dismal battery life

[DanMan32]

What are you on about? Go back and read the post I responded to and one back in the relevant history.

Mr Mint raised the direct connection issue (from the MA2 manual). My clarification was relevant.

DanMan you think you can assure everyone that the MA2 batteries that they purchase might have the updated firmware? Of course you can’t.

If by now DJI was still shipping batteries with vulnerable firmware, we'd still be hearing reports about it. Those reports stopped I'd estimate about a month after release.

You're still saying DJI is saying to charge the batteries directly. I'm saying they are not. They're simply saying to fully charge the batteries, like every mfr says with rechargeable devices, especially when there's a shipping mode.

 

[WithTheBirds]

If by now DJI was still shipping batteries with vulnerable firmware, we'd still be hearing reports about it. Those reports stopped I'd estimate about a month after release.

You're still saying DJI is saying to charge the batteries directly. I'm saying they are not. They're simply saying to fully charge the batteries, like every mfr says with rechargeable devices, especially when there's a shipping mode.

The fact anyone might not have heard a report about something happening or not is hardly a reliable means of establishing if it might be an issue. That is fallacious reasoning. I know someone personally who had the issue in September this year.

 

[Alejoviade]

How many minutes of flight time you get from a particular battery depends on several factors. Here are my top three (from experience):
1. Battery's internal core temperature. Cold is bad. Hot is bad. Warm is good.
2. Excessively high wind speed. The motors work harder, drawing more current out of the battery.
3. Jerky flying style. Sharp turns and stops also cause the motors to work harder resulting in increased current draw.

Also remember that recharging a cold battery increases the chance of internal damage to the battery's chemistry resulting in future problems with poor run time.

Take good care of your batteries and they will take care of you. You should be keeping a log of every flight, noting the battery used, percentage of battery remaining, and how long the flight lasted. With that data you'll be able to see which of your batteries is developing sub-par performance.

Unfortunately, airdata.com is not able to track flight data for the Mini or Mini2.

Thank you for your response.
by the way....Air Data fully supports Mini2 since November 2nd 2020

The batteries are brand new and all the charge process was inside out house so...nothing "edgy" there .. Excessive wind speed... well, some of the flights were in a day with some wind (not 30 knots) just "some wind". Hopefully I will not have to wait for zero wind days to fly this thing for more than 15' before changing batteries... Jerky flying style... since I'm very new I would probably say my flying is not the smoothest flying on earth, I'm getting used to the controls,etc but I'm not doing any radical moves or anything like that... and even then.... 50% less flight time than advertised? Seems a bit too much... I was just doing some videos with it so obviously the flying was rather smooth (Cine mode) and than otherwise.
If this becomes more of a burden and "work" than fun... then my drone pilot "career" will be over before it starts....

 

[Alejoviade]

I first saw the advice to charge each Mini 2 battery separately for the first time on a (private) Youtube video. That's what I did. Owning the Air 1, Air 2, Mini 1 and Mini 2, I never got anything approaching the max flying time promised by any of them, but I do get reasonable flying time. Incidentally, I number my batteries and rotate their use. I have owned quite a few cars in my lifetime, almost all of then new, and never got from any of them the mileage promised by the car companies. [I once had a small Fiat 127. I went to the dealer who handled it and complained that I was only getting 8km to the liter. He asked me what the problem was. I replied that I had a friend who said he got 10km to the liter. He replied "You should say the same thing!"]

hello and thank you for your reply...
From what I read, this drone and associated accessories (bought the Fly More Combo with the unit with extra batteries and charger, etc etc) does not perform as advertised ... This is, in itself is not a major problem since its performance is (as with real airplanes) derived from near perfect conditions which one should not expect to occur at all.... Now, having said that... from there to say that the battery lasts 31' and I get 15' I think that's a lie or at least, a very misleading advertisement... it's like buying an acft with a 7000 mile range only to then be told the range is actually 3500... not good.
same with the charging one battery at a time process.... really? so I bought a charger THEY sell so I can charge batteries together (since it takes forever to charge but 12' to 25' to deplete) and now I'm discovering that it is "obsolete" ? wow.. very, VERY disappointed if all of this is true...

Thank you once again for your input...

 

[Kilrah]

Again post your logs to see how you've been flying.

If you're pushing full stick in sport mode constantly it'll for sure not fly for 25 mins...

 

[Alejoviade]

I don't have any suggestions, but will say it doesn't seem normal. I've only got a dozen or so flights with my mini 2, but all were at temps under 40 degrees F several below 32. I'm also well above 4200 feet in elevation yet I get 20 minutes or so before I start getting the 20 percent battery remaining warning.

