M2P battery bricking

[RadioFlyer]

So I use my old trusty M2P sparingly (say every three months or so) & yesterday I wanted to fly it so I went to charge the batteries and one of them was stuck with one bar.

After researching this exhaustively, I was told a firmware upgrade may do the trick, so I updated all the firmware with the battery that actually worked, then plugged the bricked battery into the bird and it fires up, but will not charge. I’ve them hooked the drone to the PC and opened the DJI Mavic assistant to refresh the software and hopefully upgrade the battery, but it won’t allow you to perform this action unless you have at least 40% battery which I obviously don’t with one bar. So with 25% or less charge remaining does anyone here have a workaround?

Much Appreciated!

 

[dirkclod]

it won’t upgrade with low battery or says not to. If that was the case I’d try anyway.

 

[RadioFlyer]

App will not allow a firmware upgrade or refresh unless there’s 40% or more. I’m trying to find a way around this or a way to get the battery manually charged enough to perform the refresh if that’s possible?

 

[dirkclod]

App will not allow a firmware upgrade or refresh unless there’s 40% or more. I’m trying to find a way around this or a way to get the battery manually charged enough to perform the refresh if that’s possible?

I knew app wouldn’t but thought maybe assistant would. Sorry
me no help but sure someone can tell ya. Good luck.

 

[GFields]

So I use my old trusty M2P sparingly (say every three months or so) & yesterday I wanted to fly it so I went to charge the batteries and one of them was stuck with one bar.

After researching this exhaustively, I was told a firmware upgrade may do the trick, so I updated all the firmware with the battery that actually worked, then plugged the bricked battery into the bird and it fires up, but will not charge. I’ve them hooked the drone to the PC and opened the DJI Mavic assistant to refresh the software and hopefully upgrade the battery, but it won’t allow you to perform this action unless you have at least 40% battery which I obviously don’t with one bar. So with 25% or less charge remaining does anyone here have a workaround?

Much Appreciated!

Found this article. It might help not sure

 

[dirkclod]

Good tread especially when you go down to the Mavic batterys

 

[Jorge Vergara Latoja]

App will not allow a firmware upgrade or refresh unless there’s 40% or more. I’m trying to find a way around this or a way to get the battery manually charged enough to perform the refresh if that’s possible?

Hello, I understand that you cannot update the battery firmware because it asks you to have more charge. You say that you are seeing the option to charge the battery manually, so I deduce that when charging it on the charger, directly on the charger or on the hub, the battery is not charged, it is like the battery is blocked... I suggest you charge it manually, you won't be able to do it through the pin contacts of the battery itself because the integrated battery charge control card is what prevents it. You would have to open the battery, I suggest you use isopropyl alcohol, apply it to the joints of the upper and lower casing and use a scalpel to separate the covers, it will do the cutting action if the joint of the covers is not opened, once you get it you apply alcohol with a brush to help take it off then you can use plastic tweezers to continue taking off the covers...Once you do, very carefully remove the top cover, there is a flexible tape that goes from the top cover and it is connects to the battery charge controller board. Using an external lipo battery charger, you must adjust it to charge four cells, with a charging voltage of 17 V and a charging current of 2 A. and using alligator-type clamps, you comment them on the plate where the cells are soldered. the battery, there you will find the power connection cables of the cell bank, at the points of the positive and negative welds you connect the clamps and start charging the battery. Do not even think of unsoldering the cables from the positive and negative points of the battery to have a better connection with the alligator clips, because you will block and permanently turn off the battery. If you have a 4-pin SMD horizontal pitch wafer connector, you could make a connector to monitor the charge of each of the cells, through the connector and monitoring cable that is connected to the battery charge control board. that connector you can disconnect it and there is no risk of blocking and turning off the battery. If you do not have it, you should check with a voltmeter the charge that the battery cell bank is recovering. Once you recover the voltage above 50% of the battery charge, you would be able to try to update the battery firmware, previously you must assemble the battery and without sealing it, put it in the drone to do the update. I hope that what I explain to you is clear to you, if not, there are videos on YouTube where they explain how to recover the charge from the M2P batteries, using the method that I have just explained to you. Good luck.

 

[dirkclod]

I would YouTube all my options before I went into the battery.
I mod a lot but personally I do not go into the battery and could be dangerous .
here was just one I found.

