TB48 Battery Help

[Kevin Cabral]

Is this normal? I had to do a deep discharge to calibrate the battery. I drained it to 2% twice during the 10 charges. Nothing worked. A deep discharge to 0% or until it shuts off, that worked. Here are the photos. The battery is 97% health and the mah is close to 5700 mah.

 

[The Editor]

Is this normal? I had to do a deep discharge to calibrate the battery. I drained it to 2% twice during the 10 charges. Nothing worked. A deep discharge to 0% or until it shuts off, that worked. Here are the photos. The battery is 97% health and the mah is close to 5700 mah.

Normal.

 

[Kevin Cabral]

Oh okay, was just curious. My other TB48 battery is at 98% health and I also did a deep discharge earlier today for it. It shows 5700 mah. I wonder why this one doesn't. It lost 100 mah. So I take it as, I lost a second in flight? Or is it 2 seconds of flight I lost?

Thanks for the quick reply

 

[The Editor]

Oh okay, was just curious. My other TB48 battery is at 98% health and I also did a deep discharge earlier today for it. It shows 5700 mah. I wonder why this one doesn't. It lost 100 mah. So I take it as, I lost a second in flight? Or is it 2 seconds of flight I lost?

Thanks for the quick reply

Impossible to quantify that accurately since every single flight is different (different wind speeds, different amount of hover v flying, different amount of climb rates etc). Every single flight will vary by a few seconds or even a minute or more if you fly aggressively...
Just don't worry and go fly and enjoy.

 

[Kevin Cabral]

Impossible to quantify that accurately since every single flight is different (different wind speeds, different amount of hover v flying, different amount of climb rates etc). Every single flight will vary by a few seconds or even a minute or more if you fly aggressively...
Just don't worry and go fly and enjoy.

That's my thing, I worry to much haha. I assume because I've only had the Inspire 1 for a few weeks, I'm worried about everything. As long as the battery is okay, then I'm happy

 

[The Editor]

That's my thing, I worry to much haha. I assume because I've only had the Inspire 1 for a few weeks, I'm worried about everything. As long as the battery is okay, then I'm happy

Yup - you will get less concerned and more confident with time....... As long as you keep an eye on your battery levels during flight and land at around 20% or more (circa 3.45v per cell under load) you will have no issues.
When you fly the battery will be under load so the voltage will be less than at rest. Usually a pack will recover and bounce back around 0.2v per cell after the load is removed.
Ideally you want the pack to recover to circa 3.7v per cell after it has stood for a few minutes. That means flying down to around 3.45v per cell. If you land at that voltage and cut the motors and just watch the cell voltages for a few seconds you will see them climb back up to around 3.7v (maybe a little higher).
Flying that way you are treating your packs well.

 

[Kevin Cabral]

My thing is, I worry about everything, until it gets a bit older and I lose a bit of care haha . I guess because my Inspire 1 is still new, I'm like babying it. I do want to do proper maintenance so it lasts

I'll try that too. What I might be doing for awhile is not allowing my 2 batteries to go below 40%. I'll be easy on them for awhile. For the past 10 charges, I've tried to calibrate it by draining it to 2%, but it didn't work for me. The total capacity didn't read 5700, it read 5500 instead. After the 10th charge, I drained the both batteries to 0%, or until it died which was I believe 3.25 voltage. In the image I posted above, I noticed the battery history reads 'low voltage protection'. Good to know it protected itself before any damage was done . Just sucks I lost a bit of power to one of my batteries, and with 97% health already to one of the batteries. The other one is 98% health. I wonder if I was easy on the batteries in the beginning, it would still have 100% health .

 

[CCDD]

Are you saying that following your "deep discharge" the batteries only have 97-98% after only 10 charges or so? I thought the deep discharge would allow the battery to recover its full (100%) capacity after only that small amount of uses.

 

[Kevin Cabral]

Are you saying that following your "deep discharge" the batteries only have 97-98% after only 10 charges or so? I thought the deep discharge would allow the battery to recover its full (100%) capacity after only that small amount of uses.

I thought the same. One of my batteries went up to 5700 mah 98% health. While the other went down to 97% health 5600 mah. Confusing, but at least it's calibrated even though one of the batteries I lost 100 mah; the 97% health battery.

 

[CCDD]

I don't understand It Kevin, after so few charges, one shouldn't see any depletion. I own a Phantom 3 Pro as well and one of my batteries has 27 cycles on it and is still as "good as new".

 

[The Editor]

I think you guys are getting too hung up on numbers.
These are consumable items - they will die. They have a finite life.
Too many variables to say 'But I lost this much mAh' or 'It only has 97% life now'
Just treat your packs as best you can and accept they will increase in their internal resistance and will eventually be useless.
People also do not realise that lipos will degrade over time whether you use them or not.
A perfectly stored Lipo will still lose circa 2% of its capacity over a year - and that is in perfect storage conditions.
You also will not know when each of your batteries were manufactured. They start loosing capacity the day they roll off the production line.....
Stop fretting, keep an eye on cell voltages when flying and go have fun flying the Inspire.

 

[CCDD]

Well said, thanks!!

 

[CCDD]

New TB48 arrived today and thankfully, this one appears to be fine. Now just hoping the rain will stop long enough to allow for some "flying" time.

 

[Kevin Cabral]

Niceeeee. Treat it well! lol. Don't be like me haha. Speak of rain... I got caught flying in midflight, it started to rain. Luckily, no damage. I allowed the inspire to dry for 3 hours and just tested it out now. 'Safe to fly GPS' is what I got Thank God!

 

[Batteryman1952]

I want to jump in on this conversation. I've been around batteries for 35 years and they are definitely living, breathing devices that are constantly aging. Every cycle you put on them tends to change the performance of the next cycle. Also discharging your battery to 0% may be great to reset the battery fuel gauge but it does bad things to the battery and I would not recommend it on a regular basis.