Crash your Drone? In the WATER? Hers an easy fix.

[RichieFromBoston]

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[MS Coast]

Rice for drying out electronics sounds cute, but it's just not effective. It makes a great Internet folk tale, though.

I did a pretty thorough search last year for references to any actual scientific testing. I found only one. It described limited success with using rice to dry hearing aids in remote locations where there were no other resources available.

I'd really like to hear of any evaluations of rice as a desiccant from a valid source that others have found, other than anecdotal reports.

 

[Cafguy]

Might be worth a go if you splash a little liquid on your Drone.
But if you Fly your "Powered on" Drone into the Water, Your only options are Care refresh or Good old Dollars.
The Crashed one will make a Cool flag-pole Topper!

 

[shb]

I crashed my mavic Platinum in the ocean. I recovered it, and flushed it with fresh water. Then put in a sealed plastic container with rice. It didn't work in 24 hours, or a week, but eventually it would fly. One of the lights on the arms was dim. But the camera/gimbal wouldn't work. At first just bad video. Then the camera flat cable smoked. Then I changed the whole camera gimbal assembly with one I bought(not from DJI). That didn't work, the gimbal was moving wildly. So I did return it, and got my money back, but I never tried to fix it again. So I think rice does dry stuff out. Here in the Philippines, we put it in salt, so the salt shaker doesn't get plugged up.

 

[RichieFromBoston]

Rice for drying out electronics sounds cute, but it's just not effective. It makes a great Internet folk tale, though.

I did a pretty thorough search last year for references to any actual scientific testing. I found only one. It described limited success with using rice to dry hearing aids in remote locations where there were no other resources available.

I'd really like to hear of any evaluations of rice as a desiccant from a valid source that others have found, other than anecdotal reports.

I love "experts" problem is they are often wrong as is our friends here, as my mini 3 was DOA from a water crash used this method AGAIN and AGAIN it worked.

 

[MS Coast]

I love "experts" problem is they are often wrong as is our friends here, as my mini 3 was DOA from a water crash used this method AGAIN and AGAIN it worked.

I'm not pretending to be an expert or an "expert." I'm reporting that I've been unable to find any scientific or commercial support for using rice as a desiccant. Of the camera and electronics repair services I talked to or read about, not one uses rice. They all use chemical desiccants, dry air streams, or mechanical driers.

If I spend $500 to $2000 on a drone and drop it in the drink, I'll spend $20 on some good desiccant packs rather than $5 on a sack of rice. But, I'm glad the rice worked for you.

The Mini 3 might have dried out and operated just fine even if you'd just left it on the kitchen counter. In the absence of anything better, rice could have helped. But using desiccants made for the purpose would have dried the drone even faster and more thoroughly. That's why the people who repair wet electronics for a living use them.

These worked well last winter on a friend's Sony zoom lens.

Amazon.com

 

[shb]

I'm not pretending to be an expert or an "expert." I'm reporting that I've been unable to find any scientific or commercial support for using rice as a desiccant. Of the camera and electronics repair services I talked to or read about, not one uses rice. They all use chemical desiccants, dry air streams, or mechanical driers.

If I spend $500 to $2000 on a drone and drop it in the drink, I'll spend $20 on some good desiccant packs rather than $5 on a sack of rice. But, I'm glad the rice worked for you.

The Mini 3 might have dried out and operated just fine even if you'd just left it on the kitchen counter. In the absence of anything better, rice could have helped. But using desiccants made for the purpose would have dried the drone even faster and more thoroughly. That's why the people who repair wet electronics for a living use them.

These worked well last winter on a friend's Sony zoom lens.

Amazon.com

If you have them available. I was on a remote island. And those would take me at least two weeks to get here in the Philippines. But thanks for the link. I order a lot of stuff from Amazon so maybe I'll get some. I've never heard of them before.

 

[Zonian]

Anecdotal evidence here.

Many moons ago my HTC phone went through an entire cycle in my washing machine....wash, rinse, spin...the whole deal.
1 week in a ziploc bag of rice worked...phone was good as new.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

I love "experts" problem is they are often wrong as is our friends here,

Yet you present what may well be the you-tuber's first experiment in this area as the "God given truth".
Do either you or the you-tuber KNOW that unaided drying was not responsible for the resurrection of the drone? If so how?
If this is the you-tuber's first experiment there seems to be a bit of disparity between the 'standards for acceptability' that you apply to the you-tuber and forum members, ..... don't you think?

The video's title and introduction effectively guarantee that the 'procedure' will resuscitate a drowned drone.
"Crash your Drone? In the water? Hers an easy fix." &
"IN UNDER 5MINUTES ILL SHOW YOU HOW TO BRING IT BACK FROM THE DEAD."
That's an interesting point of view since whether or not a thorough drying, by whatever means, will resuscitate a 'drowned' drone depends entirely on the damaged done by the immersion.

