Why such high battery consumption on my MA when just turned on?

[Wolfeel]

This might be a stupid question, but here goes from a new MA pilot. I have just bought a Mavic Air and are still fine tuning settings and trying to improve my pictures and vids. Doing so the aircraft has to be turned on and the controller hooked up to my phone (Android). Why does my MA use up so much battery just sitting on the table, the aircraft fan has to kick in to cool the MA, is this normal? Also all light are blinking. So the simple question is there some kind of mode where you can play around with the setting without loosing 20% battery pre-flight.
Same thing when transfering pictures, I know I can take out SD-card, but just find the corded download easier and quicker.
I use an Android and like everyone else the controller charges my phone, so both the controller and phone goes really hot. This was improved by turning off fast charging like suggested here on the Forum. The phone still gets charged, but without loosing energy as heat.

 

[Lake_Flyer]

It's normal. A Mavic Pro also loses 10-20% battery during an update. Playing with the simulator the same.
Playing around before every flight? That's only in the beginning. When you're all set up with latest firmware and you have settled on your personal basic settings, what is there to do preflight, other than doing your checklists in the field? Transferring pictures would only take place after flight, so that's hardly an issue.

Just make sure your battery is fully charged again, after fiddling and updating, and before your flight.

 

[Kilrah]

The electronics in there are highly complex and sophisticated, and akin to a laptop running under heavy load they draw a lot of power (about 15W). There is no "idle mode" that would switch some stuff in a low power state, everything runs exactly the same whether in flight or sitting on the ground.

 

[Wolfeel]

Thanks for the quick reply, that is comforting to hear. Love that little thing.

 

[DJI_dutch]

Thanks for the quick reply, that is comforting to hear. Love that little thing.

Don’t worry about it.! You’re drone has some high advanced technology in that has to be running. The fan is to cool the battery and all of the chips. No worries friend! Fly safe!

 

[synaesthesia]

The Mavic Air is basically a flying high performance computer capable of taking input from a large number of sensors and processing all of the information in real time. The fan is needed to stop it from cooking itself. Sure, it probably wouldn't be entirely needed if DJI fully optimized the drone to have a "landed" power setting that turned everything down while it was on the ground but I doubt the effort and additional complexity would be worth the savings (and I assume DJI think so too, since said mode doesn't exist).

 

[amanakoinum]

The Mavic Air is basically a flying high performance computer capable of taking input from a large number of sensors and processing all of the information in real time. The fan is needed to stop it from cooking itself. Sure, it probably wouldn't be entirely needed if DJI fully optimized the drone to have a "landed" power setting that turned everything down while it was on the ground but I doubt the effort and additional complexity would be worth the savings (and I assume DJI think so too, since said mode doesn't exist).

I highly doubt that.
My racers have significantly more power and significantly higher sensor rates than anything DJI but don't require extra cooling.

I bet the "high performance computer capable of taking input from a large number of sensors and processing all of the information in real time" is not faster than an F4 racer flight controller capable of 32kHz rates. It does come with a 168MHz single core CPU.

 

[synaesthesia]

I highly doubt that.
My racers have significantly more power and significantly higher sensor rates than anything DJI but don't require extra cooling.

I bet the "high performance computer capable of taking input from a large number of sensors and processing all of the information in real time" is not faster than an F4 racer flight controller capable of 32kHz rates. It does come with a 168MHz single core CPU.

The image processor alone (Ambarella H1-A1-RH) is significantly more powerful than the F4 flight controller, since that is (IIRC) a 1.2GHz dual core ARM chip - and that's before you consider all of the other hardware inside the drone.

 

[Kilrah]

The image processor alone (Ambarella H1-A1-RH) is significantly more powerful than the F4 flight controller, since that is (IIRC) a 1.2GHz dual core ARM chip

There isn't a single word in there that is correct or applies to the Mavic Air, but whatever.

 

[amanakoinum]

The image processor alone (Ambarella H1-A1-RH) is significantly more powerful than the F4 flight controller, since that is (IIRC) a 1.2GHz dual core ARM chip - and that's before you consider all of the other hardware inside the drone.

OK, but my GoPro on my Racers come with the same or similar image processor. Not much heat or noise on idle.
Still does't explain the high power consumtion just turned on to me.

