that the intelligent battery management have been improved.

Finally no I'm not really sure as Altitude, Speed AND voltage all increased simultaniously several times during the flight.
Which isnt possible so at least one of the sensors had to be a little off.