Is all this battery charge level stuff just OCD hobbyists?

[SpitFire]

They are very expensive to replace, Check out Mavic Help and Mavic tips for yourself. About care and maintenance of these batteries. I fly my drone until I get a 30% warning, and by the next critical warning which is at 10% which I never Hear, I am on the ground safe.I fly more then once a week, and charge up as many batteries as I think I will need in rotation. Been working for me, 4 years now, I know which on battery is the oldest.

 

[DanMan32]

Bottom line, depends upon your priority. You are either interested in maximizing flight time at all times because you bought a drone to fly it rather than store it, or you are obsessed with prolonging battery life because you naively assume you will still be flying the same aircraft five years from now. The former realize that the latter assumption is absurd. Realistically, if you are a serious flyer, you will be upgrading the drone to a newer model long before your battery maintenance has any relevance. For most of us, that is every year, or every other year. Crashes outside of Refresh also make replacing the now obsolete drone at your expense unrealistic. None of these batteries have a problem within the first year of ownership, no matter how badly you abuse them.

I beg to differ. Many an M2 battery swelled before it's time. Now the swelled batteries may still be electrically sound, because no tolerance is allowed in the package for the swelling, they risk power connection loss to the AC, or unlatching and falling out completely.
Although most of us consider this a defect, keeping them out of heat may have reduced the chance of a problem.

 

[GadgetGuy]

I beg to differ. Many an M2 battery swelled before it's time. Now the swelled batteries may still be electrically sound, because no tolerance is allowed in the package for the swelling, they risk power connection loss to the AC, or unlatching and falling out completely.
Although most of us consider this a defect, keeping them out of heat may have reduced the chance of a problem.

All the swollen M2 batteries I am aware of began swelling at least a year after the manufacturing date, which is why I qualified my post as I did. Initially, it was only thought to be the early manufactured batteries from 07 to 09/2018. However, as time rolled on, swelling started occurring on batteries of all manufacturing dates as they aged beyond one year. I, myself ended up 3 of them, among some 12 M2 batteries. The other 9 are still fine and many are now almost 2 years old. Heat and age of over a year are the conditions than can potentially lead to swelling. We can debate whether swelling after a year is before its time, when the batteries only have a 6 month DJI warranty. It's disappointing, but if you use your batteries frequently, anything after a year is bonus time. The degradation in flight time with age and use precipitates battery replacement annually for me anyway.

 

[PimV]

Ha yes I was like that until my Mavic 2 pro battery left in the drone was found completely drained and dead unable to awake it no matter what I did
The power drains faster whist sat in the drone. The battery was only 6 months old
Also at the same time my old mavic pro same story battery maybe two years old but in great health before I left it plugged in!

When I am not flying, I have always one fully charged battery in the drone (M2P). Nothing happens with it. The charge level doesn’t drop and it doesn’t swell. Of course it will auto discharge after the set period of days.

 

[Mike4884]

it all depends on how you like to fly
if you must extract every last ounce of juice from you batteries and regularly run them down to below 20% then they would need a charge back to the 55 to 75 % value for storage over time of none use
if on the other hand your like me then my first battery warning is set to 40% wich gives me around 18 to 20 minutes of flight time and i like to be on the ground fairly soon after the alarm sounds ,once the battery has cooled and recovered i will have 2 lights solid on the battery and i know that i am good to store for a good couple of weeks if i cant get out to fly during that time ,i only charge my batteries the evening before a flying day and i know that they will be fine my auto discharge setting on the MPP is set for three days ,the MM of course does not have that facility so i will use the hub to charge my Ipad to drop some charge off to 75% so they are not sitting fully charged for long periods ,there is nothing wrong in just using the auto discharge method if thats what makes you happy, as has been said many times ,its fully charged or very low charge, that causes the most harm to the cells over time ,and is made worse by extreme heat

Actually believe it or not storage charge on these batteries, well the recommended with any lipo per cell is 3.8v and 30% is right there....this is why i dont know why some of these guys are charging them back up to 50 -60% after each flight....they are honestly wasting their own time....i go out, get a flight in and stop around 30% that puts me at 3.8v per cell ...sometimes i shut down at even 25% and thats @3.78 per cell .. So i had a nice flight and my lipos are in storage charge....done....also remember people these are hv cells so your normal lipo will not read 3.78v per cell at 25% ....

Now i will say if u will be away for more then a week sure, charge them to 50- 60 %.... as we all know lipo's lose life very slowly overtime. This way when u get back weeks later the lipo is not flat.

 

[Richiebricker]

The best answer is to always keep flying, cool, charge and repeat multiple times a day. That it the prescription I follow. It allows me to enjoy the quad I bought rather then stressing over what is the proper storage percentage. If they are always in the air, no worries....?

When I know I won’t be flying for a couple days, 30-50% charge....

Hes got the right idea, Fly the hell out of em and dont store em

 

[Richiebricker]

Bottom line, depends upon your priority. You are either interested in maximizing flight time at all times because you bought a drone to fly it rather than store it, or you are obsessed with prolonging battery life because you naively assume you will still be flying the same aircraft five years from now. The former realize that the latter assumption is absurd. Realistically, if you are a serious flyer, you will be upgrading the drone to a newer model long before your battery maintenance has any relevance. For most of us, that is every year, or every other year. Crashes outside of Refresh also make replacing the now obsolete drone at your expense unrealistic. None of these batteries have a problem within the first year of ownership, no matter how badly you abuse them.

Never thought of it like that but its very TRUE

 

[Pappy]

just a thought with all the concern about the batteries, whats the situation regarding charging and discharging the remote control, is there any procedure for that or is it a different battery..

Controller battery doesn’t go through the rapid discharge process so there’s much more stress on it. Also, I don’t think it’s a LiPo but I’m just guessing here

The battery for the remote control uses the :Lithium-Ion chemistry, the same as what you will find in laptops and phones.