New air owner

alx101 · Feb 16, 2023

Just got a MA for cheap and came with 3 batteries. One charged up fine and in the app showed very low use. I assume the others would show the same but they won't charge at all. Looked it up on YouTube and I'm not confident I have the skills to open them up and fix the issue myself. My question is ....is there someplace that can refresh or repair these at a reasonable price because those Damm batteries ain't cheap and I would like to have more than one to fly with.

Thanks for the ad and FYI I was a Yuneec guy (part 107) for years and years....made the switch finally cuz the ma came to me for $100

slup · Feb 16, 2023

Hi there & welcome to the forum

The MA gen 1 is in general a very good & competent craft... fast & with a splendid wind resistance including many possibilities that newer DJI crafts miss... the use of 3:rd party apps (like Litchi) for waypoint missions even out of signal range, just to mention one. It still uses the DJI GO4 app (only downloadable through DJI's own site HERE as the app stores doesn't have it anymore), the app is rather fully featured as opposite the newer DJI Fly app used for the newer crafts... even if it have caught up some nowadays. It's also a very portable craft with the possibility to be manoeuvred with the RC, only with a mobile device without RC & just by hand gestures. Camera wise it's fully sufficient for personal use, in good lightening & if cropping rarely is needed.

You have the full downloadable user manual here --> https://dl.djicdn.com/downloads/Mavic Air/20180525/Mavic Air User Manual v1.2.pdf

It's only one drawback, & unfortunately a big one... DJI have stopped to make batteries for it & no 3:rd party have taken over.

LiPo batteries doesn't like to be unused, the cell voltage slowly decreases until the level is below 3V where the battery starts to be permanently & seriously damaged through electrolyte decomposition. All DJI batteries have a Battery Management System (BMS) board inside which mainly turns the battery off pretty much permanently when a cell falls too low. Theoretically the BMS can be forced to open the circuit again but that is with a lot of special equipment & heavy DIY. And it's no use to just go through all that work to just restart the BMS... it turned off due to that the cells had become bad, so you need to swap some or all 3 cells out & get them connected.

So... refresh or repair bad LiPo cells is in general not possible, you might be able to swap the cells inside the battery enclosure & restart the BMS but that is a serious DIY with only YT videos to guide you how to do it & what equipment you need. The only thing you can try is to leave the battery in the charger for a long time, like 24h (use only the charge cable, without the charge hub)... if you're lucky that might slowly get them up in voltage... but personally I wouldn't trust a battery being that low so it appears dead even if it resurrects, pretty high risk it will later fail airborne.

Have a MA myself, doesn't fly it much nowadays as i'm putting my time on flying FPV quads instead... but put great care on my 8 MA batteries anyway with at least one full charge cycle each quarter to make them last, & similar to the RC LiPo battery.

GFields · Feb 16, 2023

alx101 said:
Just got a MA for cheap and came with 3 batteries. One charged up fine and in the app showed very low use. I assume the others would show the same but they won't charge at all. Looked it up on YouTube and I'm not confident I have the skills to open them up and fix the issue myself. My question is ....is there someplace that can refresh or repair these at a reasonable price because those Damm batteries ain't cheap and I would like to have more than one to fly with.

Thanks for the ad and FYI I was a Yuneec guy (part 107) for years and years....made the switch finally cuz the ma came to me for $100

Greetings from Birmingham Alabama USA, welcome to the forum! We look forward to hearing from you!

MAvic_South_Oz · Feb 16, 2023

alx101 said:
Just got a MA for cheap and came with 3 batteries. One charged up fine and in the app showed very low use. I assume the others would show the same but they won't charge at all.

Welcome to the forum.

It might be worth putting the batteries onto charge for a good 24 - 48 hrs, this has worked for some batteries in the past, for various DJI drones.
For seemingly dead batteries, the charging lights sometimes don't come on at all until sometime many hours later, even 24 hrs or more.

It's important, use the cable direct to each battery singularly in turn, not in a charging hub (if you have that).

If it works that's great, if not, then was worth a shot.

Keep an eye out for cheap batteries (crashed Air drones with all 3, or 2 flymore batteries spare etc), or even a complete Air drone with flymore (3 batteries) and a spare body for parts that might be needed some day.

alx101 · Feb 16, 2023

Thank you all who replied with experience and wisdom I did leave the batteries on the charger not the hub for over 24 hours that's how I got one of the three to actually take a charge and it's performed remarkably well and as I indicated the app showed that it had been used very little and I can only assume the other two batteries would be in the same state at this point what if I got to lose at this point I might as well open them up and at the very least it'll be a learning experience if I'm unsuccessful. I'll keep an eye out for some use batteries but I'm a little leery about that I might just have to bite the bullet save my nickels and dimes and buy a new one if they're available and I think they are they're just too **** expense