Battery failure mid flight

laurens23 · Apr 2, 2018

there seem to be others with the same issue

Simmo · Apr 2, 2018

Yeah, agreed, this is becoming more than a one off or so....

KingPieter · Apr 2, 2018

Yeah luckily it did

I fully charged the battery before I used it but I actually forgot to update that battery to the new firmware (V01.00.003) so that can be the problem

KingPieter · Apr 2, 2018

Defiante said:
Yes. Electronic devices can malfunction. And when a flying electronic malfunctions we all know the end result

It crashes

KingPieter · Apr 2, 2018

sar104 said:
Right - but that's not how it's supposed to work - that's clearly a fault. There is no point expecting DJI, or any other company, to try to warn consumers of every conceivable way that their products could fail. The list would be endless.

Yeah true, but it seems like it's a problem in their production line :/

KingPieter · Apr 2, 2018

I shut contacted the dji support service and they said I needed to update the battery to the newest firmware. They said the problem should be fixed so we'll see. I'll probably conduct some hovering tests first

Splashy · Apr 2, 2018

What was the temperature while you were flying?

moshik · Apr 3, 2018

sar104 said:
Strange. The smart battery reported status goes to zero percent as you said, but the actual voltages look fine. The only other anomaly in the record is a brief period at 342 s where the reported cell 2 voltage drops to 1.55 V for 0.9 s, while cell 1 climbs to 4.37 V. Looks like a battery problem to me.

View attachment 34905

Hi sar104,

How did you extract this graph from the text file that KingPieter sent?

Thanks

sar104 · Apr 3, 2018

moshik said:
Hi sar104,

How did you extract this graph from the text file that KingPieter sent?

Thanks

The data were extracted using ferraript's TXTlogToCSVtool and then imported into a data analysis program (Wavemetrics Igor Pro).

moshik · Apr 3, 2018

Thanks,

How do you import the CSV into Igor Pro?
(couldn't find it)

sar104 · Apr 3, 2018

moshik said:
Thanks,

How do you import the CSV into Igor Pro?
(couldn't find it)

Data > Load Waves > Load Delimited Text...

hquant · Apr 4, 2018

Something similar happened to me. The battery went from 30% to nothing within about a minute. Afterwards I was not able to load it again. DJI exchanged it free of charge. But is was new, unabused and undamaged. If I had not been in the process of landing, when the problem occured, the Air would have been a write off. At the time I was not able to find people with similar problems, but battery problems have been mentioned by a growing number of pilots lately.

newt2u · Apr 7, 2018

laurens23 said:
Did you charge the battery before using it the first time? A new battery will be in "storage state" when you get it. The battery percentage drop without the voltage dropping is weird though. Looks like a malfunction regardless of how/if is was charged.

Smart battery voltage was 100% at start of flight, so it must have been charged as storage is around 50% capacity.

Air Beetle · Apr 7, 2018

firmware update is required on each battery you own - swap battery after firmware update and do it again - repeat for each battery

KingPieter · Apr 7, 2018

Splashy said:
What was the temperature while you were flying?

Around 10 °C or 50 °F, so normally that couldn't have been the problem

Smokingomega · Jan 9, 2019

Hi
I’m new to the drone scene. Unfortunately I have had the same fault with 2 battery’s now. I sent one back and were given a replacement and this has now done the exact same after a couple of uses. Dropped from 52% straight to 0% forcing emergency landings. Luckily both times I’ve managed to land ok. My original battery That came with the Mavic Air seems fine. Has anyone solved the issue or do I need to send the battery back to the shop? Thanks for any advice

Lastrexking · Jan 9, 2019

Smokingomega said:
Hi
I’m new to the drone scene. Unfortunately I have had the same fault with 2 battery’s now. I sent one back and were given a replacement and this has now done the exact same after a couple of uses. Dropped from 52% straight to 0% forcing emergency landings. Luckily both times I’ve managed to land ok. My original battery That came with the Mavic Air seems fine. Has anyone solved the issue or do I need to send the battery back to the shop? Thanks for any advice

I'd send them back if I were you. Where did you get them from?

Smokingomega · Jan 9, 2019

From Argos.
Took one back Friday an they swapped it. Now this has done the same. Dropped to 0% from 52%. I didn’t know if it was a coincidence? Was going to do a firmware refresh with this new battery connected to the drone and see what happens???

Lastrexking · Jan 9, 2019

Smokingomega said:
From Argos.
Took one back Friday an they swapped it. Now this has done the same. Dropped to 0% from 52%. I didn’t know if it was a coincidence? Was going to do a firmware refresh with this new battery connected to the drone and see what happens???

Yeah, I'd check the firmware on everything, including the batteries, then reset everything.
is it a straight drop from 52% to 05? How long does it take?

Smokingomega · Jan 9, 2019

It went from 52 to 0% straight within a second. Then I had a warning of forced landing. When I look at the battery on the info screen when I managed to land the thing it’s still showing green and over half full on all the cells.
I don’t think the battery is actually flat it just thinks it’s flat.