Hi there, just a quick reminder to always charge your batteries fully before flying!!!

Some pilots here in the forum and a good friend of mine had serious issues when flying with not fully charged batteries!
Some batteries dropped from a solid value (but not fully charged) to 6-8% in seceonds and the inspire will auto-land instantly.
It seems that some batteries have problems when auto discharge was already in progress but remaining power is enough to fly!

To avoid any misunderstandings: It never happend to me, cause i always charge my batteries before flight!!! It might happen
when batteries are not fully charged and auto discharge was already in progress...

So charge your batteries always fully before flight to avoid damages!
Cheers, Christian

Thanks for the additional information Christian.

You are welcome! As a solution for me, until this problem might be fixed from DJI, i changed auto discharge from 1 day to 3 days now
to avoid possible issues when charging the batteries at the day before flying (for example if you have to fly early in the morning).

Christian Posted at 2015-5-7 18:46
You are welcome! As a solution for me, until this problem might be fixed from DJI, i changed auto di ...

Again a good tip. I will do likewise. Ta.

Do i miss the intelligent part of the battery here?
DJI add lines to the program:  "IF in use THEN do not discharge ELSE discharge as required"

Theo ter Haar Posted at 2015-5-7 19:26
Do i miss the intelligent part of the battery here?
DJI add lines to the program:  "IF in use THEN d ...

The problem (almost certainly) is not that it is continuing to auto-discharge while in use.  It's more complex than that.

The problem appears to be that once a battery has been partially used (whether from flying OR auto-discharge), the "remaining battery" indication is no longer accurate.  Whatever algorithm they used to calculate remaining charge ONLY produces accurate indications if you start with a 100% charged pack and fly continuously until the pack is depleted.  ANY other scenario can produce the sudden-drop phenomenon.

Since yesterday's firmware update forced a battery update as well, I wonder what may have changed, if anything, with regard to this issue.

Hi Theo, we are talking about the auto discharge function of the battery - i think you mentioned the long term storage of the batteries.
So, when auto discharge starts to discharge the battery and you´re flying with these battery, a serious drop could happen - even if the battery are at 75% of power.

I think there is a bug in the intelligent battery, that have to be fixed in future.

Hi Pete, good point as well - i have flown a couple batteries in the past which was partially used with no problem (at the same day).
It´s hard to tell, if a partially used battery or a battery with auto-discharge or both causes this serious drops.
My solution until it get´s fixed:

FULLY CHARGE YOUR BATTERIES BEFORE FLIGHT

And you´re right, would be interesting, what have changed with the new firmware.

I've already posted this issue.

http://forum.dji.com/forum.php?m ... D222%26typeid%3D222

Hi matty, your issue and the issue of a friend of mine was the reason i posted this threat. The behavior of the batteries were quite similar!
I think this is a issue, that DJI should solve quickly if they don't want to have more issues like that...

Happy flying (with fully charged batteries)
Christian

Just wanted to echo this thread as a serious WARNING - it just bit me and I'm shopping for repair parts now. Briefly, here's what happened:

• Pushed button on my T48 battery to confirm a fully charged status - got 4 lights
• Conducted normal safety check and startup sequence and saw that battery had approximately 9 minutes flight time. That doesn't jive with 4 lights but I just wanted to take a short flight.
• Normal flight in every way for 5 minutes
• Checked both the sky and my display and saw 4:04 minutes remaining flight time.
• 2 seconds later the red alert flashed on the screen and said critical battery blah, blah, blah...landing now (I was freaking out because the Inspire was still over a densely wooded area.
• Could not engage auto-Home function, could not see it as it was still 150-200 yards over the woods.
• Inspire signal lost.

The NEXT thing I did was, unknowingly the BEST thing I could have done: I LEFT THE IPAD AND THE REMOTE CONTROL ON!
Doing so allowed me to tap the lower right image and bring up the map to see the flight path. I then zoomed out and was able to find some road landmarks that we could triangulate off of. We jumped in the truck and drove to the juncture in the road.

What was AMAZINGLY HELPFUL is that in addition to the map indicating the last position of the Inspire, it also showed a beacon indicating the position of the Remote Control! All we had to do was to adjust our walking direction as we headed into the forest and keep moving our beacon towards the direction of the last known position of the Inspire. By leaving the Remote Control and iPad on we walked right to it! Aside from a crashed Inspire, our biggest risk when we started our hunt was that the battery power of any one of the 3 devices would have died.

Just ordered the replacement parts today. Hope to be flying again in 3 weeks.  During my "inside time" I hope to edit at least some of the video I shot this summer. I have a few on my YouTube channel (search for "Surefoot Aerial"). And, in case you are wondering: No. I do not have my Section 333, do not have my pilot's license, and have given away the videos for free).

Simply LOVE this thing!

Jim

Theo ter Haar Posted at 2015-5-7 05:26
Do i miss the intelligent part of the battery here?
DJI add lines to the program:  "IF in use THEN d ...

You`d think stuff like this would be obvious to the code writers... SMH

Good to hear you got her back Jim.

And good advice in this thread, always fly with full bats.

I've found that if several days have past since my previous flights I can fly each battery for about 2 min in my backyard hovering and then top off on the charger.

Another way of dealing with smart batteries is to charge them to 50% after returning home from flying, and then top them up to 100% before flight.