 

[GFields]

Hello, I understand that you cannot update the battery firmware because it asks you to have more charge. You say that you are seeing the option to charge the battery manually, so I deduce that when charging it on the charger, directly on the charger or on the hub, the battery is not charged, it is like the battery is blocked... I suggest you charge it manually, you won't be able to do it through the pin contacts of the battery itself because the integrated battery charge control card is what prevents it. You would have to open the battery, I suggest you use isopropyl alcohol, apply it to the joints of the upper and lower casing and use a scalpel to separate the covers, it will do the cutting action if the joint of the covers is not opened, once you get it you apply alcohol with a brush to help take it off then you can use plastic tweezers to continue taking off the covers...Once you do, very carefully remove the top cover, there is a flexible tape that goes from the top cover and it is connects to the battery charge controller board. Using an external lipo battery charger, you must adjust it to charge four cells, with a charging voltage of 17 V and a charging current of 2 A. and using alligator-type clamps, you comment them on the plate where the cells are soldered. the battery, there you will find the power connection cables of the cell bank, at the points of the positive and negative welds you connect the clamps and start charging the battery. Do not even think of unsoldering the cables from the positive and negative points of the battery to have a better connection with the alligator clips, because you will block and permanently turn off the battery. If you have a 4-pin SMD horizontal pitch wafer connector, you could make a connector to monitor the charge of each of the cells, through the connector and monitoring cable that is connected to the battery charge control board. that connector you can disconnect it and there is no risk of blocking and turning off the battery. If you do not have it, you should check with a voltmeter the charge that the battery cell bank is recovering. Once you recover the voltage above 50% of the battery charge, you would be able to try to update the battery firmware, previously you must assemble the battery and without sealing it, put it in the drone to do the update. I hope that what I explain to you is clear to you, if not, there are videos on YouTube where they explain how to recover the charge from the M2P batteries, using the method that I have just explained to you. Good luck.

This is VERY dangerous advice

 

[Jorge Vergara Latoja]

This is VERY dangerous advice

I understand you, but I based myself on what he was arguing about seeing options for how to recover his battery. I fully understand the care that must be taken when handling lipo batteries, I also had my apprehensions about this method to "recover" the battery. I personally have done it and it works very well, I have also used Texas Instrument's EV2400 interface to clear faults in the software of the BQ9003RS microcontroller, installed on the battery control card, so it is no longer necessary to "open " Battery. If you are careful when handling batteries, you should not have any incidents with them. When you have knowledge of how to do it, respecting safety, there is no danger when handling them. Regards.

 

[Bramavic2]

Very interested in following this case. I also use my M2P seldom and last year a lost the controller for letting it run out of juice. Tried disconnecting of internal cables as suggested, but the mainboard was fired. The tech told me it is a common problem due to some bad engineering of the controller. Had to buy a new one and now I keep a note on my calendar to check it from time to time.

 

[Jorge Vergara Latoja]

Very interested in following this case. I also use my M2P seldom and last year a lost the controller for letting it run out of juice. Tried disconnecting of internal cables as suggested, but the mainboard was fired. The tech told me it is a common problem due to some bad engineering of the controller. Had to buy a new one and now I keep a note on my calendar to check it from time to time.

Hello. Very true what you say. You have to be very careful with the batteries, both with the drone batteries and the RC battery. The RC battery does not have much complicity in changing it. In fact, there are several videos on YouTube that show the entire process to be able to do it safely. As for the drone batteries, that's another matter. I suffered a failure in one of my batteries, its condition was that I could turn it on and off without problems. When I put it on the drone, through the DJI Go4 App, it did not allow me to see the telemetry of the battery charge, as well as any other battery data. The App told me that the battery had a fault and that I should contact DJI, for the rest, it also did not allow me to take off and fly the drone. This situation led me to find out more background about battery settings, so I was able to find several videos on YouTube to give me an idea of how to "recover" my battery. I have learned that DJI Smart Batteries have a microprocessor in charge of supervising battery charging, discharging, automatic discharge programming, battery voltages and currents. There are devices to be able to connect with the battery and through software you can monitor the condition of the battery and make a diagnosis of the condition of the battery, failures that can be generated in the battery and that you can reset, managing to normalize the battery. There are values that you must always respect, such as minimum voltage values in the batteries, in order to avoid blocking them or damaging their load cells, it is very important to maintain supervision of the battery charges, although there is an automatic discharge that you can program through the App, which currently allows you to program the discharge of the batteries every 5 days, draining a percentage of the battery charge. I was able to recover my battery that I know was blocked using a Texas Instrument model EV2400 interface, I downloaded the software from the same TI page, for which I think it is very necessary to have that interface, which is also compatible for batteries of Phantom, Mavic 3 and Inspire 2, since that interface through its software you can choose the type of microprocessor that has the charge control smart card installed. Adj that I encourage you to investigate more and be more interested in the care and maintenance of your batteries. Regards.!

 

[AMann]

When the voltage goes too low, the internal battery charge controller goes into a state that prevents the battery from charging. There is a way to reset the firmware setting, but it requires a firmware hack called “DJI Battery Killer” that a guy in Ukraine wrote. It’s useful for diy replacing the cells in a battery but requires some familiarity with programming and a external constant power supply hooked up to the controller to keep it from locking up while changing out the cells.