"Critical battery" warning issues

[Blurfonz]

Thanks guys... Yes I had returned it to my store. And he had replaced me with a new one already. Just fortunate that, it happened inland!

And Yes, I always ensured that a FULL charge before I fly, no partial charge.

Lesson learnt, always check the Cell voltage before each flight!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Birdseyejr]

Before flying the Inspire 1 I use to fly R/C helicopters also using lipo batteries. The rule of thumb was to fly the batteries down to 20% remaining power. We could fly the batteries lower then this getting all we could out of the battery, but this would shorten the life span of the battery pack. i.e. Normal life span 200+ flights before battery starts to weaken/ too 100 flights out of an abused battery before it starts giving out.( weak short flights)

You want to treat your batteries as best you can to stretch the life of the battery as much as posible. Try not to overfly your packs. Having 20% remaining is good. Let your batteries cool off as much as possible before stuffing them back in the Inspire case where they will remain hot for a long time especially in warm climits. Calibrate and deep cycle as suggested by DJI. Flying abused batteries can be risky business to a drone pilot. They will start off fine but then quickly drop off to almost nothing rapidly.
When flying over water, long distances, or anything else that's considered risky, use your newest most reliable packs to minimize the risk of not making it back. Make note of the wind direction on windy days. Flying against a brisk headwind can get you in trouble quick with low juice remaining.

 

[VAP]

I heard Colin when he was around, say that you should de charge your battery below 5% every, some 10 flights, in order to maximize the life of your lipo battery. Now everyone is saying never run it down or you will damage it? I must say I have run my batteries down even to zero and never had a problem, but from all this talk, I may not run them down so low. Tech support from DJI also said if you charge them down too low you can damage them. I think if you run them down, then LEAVE them down, you can do damage. So charge them back up ASAP after de charge. IE do not leave them discharged overnight. The battery will automatically shut down when it reaches a critical low level.

 

[VAP]

Speaking of batteries, I did have my first failure of my P2 smart battery, but I have had it for a long time with likely many many hours on it. It was from my original to the P2 V1. It just puked! It will not even charge anymore.... I did not have a failure with it in flight. Is there a way to revive it?

 

[Birdseyejr]

Speaking of batteries, I did have my first failure of my P2 smart battery, but I have had it for a long time with likely many many hours on it. It was from my original to the P2 V1. It just puked! It will not even charge anymore.... I did not have a failure with it in flight. Is there a way to revive it?

The short answer is no. That battery is done. There were times when I was flying Lipo powerd R/C helicopters that we would get a bad cell on a new pack or have a cell go bad premature. Since these lipo packs for helicopters were usually expensive, some people would carefully dismantle the pack, desoder the wires of the bad cell and solder in a good cell from another pack of like kind to make the battery usable again.
But taking apart lipo batteries and rebuilding them is risk business because of the fire hazard. If negative and positive wires touch on a lipo you'll be jumping out of your shoes.
So if your battery won't hold a charge and you've had good use of it, consider your money well spent.

 

[Birdseyejr]

The short answer is no. That battery is done. There were times when I was flying Lipo powerd R/C helicopters that we would get a bad cell on a new pack or have a cell go bad premature. Since these lipo packs for helicopters were usually expensive, some people would carefully dismantle the pack, desoder the wires of the bad cell and solder in a good cell from another pack of like kind to make the battery usable again.
But taking apart lipo batteries and rebuilding them is risk business because of the fire hazard. If negative and positive wires touch on a lipo you'll be jumping out of your shoes.
So if your battery won't hold a charge and you've had good use of it, consider your money well spent.

Let me just add trying to fix a bad lipo on a drone like the Phantom or Inspire shouldn't even be considered. If a battery is acting up and doesn't perform properly then most likely there is something wrong with it and should not be used.

 

[Queen1944]

Not sure if this the right thread but my experiences match what is being discussed here. Lesson one learned. Cells close to 40 percent left discharge quick! Started a flight with 42 percent indicated left. Took off an climbed to 100 feet and full forward. I1 got 200 feet out and hit 30 percent RTH level, bird came home no problem other than I forgot to set Failsafe altitude. She came in a direct line to home point.

Second lesson learned: Have a plan B. On a flight to test return to home I entered a really high 400 ft fail safe. After doing a couple of dynamic RC home point tests I had about 20 percent flight battery left on a new 4500 pack. I was told to fly the first (new) batteries down to under 10 percent so the pack can calibrate itself. I moved the aircraft away from where I landed to the other side of a flight line in case I had troubIe. I'm too new to trust tight quarter. I proceeded to fly and hover to drain the battery quickly. It was doing fine when it imitated a RTH maneuver for low battery.

First thing it did was start climbing to the failsafe 400 ft. Then it quickly hit 10% battery and started to land heading to my old home point behind a fence. A number of battery warnings came up as the aircraft headed for the fence. I couldn't cancel them fast enough as panic was creeping in. I manually fought the auto land sequence and couldn't get the gear to drop after cycling the switch on the RC. I managed to stop the flight from hitting the fence, but without the gear down I had to land without them. I killed the motors (both stick down and in) as the camera touched the grass. As it spun down the props hit the grass and flipped the aircraft. It seemed they wanted to spin again so I did the kill again. (Perhaps I was restarting them.) any rate they stopped and I walked out to expecting to find something busted being upside down.

So while I moved the craft to a safe area, I forgot the high failsafe. Battery really drops fast while climbing. A whole host of things could of gone wrong but I remembered first rule of flying troubles...keep flying the plane. Had I stopped to cancel and swipe all the warnings, I would have hit the fence or worse. No damage for this lesson other than a few extra blood pressure points. Whew!