Thank you...I'll keep monitoring the flights and see what happens... I appreciate your input !!

 

[Alejoviade]

What are you on about? Go back and read the post I responded to and one back in the relevant history.

Mr Mint raised the direct connection issue (from the MA2 manual). My clarification was relevant.

DanMan you think you can assure everyone that the MA2 batteries that they purchase might have the updated firmware? Of course you can’t.

whatever the discussion is, I would appreciate if we can just focus on my question. For whatever is worth, ALL updates to firmware were applied on the 26th in the morning as the first step before doing ANY flying whatsoever (batteries firmware updated as part of this).
I know you all have good intentions but it won't help me if 100 different reasons are started to be thrown at me. All I'm looking is for some "obvious" reasons why the battery life would be so dismal when basic, normal and accurate procedures were followed when flying the drone, applying firmware, temperature was low but not in the North Pole, MSL altitude 900, no 20 knots winds, etc. Everything indicates that, even though the PERFECT test scenario was not followed (as it is impossible to achieve)... the battery should perform better than what it did.... 31' advertised to 15' real is a lot of difference.
Again, I remind you that I'm new to this so I'm trying to cover all the basis to guarantee the drone will perform close to "as advertised" and I think it should, out of the box, using the OEM accessories while flying within the parameters set forth in the product manual.
I'm learning to process to extract the data so I can read it...

thank you all

 

[Alejoviade]

Again post your logs to see how you've been flying.

If you're pushing full stick in sport mode constantly it'll for sure not fly for 25 mins...

I will, Im working on it. I'm new and It is not second nature to me yet to pull the data.... Im learning, your patience is appreciated...
In my previous posts I clearly stated the type of flying I was doing,.. Cine mode (not even normal except a couple of times) and NO stunt and acrobatic flying either..... I read the manual and I know what depletes the battery hence my question... WHY if I don't do any of that ...it depletes?... that's all...

 

[Alejoviade]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but with the release of the latest DJI FlyApp there have been reports of battery life depleting quickly. This may be your problem.

Not sure of this.. I did all firmware updates.... I guess I need to investigate

 

[Alejoviade]

Whenever I hear about battery life being crap from the get go, three conditions come to mind that I'd want to know about.

1) Wind Speed, the battery life quoted by DJI is only good for minimal wind conditions. The more wind, the harder it has to fight to maintain position which eats up more battery.
2) Temperature, as mentioned earlier, the colder the environment the short the battery life is, especially if it can't keep up optimal voltage.
3) Altitude, the closer you get to the maximum take off altitude (in the case of the Mini 2, it's 4,000 meters above sea level), the more spin is required to create lift, which also increases the power draw. ie: Someone flying above 3,000 meters is going to have significantly lower battery life as it works harder to keep lift in thinner air density than someone right at the beach at sea level.

Other factors can be improperly installed props, as it being out of balance can cause more power draw to compensate, or if there's any additional weight attached.

everything out of the box, brand new. no props installed by user... rather than 4000 meters... I'm about 270 meters... Wind... well being that it was my first time EVER flying a drone...I made sure the wind was pretty minimal.. not zero but not 20 knots either... Battery in colder environment... well, somebody mentioned flying at colder temps I did and getting much better battery life... so... yes, those are all contributing factors but I don't think anything of them was present to such extent as to cause such dismal battery performance..

thank you very much for your comments and suggestions

 

[Hi-Flyer]

hello and thank you for your reply...
From what I read, this drone and associated accessories (bought the Fly More Combo with the unit with extra batteries and charger, etc etc) does not perform as advertised ... This is, in itself is not a major problem since its performance is (as with real airplanes) derived from near perfect conditions which one should not expect to occur at all.... Now, having said that... from there to say that the battery lasts 31' and I get 15' I think that's a lie or at least, a very misleading advertisement... it's like buying an acft with a 7000 mile range only to then be told the range is actually 3500... not good.
same with the charging one battery at a time process.... really? so I bought a charger THEY sell so I can charge batteries together (since it takes forever to charge but 12' to 25' to deplete) and now I'm discovering that it is "obsolete" ? wow.. very, VERY disappointed if all of this is true...

Thank you once again for your input...

Getting only 15' from a battery claimed to give 31' is reason to return the battery. I haven't gotten such a short period of time from any DJI battery. In your case I would charge the battery and fly around until near to battery depletion, keep the flight logs, also have a screen recording of the entire flight. All this (with the battery) I would send to DJI asking for a replacement. Incidentally, I read somewhere that hovering demands more juice from batteries, so I wouldn't do much of that in said flight.

