How to drain battery

[Harald]

Anybody knows how to drain the battery with the new firmware? Now the engines stop @15%.......
After 20 recharges it's recommended by DJI to drain the battery to about 8%, but how?

 

[M.Tigelaar]

Re: How to drain battery

I set them back to 12% with 3.0 and then go back to 3.2

 

[tedw123]

Re: How to drain battery

Anybody knows how to drain the battery with the new firmware? Now the engines stop @15%.......
After 20 recharges it's recommended by DJI to drain the battery complete, but how?

You should never drain completely or battery damage will occur. DJI suggests not below 8%.

 

[cougar]

Re: How to drain battery

Anybody knows how to drain the battery with the new firmware? Now the engines stop @15%.......
After 20 recharges it's recommended by DJI to drain the battery complete, but how?

You should never drain completely or battery damage will occur. DJI suggests not below 8%.

Running the Phantom does not completely drain batteries, it will shut down at 8% via the built in smart controls.
The issue at hand, is that now motors stop at 15% so how do you drain from 15 - 8% other then revert back to old firmware.

 

[Dirty Bird]

Re: How to drain battery

The issue at hand, is that now motors stop at 15% so how do you drain from 15 - 8% other then revert back to old firmware.

The latest firmware STOPS the motors @ 15%? What if you are at 500'? Why in the Hell would they do that???

This is why I happily run 3.0...

 

[cougar]

Re: How to drain battery

The issue at hand, is that now motors stop at 15% so how do you drain from 15 - 8% other then revert back to old firmware.

The latest firmware STOPS the motors @ 15%? What if you are at 500'? Why in the Hell would they do that???

This is why I happily run 3.0...

Sorry, It auto-lands and stops the motors. Before you could drain battery farther (to 8%)

 

[Jayson Hanes]

Re: How to drain battery

I'm not sure what you guys are flying, but, my phantom 2 v+ does NOT shut down until it's running at 0% for about 30 seconds. You are also SUPPOSED to drain the batteries flat every 20 cycles as part of good HEALTH per DJI... so.. not sure where the false info come from.

Anyway, I bring my phantom in close at 8%, and then keep force-hovering until 0% (you can fight it from landing..) .. then let it sit until it dies on it own.. then re-charge... I'm over 100 cycles on each of my 2 original batteries.. no issues.

 

[tedw123]

Re: How to drain battery

The issue at hand, is that now motors stop at 15% so how do you drain from 15 - 8% other then revert back to old firmware.

The latest firmware STOPS the motors @ 15%? What if you are at 500'? Why in the Hell would they do that???

This is why I happily run 3.0...

The engines don't stop mid air at 15%

 

[cougar]

Re: How to drain battery

I'm not sure what you guys are flying, but, my phantom 2 v+ does NOT shut down until it's running at 0% for about 30 seconds. You are also SUPPOSED to drain the batteries flat every 20 cycles as part of good HEALTH per DJI... so.. not sure where the false info come from.

Anyway, I bring my phantom in close at 8%, and then keep force-hovering until 0% (you can fight it from landing..) .. then let it sit until it dies on it own.. then re-charge... I'm over 100 cycles on each of my 2 original batteries.. no issues.

Have 4 batteries and 2 PV2+ and all is the same, shuts down power @ 8%.
Where do you read 0% from, phantom assistant or the App?

 

[Jayson Hanes]

Re: How to drain battery

uh.. lol.. from the vision app.. I'm still in the air at 0% (usually 20 minutes of flight).. just did it last night again.

 

[cougar]

Re: How to drain battery

uh.. lol.. from the vision app.. I'm still in the air at 0% (usually 20 minutes of flight).. just did it last night again.

There you go, battery is not at 0% only flying time is done. Plug the phantom in to your computer and you will see about 8% left when it stops responding. This is with using the old firmware.

 

[slothead]

Re: How to drain battery

Man! I'm fully confused! But I haven't updated anything yet (the Vision App seems to updated itself though), so I'll stay in Phantom 3.0.

 

[Jayson Hanes]

Re: How to drain battery

that might be true but it's irrelevant what the battery is truly at -- I get the same flight time and same performance with the update as I did before the update.. last night I did a flight with a lot of high-speed flying in atti mode (45mph for ~ a minute a few times), and I got 17+minutes of video and flight time to 0% as shown in the raw video and screen shot from the video... I was trying to get a close shot but the props were still spinning (as I was actually on purpose trying to drain the battery..)

here's the raw video: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBLUWSCAaDQ[/youtube]

here's the edit: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3ETVh02pEg[/youtube]

 

[cougar]

Re: How to drain battery

that might be true but it's irrelevant what the battery is truly at -- I get the same flight time and same performance with the update as I did before the update.. last night I did a flight with a lot of high-speed flying in atti mode (45mph for ~ a minute a few times), and I got 17+minutes of video and flight time to 0% as shown in the raw video and screen shot from the video... I was trying to get a close shot but the props were still spinning (as I was actually on purpose trying to drain the battery..)