As for the implication that drying can resuscitate a drone that has spent some time in the sea, (from the subtitles as I am deaf)
"
0:28 but I happen to live next to the 0:31 Atlantic and that can cause an entirely
0:34 different set of issues if you happen to. 0:36 crash your drone into the water
0:39 but have no fear because in less than 0:41 five minutes I'm going to show you how
0:43 you can possibly repair your drone if. :45 you dunk it deep into the water or a
0:49 swamp like I did for instance"

that's laughable !

If the drone goes into salt water it is almost certainly toast especially if it is submerged for any length of time. I think I have only seen one thread where a drone survived a salt water immersion and, in that case, the drone was immediately rescued and washed in fresh water, then possibly ASAP washed with Iso Propyl Alcohol. It was then dried for a long time, possibly a week.
Salt water will enhance or start electrolytic corrosion. Given the mixture of metals in these drones and there electrical 'interconnectedness' those metals become, in effect, constituents of battery cells.
I have dismantled a drone that spent several days in the sea and some of the component literally no longer existed, others were turned to mush. Even the ribbon cables had been attacked and delaminated.
From memory many of the steel screw that clamped things together, especially clamping circuit boards to the drone's shell pressed on circuit tracks, at a guess "earth or common" in British terminology and "ground" in American" terminology. That left the salt water as the other conductor between the two parts of the 'cell'.
Nothing would have resuscitated that drone, only the plastics were salvageable.

Fresh water isn't so ionised and corrosion causing.

Aside from the use of rice being 'debatable' and much debated, I would be concerned about grains or grain fragments or dust getting into places it shouldn't and, in the presence of water, perhaps forming a paste or sticking.

 

[umanbean]

1 week in a ziploc bag of rice worked...phone was good as new.

One week in front of a fan or a sunny window would have worked also.

Rice is a desiccant, really... a poor one, slow and sometimes messy I'm sure - but using it to magically dry small electronics is an internet myth that got started and somehow spread to the point where now almost everybody believes it

 

[Phantomrain.org]

Im the expert , lol
None of this matter if the ESC module and the Sensors did not burn out , than Rice or No Rice the drone will be fine.

Rice has very little to do with this equation, you could just put it on a shelf an get the same results.

With that said. , I have a hard time believing that the Sensors did not burn out considering all the testing we did on the Mini 3 in light rain, let alone the ESC module being toast.

One of the Reason why we did not make a Rescue Jacket for the Mini 3 to Float on the water was how fragile it was in the Rain. I remembe the first time it went up in the Rain for just 3 Minutes and the Sensors burned out.

I would have to see the Mini 3 really in the water to believe such a mirracle.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly your mini 3 in the Rain.

 

[Dave Maine]

It is not just drying it out. Salt water in particular has a lot of other stuff in it that corrodes the exposed interconnects making them become flaky or fail outright.

 

[shb]

Yet you present what may well be the you-tuber's first experiment in this area as the "God given truth".
Do either you or the you tuber KNOW that unaided drying was not responsible for the resurrection of the drone? If so how?
If this is the you-tuber's first experiment there seems to be a bit of disparity between the 'standards for acceptability' that you apply to the you-tuber and forum members, don't you think?

The video's title and introduction effectively guarantee that the 'procedure' will resuscitate a drowned drone.
"Crash your Drone? In the water? Hers an easy fix." &
"IN UNDER 5MINUTES ILL SHOW YOU HOW TO BRING IT BACK FROM THE DEAD."
That's an interesting point of view since whether or not a thorough drying, by whatever means, will resuscitate a 'drowned' drone depends entirely on the damaged done by the immersion.

As for the implication that drying can resuscitate a drone that has spent some time in the sea, from the subtitles
"
0:28 but I happen to live next to the 0:31 Atlantic and that can cause an entirely
0:34 different set of issues if you happen to. 0:36 crash your drone into the water
0:39 but have no fear because in less than 0:41 five minutes I'm going to show you how
0:43 you can possibly repair your drone if. :45 you dunk it deep into the water or a
0:49 swamp like I did for instance"

that's laughable !

If the drone goes into salt water it is almost certainly toast especially if it is submerged for any length of time. I think I have only seen one thread where a drone survived a salt water immersion and, in that case, the drone was immediately rescued and washed in fresh water, then possibly ASAP washed with Iso Propyl Alcohol It was then dried for a long time, possibly a week.
Salt water will enhance or start electrolytic corrosion. Given the mixture of metals in these drones those metals become, in effect, constituents of battery cells.
I have dismantled a drone that spent several days in the sea and some of the component literally no longer existed, others were turned to mush. Even the ribbon cables had been attacked and delaminated.
Nothing would have resuscitated that drone, only the plastics were salvageable.

