How Cold can it be and still fly?

[BD0G]

Im going to 3 D print battery heaters that use a USB charged heating element.

Found here Battery Heater For DJI MAVIC by Digson

 

[WolfgangStiller]

Ah. Ok. For some reason I thought you were affixing the heat pad to the battery and flying that way.

I've done a lot of flying in -10 to -20 degrees Fahrenheit over the years, but never with the Mavic. I have a similar system to what you describe, but I pretty much use hand warmers exclusively. No particular reason other than I have boxes of them around the house. Basically I pack the hand warmers all around each battery in my pack.

I find that the biggest impact of cold weather is on the baraometers. If you just pull your drone out of the car (or a warm pack), and try to fly right away, you run the risk of condensation in the barometer... and barometers don't like moisture of any kind. To prevent this, I leave the drone out in the cold for an extended period of time prior to takeoff (minimum 10 minutes, preferably 30 minutes to an hour). Right before takeoff I pop in a warm battery.

I also find that keeping a battery in your inner jacket pocket isn't good enough, at least not at -10 to -20 F. My hand warmers in a bag approach has worked much better.

Disclaimer: I've never flown a DJI drone in extreme cold. My experience is entirely with drones I've built and a couple 3DR drones (Iris and Solo).

Should be fun to test out this winter.

(Oh and Happy New Year!)

No need to attach any warming to the battery once you start flying. Once the Mavic takes off the battery will actually get warmer even in 8 F conditions (based on the battery stats I got in Healthy Drones).

 

[erikgraham]

No need to attach any warming to the battery once you start flying. Once the Mavic takes off the battery will actually get warmer even in 8 F conditions (based on the battery stats I got in Healthy Drones).

I take it you haven't flown a naked LiPo in -20 F. We regularly insulate and add warmers to our batteries. But yes. For the most part the heat it generates internally is enough. The issues in extreme cold come with keeping the temperature evenly distributed. These consumer drones like the Mavic have a plastic housing around the lipo, so I imagine that helps retain a little heat. Anyway, I don't plan on flying a Mavic at extremes. It's nice to know it will definitely go beyond the stated specs though.

 

[WolfgangStiller]

I take it you haven't flown a naked LiPo in -20 F. We regularly insulate and add warmers to our batteries. But yes. For the most part the heat it generates internally is enough. The issues in extreme cold come with keeping the temperature evenly distributed. These consumer drones like the Mavic have a plastic housing around the lipo, so I imagine that helps retain a little heat. Anyway, I don't plan on flying a Mavic at extremes. It's nice to know it will definitely go beyond the stated specs though.

That's correct, the battery is in a down jacket with a warming pack directly on it.

 

[ZetallicA]

today 1-15-2018, I updated the firmware everywhere (drone, remote control) and had the latest DJI Go android app on my phone.
I went to the beach. cold -4C temperature.
it took many restarts and re-bindings of the remote control to the Mavic to finally connect it.
then after flying it for 2 or 3 minutes in the cold weather, it keeps getting disconnected and video feed drops.
the DJI Go app keeps telling me that the firmware needs to be upgraded (which I already did from both the phone via Wi-fi and from the computer using USB cable) and on both the mavic and the remote control.
I went back home, conntect it to my computer. the DJI assistant 2 tell me the version is 0.00.0.0.0. (see attached screenshot)