Battery error midflight = ahhhh!

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A few months ago, I had a pretty bad crash where my drone slammed into a guardrail in a parking lot. The impact was so severe that the battery popped out, the camera became crooked and a few other issues I wrote about here: viewtopic.php?t=26655&p=245770

Anyway, I kept the battery from the crash despite the crack on the corner of the bottom plastic and the bruise on the top, using it as a last battery in my rotation.

The other day my phantom was flying a few thousand feet out in a valley along the south coast of Italy where I'm visiting right now (photos below). I took off from atop a hill and was flying down into a large residential valley so my altitude was -150ft.

Suddenly and without warning the battery dropped to 10% (from ~50%) and low battery RTH triggered...so it started to go from -150ft all the way up to 120ft which is my RTH height setting! Ain't nobody got time for that!

I interrupted the RTH and hustled it home as fast as possible (in ATTI mode to gain every last bit of speed I could get!). I watched the telemetry info closely as it raced home and the battery level continued to drop precipitously.

A minute or so later I heard the drone again and was SO relieved to see it zooming right towards my hill. It was already doing that auto-land thing, so I had to fight it to gain altitude to get back uphill to me but it seemed to have enough power to gain a bit of altitude.

Anyways, I hand caught it and thanked my lucky stars that it made it back...with 3% battery left as you can see in the screenshot.

Obviously that's the last time I'm flying with that battery...
 

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One more thing. It was my first time using Vision+ Utility by KA YUE MAK
https://appsto.re/us/tSdf1.i and I had amped up the transmitter powers as recommended.

I also had turned on flight logger. ***Does anyone know how I actually get the logs from my flight?*** the app description says something about using iTunes to get them? Do I really need to plug it in to do so? I'll need more detail than that hah.

And do the flight logs keep track of battery life? I'd love to dig in and diagnose what happened a bit and make sure my recollection is correct.
 
Hi jwegener,

Very lucky you were able to get it back. Good idea disposing of that battery. Sounds like at least one of the cells is damaged.

As for the Vision+ Utility, I have that on Android and absolutely love it. The flight logs are a great addition. You can use them in Dashware to overlay the flight stats like in my videos etc.

As for using it on a idevice, unless you have some type of file manager that allows you to access other app directories, you need to use iTunes File Sharing feature, you should see something like this in iTunes for the Utility App.

iphone-apps-file-sharing.png


It should give you a csv file that has all the flight details, eg how many satellites etc note, only records that info when the Phantom is in range, eg if you fly out of FPV range it can't record that information etc.

Hope it helps.
 
3% is as close as you can get to a lost Phantom - very lucky.
I suspect that battery error msg is a product of the latest battery firmware.
I had a battery that started to go low battery at 50% but as long as I was aware of this I could still use it.
After the battery upgrade, I sent it up 400 ft over the sea and it was at 78% when it brought up that message and it wouldn't go from the screen, making it tricky to pilot back. Now the battery isn't useful for anything.
i-Pcczxr4-L.jpg
 
I had a battery that started to go low battery at 50% but as long as I was aware of this I could still use it.
After the battery upgrade, I sent it up 400 ft over the sea and it was at 78% when it brought up that message and it wouldn't go from the screen, making it tricky to pilot back. Now the battery isn't useful for anything.

Any idea what made your battery go bad? Approximately how many charges did it have? Had it been used in a particular way that you suspect might have caused it to start go 'Low Battery'?

LiPos can start not to report charge levels accurately if never run down to low charge once in a while. I believe DJI advices to do this every 20 charges. I think thats a little often - but it might be a good idea to do once in a while. But not too often, as it will lower the life/health of the battery a little bit every time.

But I imagine it could also be a defective battery? Or perhaps a damaged battery (crash?)?
 
Any idea what made your battery go bad? Approximately how many charges did it have? Had it been used in a particular way that you suspect might have caused it to start go 'Low Battery'?
It's a long time back but from memory that battery had been left charged for too long while I was between Phantoms.
No problems like that these days now that they auto discharge after a few days without use.
 
The battery most likely was damaged from the crash. I had one do the same thing and when it drops from 65% to 8% the Phantom kicks in the autoland feature and it make no difference where is at or what's under it.
You did good getting control. Mine said auto landing and did just that, no stick control. Thank goodness the Find My Phantom feature worked like a charm. Drove right up to it many blocks away.. Luck it landed in a front yard so I could just pick it up and run. The second time down in the woods. That's when I realized it was definitely the battery. Disposed of it too.
 

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