Fresh water isn't so ionised and corrosion causing.

Aside from the use of rice being 'debatable' and much debated, I would be concerned about grains or grain fragments or dust getting into places it shouldn't and, in the presence of water, perhaps forming a paste or sticking.

The guy who made the YouTube video I used to to try to fix my drone when it crashed in salt water, said that being in salt water for a while is ok, as long as you remove the salt water with fresh water as soon as you take it out of the salt water.

 

[umanbean]

said that being in salt water for a while is ok, as long as you remove the salt water with fresh water as soon as you take it out of the salt water.

That's probably true to a certain extent as long as you meet two conditions.

It can't stay in the salt water very long because corrosion begins immediately... however slight at first.

Don't remove it from the salt water until you are ready to immediately and thoroughly rinse it with fresh water.

And those conditions depend on the electronics not getting fried as soon as it hits the water.

Edit: And as tempting as it might be, do not power on until you are absolutely sure everything inside is dry

 

[spsphotos]

instead of rice, buy some desiccant packets. I use them to keep my 3D printer filament dry. A big handful of them in a bag works fine and you won't get rice in the drone.

Amazon.com

 

[YVRGUY]

instead of rice, buy some desiccant packets. I use them to keep my 3D printer filament dry. A big handful of them in a bag works fine and you won't get rice in the drone.

Amazon.com

I keep a couple of silver dollar sized packets in each of my two DJI carry bags…I collect the decadent from packaging received from products ordered online. This ensures that extra protection for the fine electronics during lengthy storage times. Just a safe sure.

 

[KenG]

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding or experience in my case. Last year, while flying over a fresh water lake nearby, I accidentally caught enough of a tree limb to hang up my mini and drop it in the water. It was at dusk and we didn't have success at that very moment trying to retrieve the drone. Next morning, bright and early the search resumes and find it. Towel dry as much as possible and then into the rice where it remained for a week.

Tried to fired it up and nothing. Back in the rice for a few more days and after that I could get it to come on and what the camera would see showed on my display but I could not get anything else to work and finally returned it to DJI for rebuild. The one plus is the SD card retained all footage and is still living and working today, in another drone, of course.

 

[E-boy Avata]

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding or experience in my case. Last year, while flying over a fresh water lake nearby, I accidentally caught enough of a tree limb to hang up my mini and drop it in the water. It was at dusk and we didn't have success at that very moment trying to retrieve the drone. Next morning, bright and early the search resumes and find it. Towel dry as much as possible and then into the rice where it remained for a week.

Tried to fired it up and nothing. Back in the rice for a few more days and after that I could get it to come on and what the camera would see showed on my display but I could not get anything else to work and finally returned it to DJI for rebuild. The one plus is the SD card retained all footage and is still living and working today, in another drone, of course.

just crashed my avata a few days ago into a fresh water stream, got a new one from dji care because the whole electronic system was smoked...

 

[Droning on and on...]

It is not just drying it out. Salt water in particular has a lot of other stuff in it that corrodes the exposed interconnects making them become flaky or fail outright.

Yeah, the most significant being salt, which makes sea water rather conductive, shorting stuff out and causing shorting on electrically energized exposed metal.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Three thoughts occur to me concerning this thread.
1) There are those who believe rice to be an effective desiccant and there are those people who do not, neither will ever agree with the other.
2) If rice is not a desiccant then sealing a wet drone in an air tight plastic bag might possibly be detrimental to the drone as it may keep water in the liquid state due to the air in the bag being 'saturated'. One for @sar104 etc. perhaps.
3) Someone with accurate scales could perhaps perform an experiment.
Weigh, to 0.1g or less, a reasonable quantity of rice from a just opened bag and keep a record of that weight. Pour that rice into a zip lock plastic bag and the place that zip lock bag inside another zip lock bag put the bags somewhere with constant temperature that is safe and flat so that the bags can lie flat and undisturbed for perhaps a week.

3a)Weigh, to 0.1g or less, and record the weight of some sort of small, open topped, plastic container that is partially filled with room temperature water.
Without splashing out any of that water, place the container and water inside the inner zip lock bag and seal both bags. Ensure that the top of the container remains open, so that the air and water vapour can circulate within the inner bag. Leave the whole shebang undisturbed for whatever time period was chosen.

At the end of the time period remove the container and water from the bags and weigh, to 0.1g or less, the container and water. Remove the rice from the bags and weigh it, to 0.1g or less.
Calculate the two weight changes. What is the weight change in the rice and does it match the weight change of the container and water?