Battery Cell Broken

[Humanparody]

Haven't received this one before, any thoughts? It let me continue the flight. Wondering if this is a "it was too cold" or "it was too windy and you pushed it too hard" or "it will go away the next time you fire it up" or "send that thing back to DJI, it's a warranty issue"

 

[stuffonastick]

View attachment 6487 Haven't received this one before, any thoughts? It let me continue the flight. Wondering if this is a "it was too cold" or "it was too windy and you pushed it too hard" or "it will go away the next time you fire it up" or "send that thing back to DJI, it's a warranty issue"

The last one. Send it to DJI, it's a warranty issue. As an aside, I would NEVER fly with a broken battery, you have no idea what that thing might potentially do.

 

[Kilrah]

I guess you checked the battery page to look at the cell voltages? Or most likely not, otherwise you wouldn't ask

 

[CyberNate]

Review the battery details in the app. There you should see if any 1 of the cells has a much lower voltage than the others. They should all be close in voltage, within .1 volts.

 

[Humanparody]

I was mainly trying to get it on the ground once I realized what the error was. I'm assuming that one of them was lower or else what would have triggered that error? I will go check now. So assuming that one cell is lower, what are the implications/causes?

 

[Anthony Viscomi]

Just open up a support/claim ticket & send it back. Bottom-line is that the battery is defective and no matter what the battery voltage says isn't going to change that fact. I stated this on another thread and I'll say it again, "the most crucial component on your drone is the battery, if it fails in the air you're screwed".

 

[Humanparody]

Okay, they are all within .1v of each other. Granted it has been sitting for 5 minutes since I landed.

 

[Humanparody]

The last one. Send it to DJI, it's a warranty issue. As an aside, I would NEVER fly with a broken battery, you have no idea what that thing might potentially do.

I wasn't planning on continuing to fly, what I meant was that the error simply showed up as a red battery icon while I was flying, it didn't initiate RTH or anything. I had to go into details to figure out why the icon was red. At that point, I made a B line for home. Now that it's been sitting, the voyages are all reading normal.

It's windy as hell out there and I was having to full throttle it to keep it in place during a good portion of the flight so it may have simply overheated/over discharged although I didn't get either of those warnings. I'm going to charge it up to 50% and take it for a low flight and watch the cells and see how they act. Only 17 charges under its belt, if it so much as flinches I'm sending it back.

 

[jimbubba]

Okay, they are all within .1v of each other. Granted it has been sitting for 5 minutes since I landed.

I deal with batteries all the time outside of flying, and a "broken" cell on a multi cell battery can be a huge red flag. I assume the Mavic Smart Battery has multiple fail-safes built in to prevent it from venting or (God forbid) thermal runaway, but it's still a good idea to get it on the ground as soon as possible. It would be a bad idea to ever use it again.

 

[CyberNate]

It could be a 1 time occurrence, but to be safe, check the voltages when the battery is under some load. You could just hover the mavic and watch the cell voltages. Give it some throttle a couple times and see if there are cell deviations. Don't take it very high. I bet DJI has some pretty tight monitoring parameters given the liability of it falling out of the sky.

 

[adiru]

How many charges did it have before it crapped out?

 

[Humanparody]

Doing a hover test as we speak. I'm getting variations that are fluctuating. The greatest deviation from the highest to lowest charged cell is 3.68 vs 3.64

 

[Humanparody]

How many charges did it have before it crapped out?

19

 

[adiru]

19

That is terrible, I thought these rated for 500?!

 

[CyberNate]

Doing a hover test as we speak. I'm getting variations that are fluctuating. The greatest deviation from the highest to lowest charged cell is 3.68 vs 3.64

I'm not sure how much variation is considered out of spec. I'll check my cells next time I'm out. I have 3 batteries to compare.

 

[Humanparody]

Okay, did a couple of hard altitude changes. The battery was basically drained and I didn't want to take it up any higher than I did. Here is the hover and then at the peak drain.

 

[AlanTheBeast]

View attachment 6487 Haven't received this one before, any thoughts? It let me continue the flight. Wondering if this is a "it was too cold" or "it was too windy and you pushed it too hard" or "it will go away the next time you fire it up" or "send that thing back to DJI, it's a warranty issue"

Out of curiosity:

What conditions were you flying it in?

Was it cold? (I've received two cold batt warnings - I don't recall if they were on the same battery)

Did you get those warnings?

 

[Humanparody]

It's 36F out but I didn't get any cold battery warnings. They were fresh out of my house when I took off. It's really windy though, like "drift away unless in sport mode" windy. I'm wondering if there is a cell that's discharging faster than the others under load. I'm going to put a bit more charge on it and take it for a flight. According to other threads, DJI is a pain in the *** when it comes to replacing batteries under warranty and you have to *prove* that the battery is bad. I'm going to record the flight screen. If all is well, then all is well. If not, having proof should help expedite the replacement.

 

[Cyberpower678]

I was mainly trying to get it on the ground once I realized what the error was. I'm assuming that one of them was lower or else what would have triggered that error? I will go check now. So assuming that one cell is lower, what are the implications/causes?

If the voltage is lower, the battery needs to deliver more current to deliver the same power. The battery will die fast, or unexpectedly drop to 0 mid-flight if the cell completely dies.

 

[CyberNate]

It's 36F out but I didn't get any cold battery warnings. They were fresh out of my house when I took off. It's really windy though, like "drift away unless in sport mode" windy. I'm wondering if there is a cell that's discharging faster than the others under load. I'm going to put a bit more charge on it and take it for a flight. According to other threads, DJI is a pain in the *** when it comes to replacing batteries under warranty and you have to *prove* that the battery is bad. I'm going to record the flight screen. If all is well, then all is well. If not, having proof should help expedite the replacement.

It looks like the battery is ok. .05 volt variance is not much. Pushing the motors to the max in low temperatures is going to test the limits of the battery. I've had a couple over current warnings in sport mode when I'm giving maximum elevator and pitch into the wind. It was 60 degrees at the time. I can imagine at 36F it would be worse.

Regarding DJI, all the warning information will be in your flight log. I don't think you'd have an issue with DJI support; however they may decide that the battery is fine given the circumstances of the warning.