Power drain

[Billpro]

Hi all. Just tested out new note 8 with controller and having it on full brightness just sucked the life out my controller battery with only 1 battery on the drone, please help
also is there a difference between where you connect your phone to the rc
bottom or side?

 

[apeel]

My understanding is that if you use the bottom USB connector on the RC it will NOT try to charge the Android device. Unlike with iOS devices, you cannot disable device charging from the side port when using Android devices. However, if you use the bottom USB port, it will not try to charge the Android device.

 

[DanMan32]

For M2, bottom port does charge the Android. That's evident by my devices telling me "slow charge". Slow charge because original USB specs say it must deliver 500mA.
I would expect the same with M1.

I used to think turning off charging for iOS was commanding the RC to turn off power. Now I believe it's using the iOS API to have the phone stop asking for power. That's probably not a standard API option on an Android and probably why it's not available on the Android version of the app.

 

[apeel]

OK. Thanks for correcting me. I only have an iOS device and you cannot charge it from the bottom port. So I incorrectly assumed that the same is true of android devices.

I know that there are two basic types of USB cables - POWER + DATA (allows data communication and power charging) and POWER ONLY (does not allow data communication). I wonder if anyone makes a DATA ONLY cable (no power) or a POWER BLOCK adapter (passes data through but blocks the power pins) so that it would effectively prevent the RC from charging the Android device, but still let the DJI Go 4 app to work? May be worth looking at amazon for such options.

 

[DanMan32]

Data only might likely cause devices to consider it disconnected as they may sense the power to activate.

I believe you can charge iOS as well from the bottom, just need to enable it in the app. It will be a slow charge though.