 

[Scotflieger]

Not sure if this the right thread but my experiences match what is being discussed here. Lesson one learned. Cells close to 40 percent left discharge quick! Started a flight with 42 percent indicated left. Took off an climbed to 100 feet and full forward. I1 got 200 feet out and hit 30 percent RTH level, bird came home no problem other than I forgot to set Failsafe altitude. She came in a direct line to home point.

Second lesson learned: Have a plan B. On a flight to test return to home I entered a really high 400 ft fail safe. After doing a couple of dynamic RC home point tests I had about 20 percent flight battery left on a new 4500 pack. I was told to fly the first (new) batteries down to under 10 percent so the pack can calibrate itself. I moved the aircraft away from where I landed to the other side of a flight line in case I had troubIe. I'm too new to trust tight quarter. I proceeded to fly and hover to drain the battery quickly. It was doing fine when it imitated a RTH maneuver for low battery.

First thing it did was start climbing to the failsafe 400 ft. Then it quickly hit 10% battery and started to land heading to my old home point behind a fence. A number of battery warnings came up as the aircraft headed for the fence. I couldn't cancel them fast enough as panic was creeping in. I manually fought the auto land sequence and couldn't get the gear to drop after cycling the switch on the RC. I managed to stop the flight from hitting the fence, but without the gear down I had to land without them. I killed the motors (both stick down and in) as the camera touched the grass. As it spun down the props hit the grass and flipped the aircraft. It seemed they wanted to spin again so I did the kill again. (Perhaps I was restarting them.) any rate they stopped and I walked out to expecting to find something busted being upside down.

So while I moved the craft to a safe area, I forgot the high failsafe. Battery really drops fast while climbing. A whole host of things could of gone wrong but I remembered first rule of flying troubles...keep flying the plane. Had I stopped to cancel and swipe all the warnings, I would have hit the fence or worse. No damage for this lesson other than a few extra blood pressure points. Whew!

Hi Queen1944

Having read and responded to your various detailed postings as a 'newbie', I think you should curtail your ambitions until you learn a little more about your I1.

There are many postings here on critically low battery use. The prime lesson is never to launch without a fully charged battery (>90%) and certainly not one with 42% remaining. Also the failsafe return height should only be set to that needed and not the maximum. I set it to about 5m above the highest obstacle in the area I am flying. I would not rely to much on the automatic systems for RTH, good judgement and skill is required when flying the I1 and will get you out of more sticky situations that the auto options. A little caution will reduce your heart rate and save you from an expensive lesson.

 

[m00se]

Having read and responded to your various detailed postings as a 'newbie', I think you should curtail your ambitions until you learn a little more about ..........

I'm going to add, flying cuadcopters to the end of that line....

The I1 is a relatively expensive system to make rookie mistakes on, I can tell you I would have trashed many by now if I hadnt learnt to fly on small cheap systems first.

 

[Birdseyejr]

Not sure if this the right thread but my experiences match what is being discussed here. Lesson one learned. Cells close to 40 percent left discharge quick! Started a flight with 42 percent indicated left. Took off an climbed to 100 feet and full forward. I1 got 200 feet out and hit 30 percent RTH level, bird came home no problem other than I forgot to set Failsafe altitude. She came in a direct line to home point.

Second lesson learned: Have a plan B. On a flight to test return to home I entered a really high 400 ft fail safe. After doing a couple of dynamic RC home point tests I had about 20 percent flight battery left on a new 4500 pack. I was told to fly the first (new) batteries down to under 10 percent so the pack can calibrate itself. I moved the aircraft away from where I landed to the other side of a flight line in case I had troubIe. I'm too new to trust tight quarter. I proceeded to fly and hover to drain the battery quickly. It was doing fine when it imitated a RTH maneuver for low battery.

First thing it did was start climbing to the failsafe 400 ft. Then it quickly hit 10% battery and started to land heading to my old home point behind a fence. A number of battery warnings came up as the aircraft headed for the fence. I couldn't cancel them fast enough as panic was creeping in. I manually fought the auto land sequence and couldn't get the gear to drop after cycling the switch on the RC. I managed to stop the flight from hitting the fence, but without the gear down I had to land without them. I killed the motors (both stick down and in) as the camera touched the grass. As it spun down the props hit the grass and flipped the aircraft. It seemed they wanted to spin again so I did the kill again. (Perhaps I was restarting them.) any rate they stopped and I walked out to expecting to find something busted being upside down.

So while I moved the craft to a safe area, I forgot the high failsafe. Battery really drops fast while climbing. A whole host of things could of gone wrong but I remembered first rule of flying troubles...keep flying the plane. Had I stopped to cancel and swipe all the warnings, I would have hit the fence or worse. No damage for this lesson other than a few extra blood pressure points. Whew!

Be sure to educate yourself as much as possible before and watch YouTube videos on the Inspire 1 regarding safe flying. One other thing!, use and make yourself checklist and keep it as safe as possible especially when flying with people nearby.
The Inspire 1 is a heavy and costly ship. We cannot afford to have our inspires falling out of the skies. The general public will start to hate us drone pilots. It's already starting..... be as safe as you can always fly with a fully charged battery.

 

[JohnHan]

Here is an experiment.

1. Fly a battery down to 40-45%.
2. Let the battery rest overnight
3. Power up aircraft with this battery. Don't start motors just let it power the aircraft.

Within a few minutes you will get critical battery warning, 10%. That's with light loading of only aircraft electronics. Now you see why it's a disaster to launch with a flown battery while treating the percent remaining as meaningful.