 

[Kilrah]

As said there is no "idle" on DJI aircraft. All systems run at the same load at all times anytime power is on, camera encodes as if it's recording evenw hen it isn't, just not dumping the result to the card etc.
Your GoPro does not continuously analyze 7 video streams for movement and object recognition either.

And that processor isn't used in the MA anyway.

 

[synaesthesia]

There isn't a single word in there that is correct or applies to the Mavic Air, but whatever.

I see your snide remark and raise you to full pedant! You used an "or" qualifier so I only need to prove one statement is correct(!)

"There isn't a single word in there that is correct" -> one specification sheet clearly stating the CPU

/majorvictory

For the bonus round though, since I am not intentionally trying to mislead and did clearly state IIRC (if I remember correctly) - DJI stated that the Mavic Air has the same image processor as the Phantom 4 pro, which is the Ambarella H1-A1-RH. Just saying.

OK, but my GoPro on my Racers come with the same or similar image processor. Not much heat or noise on idle.
Still does't explain the high power consumtion just turned on to me.

There is more than just the one chip, I was merely biting at your super powerful "168MHz single core CPU". The fact is it doesn't do power management, if you turn it on, everything is on. If you turn it off, everything is off. As you can see in this image (stolen from RCGeeks), there is a lot of stuff crammed into a relatively small package, all running at full power whenever the drone is on:

 

[sberfield]

I don't know for sure, but the Spark uses the Myriad 2 VPU for processing visual inputs. Would imagine the Air does as well. It's a pretty powerful chip, but low power and probably doesn't kick out a lot of heat. But with multiple sensor cameras, the GPS, the gymbal, the main camera, the IMU, and, I assume, a separate CPU all in a very small enclosed body, I tend to think a fan is probably necessary. ANd it sure does sound like they could use a "resting" power mode.

 

[rblom]

I'm also new to the MA, so apologies if you can already do this without me knowing.
Having DJI GO with your "cached" drone(s) with all your settings, firmware status etc would help not force you to have the physical drone powered on/connected for simple tasks. Then you can modify all settings offline as you please, and when connecting these new settings will be synced to the drone. This would also allow you to make sure new firmware etc is downloaded locally to the phone/pad before you are heading out without consuming battery on the drone.
While asking, being able to save multiple profiles with your preferred settings would be useful. With an import/export function we could all easily share best practices/settings

 

[twitchyzero]

The Mavic Air is basically a flying high performance computer capable of taking input from a large number of sensors and processing all of the information in real time. The fan is needed to stop it from cooking itself. Sure, it probably wouldn't be entirely needed if DJI fully optimized the drone to have a "landed" power setting that turned everything down while it was on the ground but I doubt the effort and additional complexity would be worth the savings (and I assume DJI think so too, since said mode doesn't exist).

lol @ high performance
it's not a 36-threaded HEDT system, love it when quadcopter enthusiasts over exaggerate.

you're correct there's a fair bit to process in real time, but it's still a mobile chip in the end, The Mavic Pro had only a gig of RAM

 

[zackdbassist]

I'm also new to the MA, so apologies if you can already do this without me knowing.
Having DJI GO with your "cached" drone(s) with all your settings, firmware status etc would help not force you to have the physical drone powered on/connected for simple tasks. Then you can modify all settings offline as you please, and when connecting these new settings will be synced to the drone. This would also allow you to make sure new firmware etc is downloaded locally to the phone/pad before you are heading out without consuming battery on the drone.
While asking, being able to save multiple profiles with your preferred settings would be useful. With an import/export function we could all easily share best practices/settings

AFAIK, it can't be done. When the bird is not connected, the app shows a generic setting screen and any changes you make is not retained/saved.

 

[synaesthesia]

lol @ high performance
it's not a 36-threaded HEDT system, love it when quadcopter enthusiasts over exaggerate.

you're correct there's a fair bit to process in real time, but it's still a mobile chip in the end, The Mavic Pro had only a gig of RAM

High performance is relative though, in the world of devices measuring 168x83x49 (which is a similar volume to most netbooks/tablet computers), the Mavic Air is relatively "high performance". Sure it's not data centre scale HPC, it's no super computer, but in comparison to all of the other devices occupying the same sort of space, it's high performance computing. You are certainly correct though - it wouldn't even give the average desktop computer a run for its money.