 

[DanMan32]

We're still waiting for OP to provide the logs. I'm sure there's some small details he's overlooking that explains the lost time.

For example, on first flight of the day, my MM1 can take a minute or two to capture enough sats. That eats up time.
Landing at 20% rather than 0%, that takes away from the spec flight time (no, I am not advocating flying until it drops, just a point).

A bit here and a bit there, and you have your 10 minutes. I say 10 minutes because average real world flight time is probably closer to 25 minutes than the ideal world max of 31 minutes.

 

[ICHOTT]

To OP
1. Latest fly app?
2. Latest firm aware update?
3. All batteries firmware updated?
4. Fully charged.
5. Hover at eg 3 meters and leave it in hover,
6. how long do you get till it’s at 20%?

I’ve done the first 4, it’s snowing here right now, as soon as it’s stopped I’ll do 5&6 the same and report back?

 

[mugsy1963]

Brand new, Mini2, got battery bank (so 3 batteries in total)... I took it out today for the first time...
Did a few (less than 15' of flying and I had to bring it back for low battery.... then...
Did about 2.5 minutes of video (and maybe another 2 minutes of flying at the most) freshly charged battery at 100%) and the app was already indicating battery down to 63%. it doesn't seem this will last more than 12' ? (if that)... I'm not doing a whole bunch of crazy things, up and down and all that... just getting used to it.. a couple of quick shots but I can see the battery counting down like no other when flying ... is this normal ?? Tried other batteries ....pretty much the same...

I understand the fact this is a small drone and all that but from what I see there is NO way I'll get even close to the advertised flight time. Maybe 15' max and good luck getting it back home !!!

I'll need an 18 wheeler full of batteries right next to me to get any enjoyment out of this... So disappointing... I find myself paying more attention at the battery than the drone itself....

I went out on Thursday and used all 3 batteries and managed 63 minutes but it was freezing

 

[Deleted member 124477]

Battery break-in and storage I found out is the whole thing in long flight times.

 

[ICHOTT]

So here goes, I missed the screen shot at start but it did say 98% and 27 minutes, here are some to 20%

 

[DanMan32]

Unfortunately the times are calculated remaining time and not elapsed time.
For example between 25% and 20% remaining flight time dropped by about 1'20", but that doesn't mean 1:20 elapsed between that period. It could have been 1 minute, it could have been 5 minutes. We can't tell here.

If you provide a recording of the flight log, or better yet the log itself, that would show elapsed time. The tail of the timeline would show total elapsed time.

 

[Bobell69]

Brand new, Mini2, got battery bank (so 3 batteries in total)... I took it out today for the first time...
Did a few (less than 15' of flying and I had to bring it back for low battery.... then...
Did about 2.5 minutes of video (and maybe another 2 minutes of flying at the most) freshly charged battery at 100%) and the app was already indicating battery down to 63%. it doesn't seem this will last more than 12' ? (if that)... I'm not doing a whole bunch of crazy things, up and down and all that... just getting used to it.. a couple of quick shots but I can see the battery counting down like no other when flying ... is this normal ?? Tried other batteries ....pretty much the same...

I understand the fact this is a small drone and all that but from what I see there is NO way I'll get even close to the advertised flight time. Maybe 15' max and good luck getting it back home !!!

I'll need an 18 wheeler full of batteries right next to me to get any enjoyment out of this... So disappointing... I find myself paying more attention at the battery than the drone itself....

I'm getting in the mid 20's with my batteries, so I'm not experiencing the issue that you are facing. Did you do the firmware update on each of the batteries that came out in December?

 

[AussieDronePilot]

Being Summer in Australia, I get 20 to 25 minutes of flight time (at 118m/399ft AGL, doing photo/video at 180m/590ft ASL).

Won’t get to test cold weather flying for another 4 to 5 months. Though when I visited the Rocky Mountains in Colorado over 8 years ago, I got to see the impact cold weather has on batteries. 80% on an iPhone 4s, went to 12% quite quickly and my DSLR went from 100% to ~60%. Try and keep the batteries warm before use, it might help getting a little more flight time.

 

[Audiorent]

I did the Hoover test and started the video when the Mini 2 lifted off.
Then I stopt the video when it wouldn't fly any more, even with the sticks full up.
In my backyard, 3 meters above the ground.
Battery had a 3 times charge.
The video stopped after 26 minutes and some second's.
When I directly tried to charge the battery, fast loading wasn't possible, the accu was to warm for this. It was not realy cold, about 10° C.
So, in corresponding to all the YouTube video's, you can't expect the 31 minutes flight time.
No way.
It makes no sense that hovering takes more energie then traveling from one place to another.