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M600 Battery Error
5781 5 2018-4-30
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Radf9760
lvl.1

United States
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Something is wrong and it's not the batteries themselves.

We were 9.5hrs from home on a remote job site. The M600 flew 4 missions perfectly the previous day. The M600 flew 2 missions perfectly that day, then I got "Battery Error."

I tried all four sets of our batteries but nothing changed.

We had to go home without collecting all of the data, this is a business disaster.

I've hooked up to DJI Assistant 2 several times now. The batteries don't register in DJI Ass 2 or in DJI Go. Assistant 2 indicated we needed a firmware update so I did that - Assistant 2 said the update failed because the Bat.Mag. (I assume battery manager) and the 6 batteries weren't connected. After disconnecting from DJI Assistant 2, I fired up the M600 and it no longer says we need an update.

That makes sense to me, from the release notes, the latest update doesn't have anything to do with batteries.

Still, I have the same problem - "Battery Error" in the DJI Go header, no battery data in DJI Go, and in the left-hand menu, it says "invalid battery."

When I power on the M600, only the battery I powered on fires up - that's enough for DJI Go to give me the "battery error" message.  I've tried powering each battery on manually but that doesn't improve matters.

I suspect something is wrong with whatever connects the batteries to the M600. I'm assuming this is the PMU, I could be wrong but I think PMU stands for "Power management unit."

If anyone has any ideas, I am all ears. I filed a support ticket with DJI this morning but that process is terrible, it usually takes them 24hrs to respond each time and the first 5 responses are all completely stupid things like, "is your aircraft up to date?"

Thank you very much for any responses.


2018-4-30
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Radf9760
lvl.1

United States
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Okay, I got a good tech support person via email. She came to the same conclusion I did, she said, "It seems that the batteries cannot communicate with the main board properly."

I sent her a screenshot of the update failure message from DJI Ass 2. I also sent her screenshots of what DJI GO shows me now for battery status. In the left hand menu it says "invalid battery." In the right hand battery menu, there's just no battery info at all.

DJI Go no longer has a message saying I need to update the firmware. The update did get to 100% before DJI Ass 2 said the update failed due to the bat manager & batteries being disconnected. Perhaps the M600 did update.

DJI Go now says there's a compass error in the header instead of "battery error." Still, it says "invalid battery" further down and as I said, there's no info on the battery menu panel. I'm not too worried about the compass error, it's easy enough to calibrate the compass and I am in my office, a compass error isn't out of line.

I found the PMU port in the M600 manual, I pulled the the top cover (the one with the fan in it) off and checked, the PMU cable is plugged in and nothing looks amiss. I checked the M600 Disclaimer & Safety Guidelines, PMU does stand for Power Management Unit. The PMU is connected at the factory and there is a warning not to mess with factory-connected parts. Thus, I haven't done more than look at where the PMU cable plugs into LB2.

I'm hoping the tech support gal I'm talking to will suggest digging into the M600 a bit to examine the PMU cable and make sure the other end is plugged in properly. Given the note in the Disclaimer & Safety Guidelines though, I don't want to do that without being instructed to do so.

It's still a weird situation though. Say I did dig into the M600 and found that the PMU cable was unplugged - how the devil would that have happened? As I said in my first post, I did two beautiful flights that day before getting the battery error, nothing went awry, there wasn't turbulence, no hard landing. The M600 flew just fine, got packed safely back into its case, and when we unpacked it a couple of hours later, we had a battery error. So it just doesn't seem like it could be a disconnected or damaged cable because how the devil could it have become damaged/disconnected?

I'm really worried that the PMU failed. If it did just randomly fail, we are exceptionally lucky that it didn't do so in the air.
2018-5-1
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DRAGONFLYSAM
lvl.1

United States
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Radf9760 Posted at 2018-5-1 06:50
Okay, I got a good tech support person via email. She came to the same conclusion I did, she said, "It seems that the batteries cannot communicate with the main board properly."

I sent her a screenshot of the update failure message from DJI Ass 2. I also sent her screenshots of what DJI GO shows me now for battery status. In the left hand menu it says "invalid battery." In the right hand battery menu, there's just no battery info at all.

Hello - what happened with this issue please?
It appears we are having the same errors as you did.
Battery Error.
Only 1 battery powering on.
When we checked the PMU connection there was a moment when everything was OK.  Then the error resumed when I took my finger off the PMU connection.
I believe we have isolated the problem to the PMU.

What happened with your case and was it resolved?

Thank you.
2019-8-10
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fans2ddd2832
lvl.1
Flight distance : 12280 ft
Senegal
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Dear All, I am in serious trouble, We recently purchase a DJI Matrice 600 and after finishing mounting the drone and charged the batteries i  notice that some of them were fully charged from the charging hub but i never have been able to power on my drone.. Am I doing something wrong ? How to I insert the batteries and in which order ? WE NEED YOUR HELP
2019-8-13
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iwegge
lvl.1

Norway
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I have the same problems as RADF Started after a failed firmware upgrade. Any tips??
2020-12-9
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Radf9760
lvl.1

United States
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I apologize, I didn't realize there were replies to this.

DJI concluded that replacement parts were needed and we sent the M600 for repair. They replaced two GPS connection cables and the Power Distribution Board. The labor was the most costly bit, total bill was $269.

I've never heard of anyone else having a PDB failure and it always bothered me. All in all, a fairly low-cost repair but my God, what if that failure had occurred in the air?  Our M600 was out of warranty, so we paid the bill. Repairs took awhile, we were without our aircraft for a month. Bit of a mixed bag with regard to DJI Support and the repair process but all in all, I think they treated us fairly.

In November 2018 I started having IMU & Compass problems with our M600. I worked with DJI support for a long time with no success. The M600 was still flyable, it was just a pain in the neck dealing with constant recalibrations. When our work slate was cleared in January, I contacted DJI support again and we eventually concluded repairs were needed. DJI did a damage assessment and decided the A3 Main Controller Module needed to be replaced - they did that at no cost to us despite us being well out of warranty. The cost of that repair was $480 and they covered it.

On the downside, the M600 was not packaged well when they shipped it back to us. They had ripped our GPS antennas off of the mounts and left the GPS rattling around the case. Now there's a huge dent in one of our GPS antennas. At least it still works but oh my gravy, who packed it like that?

It can be frustrating dealing with DJI Support, it takes a long time and that's hard when you're trying to run a business. Still, I don't think they've ever hosed us on repair costs and they really came through when they replaced our A3 module for free.

I hope the notes on the Power Distribution Board are helpful. It looks like it is Part #49 and you can buy them for $109 from 3rd party retailers. So you could tackle the repair yourself if you are out of warranty and confident in your skills. For us, it is usually better to get official repair work done because we don't want to compromise company insurance - your mileage may vary.
2020-12-9
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