Ok Jason, what the OP was asking was how to drain the battery, not flying time?

 

[Jayson Hanes]

Re: How to drain battery

as stated.. 2x now.. and demonstrated above in the video.. I fly until 8%, bring it in close, hold throttle to maintain hover to 0% and THEN leave it ON until the lights go out.. then recharge.

 

[cougar]

Re: How to drain battery

as stated.. 2x now.. and demonstrated above in the video.. I fly until 8%, bring it in close, hold throttle to maintain hover to 0% and THEN leave it ON until the lights go out.. then recharge.

Now plug your phantom in to computer and read the battery level, it is not 0.

Battery is not drained at this stage, only on your app shows 0, meaning no more flying time.
OP wanted to know how to drain his battery down (assume for maintenance charge every 20 cycles and recommended by DJI), not how long he could fly.

 

[DBS]

Re: How to drain battery

You should never drain completely or battery damage will occur. DJI suggests not below 8%.

Not true... DJI states "at least until 8% or until the battery won't turn on anymore"... they make no such claim of "never drain completely or battery damage will occur"

I fly mine all the way to zero regularly and leave the phantom on until the lights turn off... then a quick check shows the battery is still at 10volts or more...

0% on the app battery meter doesn't mean 0 volts.... DJI made this a smart battery system for a reason... for their "anyone can fly it" campaign... they knew many flyers wouldn't know the lipo rules so the battery keeps itself safe...

That being said... If you DON'T take your battery down under 8 volts from time to time it will have a negative effect on battery health and give shorter flight times sooner...

If you DO take your battery down below 8% (or all the way till lights off) from time to time... you will notice increased flight times because you are exercising the bottom end of the battery... your battery's overall health and life span will be extended as well.

 

[cougar]

Re: How to drain battery

You should never drain completely or battery damage will occur. DJI suggests not below 8%.

Not true... DJI states "at least until 8% or until the battery won't turn on anymore"... they make no such claim of "never drain completely or battery damage will occur"

I fly mine all the way to zero regularly and leave the phantom on until the lights turn off... then a quick check shows the battery is still at 10volts or more...

0% on the app battery meter doesn't mean 0 volts.... DJI made this a smart battery system for a reason... for their "anyone can fly it" campaign... they knew many flyers wouldn't know the lipo rules so the battery keeps itself safe...

That being said... If you DON'T take your battery down under 8 volts from time to time it will have a negative effect on battery health and give shorter flight times sooner...

If you DO take your battery down below 8% (or all the way till lights off) from time to time... you will notice increased flight times because you are exercising the bottom end of the battery... your battery's overall health and life span will be extended as well.

Agree 100%, that is also what I have been doing.

So now back to the original question. With the new firmware, if the phantom auto lands and shuts down eariler then before, any way to drain down to 8% other then leaving the lights on (much longer now since it seems to shut down earlier then on last firmware)

 

[Panamon Creel]

Re: How to drain battery

....
That being said... If you DON'T take your battery down under 8 volts from time to time it will have a negative effect on battery health and give shorter flight times sooner...

If you DO take your battery down below 8% (or all the way till lights off) from time to time... you will notice increased flight times because you are exercising the bottom end of the battery... your battery's overall health and life span will be extended as well.

Under 8 volts, ouch! Under load it should not drop below 3.0, better 3.1 Volts and some LiPo manufacturer even recommend not below 3.2 Volts per cell. This means with the Phantom 3S2P batteries the lowest under load should be 9.0-9.6 Volts.
Lipo batteries do not have a memory effect so discharging them low doesn't change the true available battery capacity however LiPo batteries lose capacity over time and with charge cycles therefore the deeper discharge is there so that the intelligent controller can "learn" the true available capacity and correctly display it. The lower you can discharge it without going below the safe discharge voltage on any cell the more accurate the capacity can be measured with the following charge cycle.

I deeper cycle my battery by flying with it down to the 15-30% let them cool and then I use charger that I have for my other RC batteries to slowly discharge the battery further.

 

[BlackTracer]

Re: How to drain battery

So now back to the original question. With the new firmware, if the phantom auto lands and shuts down eariler then before, any way to drain down to 8% other then leaving the lights on (much longer now since it seems to shut down earlier then on last firmware)

Here's what I did 2 nights ago. May not be the best method but it worked and was kinda fun.

I strapped my phantom to my kitchen table so it wouldn't move (lift off). I put on the props. I quickly found out you can restart the motors below 15%. They will shut off again after about 5 seconds UNLESS.....you start giving throttle. I revved the engines up until the whole phantom eventually powers off suddenly. Note that you have to give it quite a bit of throttle as the battery gets lower and lower. That battery is now 0% on the vision app telemetry. I didn't check it in the assistant because it would not power on anymore. I did this for all three of my batteries. The breeze it created was quite refreshing as well. I of course had to clear the area of papers and such that could blow around.

Pressing the battery check button, the first LED was flashing.

I then charged all three back to full charge and went flying. I got 17-20 minutes out of each one.