DJI Mavic, Air and Mini Drones
Friendly, Helpful & Knowledgeable Community
Join Us Now

Time to retire this battery?

basyok

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 16, 2020
Messages
173
Reactions
93
Age
54
Location
Oaxaca
Flight log got cut into 2 for some reason, but the second half is similar...

 
Since your battery is a Single Failure Point (if it dies in the air everything else doesn't matter) then I would retire it in a heart beat.
 
  • Like
Reactions: RMS001 and basyok
That is a perfect battery for non-flying testing, firmware upgrades, and stuff like that. Test camera settings, maybe hovering close to the ground testing but I will not fly higher than 5 feet with a battery like that.
 
Agree with what others have said. Now...what will happen eventually, is that that one cell will "collapse" and you'll go into a forced landing scenario. One other thing to try is to follow AirData's recommendations on battery maintenance and see if that has any effect. You only had 35 seconds of deviations, so it would be interesting to know what was going with the flight during that time. For example, were you in Sport mode? What was the weather like, etc.
 
  • Like
Reactions: basyok
Agree with what others have said. Now...what will happen eventually, is that that one cell will "collapse" and you'll go into a forced landing scenario. One other thing to try is to follow AirData's recommendations on battery maintenance and see if that has any effect. You only had 35 seconds of deviations, so it would be interesting to know what was going with the flight during that time. For example, were you in Sport mode? What was the weather like, etc.
I've had consistent deviations on cell #3 of the battery for a while now. It's never been a good battery, but too late to claim any kind of warranty on it (also I'm in Mexico, making any of that much harder).

I will count my lucky stars that I haven't had an emergency with that battery so far, and retire it, except for testing and such, like zeusfl said above.
 
I've had consistent deviations on cell #3 of the battery for a while now. It's never been a good battery, but too late to claim any kind of warranty on it (also I'm in Mexico, making any of that much harder).

I will count my lucky stars that I haven't had an emergency with that battery so far, and retire it, except for testing and such, like zeusfl said above.
Good call. In case you're curious, this is what happened to my Mavic Air when I had a cell collapse. Don't be me!

 
  • Like
Reactions: basyok and BigAl07
Good call. In case you're curious, this is what happened to my Mavic Air when I had a cell collapse. Don't be me!



I'd love to see a way to extract and display the errors on the video :) I've already asked to developer of "

Telemetry Overlay"​

if their program has this ability yet.

@0Kajuna0
 
Guys ... sounds like you're missing the obvious here...

It's not the red cell 3 column, the total battery cell deviation is just a tad above those 0,07V that Airdata classify as "major" ... instead look at the cell voltages in all cells, down to 3,1 & 3,2? This battery have been discharged to a very low percentage (those pages the OP have chosen not to share).

Cell 3 might be the weakest & by discharging a battery to low levels that will show up in larger deviations ... a DJI battery normally is at approx 3,5v/cell at 0%.
 
  • Like
Reactions: basyok
Guys ... sounds like you're missing the obvious here...

It's not the red cell 3 column, the total battery cell deviation is just a tad above those 0,07V that Airdata classify as "major" ... instead look at the cell voltages in all cells, down to 3,1 & 3,2? This battery have been discharged to a very low percentage (those pages the OP have chosen not to share).

Cell 3 might be the weakest & by discharging a battery to low levels that will show up in larger deviations ... a DJI battery normally is at approx 3,5v/cell at 0%.
Thanks for pointing this out. Yes, i have run this battery low. Is that what would cause the low voltage and the deviations?

The thing is, i have also run other batteries low before, and this battery is a similar age to my other batteries, and airdata shows it having a similar remaining capacity (93%). My other batteries voltage doesn't drop this low, and I've used them more (~27hrs vs 21) - i have been avoiding this battery in my rotation because of the deviations.

I think this battery might have been a bit of dud from the start.
 
...I think this battery might have been a bit of dud from the start.
It possibly is ... but you have shared way to little data to judge anything. The closer 3V/cell a battery comes the bigger the tendency is for larger deviations. LiPo wear isn't black & white ... the farther away from storage voltage a cell comes & the longer it stays there accelerate the wear. Generally speaking, the "usable" voltage span for a LiPo is between 3,2 - 4,2V ... when it goes below 3V major wear & permanent degradation occurs.

Furthermore ... it's impossible to judge a battery out from a single flight, in the payed Airdata subscriptions you have the possibility to "bundle" all use for a battery out from all logs there & look at the trends regarding cell deviations, total theoretical flight time, total full capacity ... this will give you a possibility to see degrading trends & leave out certain batteries that perform worse in colder/hotter ambient temps or in high amp draw like in Sport mode use. When those "keep an eye on" batteries start to misbehave in ordinary conditions it's time to put them on desk duties only.
 
  • Like
Reactions: basyok
Lycus Tech Mavic Air 3 Case

DJI Drone Deals

New Threads

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
131,106
Messages
1,559,915
Members
160,087
Latest member
O'Ryan