New battery best practices?

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Hey guys,
Just ordered a couple of new batteries for my P3A. I was wondering what are some good practices to ensure the best battery health going forward?


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Avoid discharging below 20%.

Charge just before you fly and set the auto discharge at 1 day.

LiION don't like being over discharged and the age fastest when kept at full charge.
 
I don't know if it's still in practice, but the recommended full discharge occurs when the battery hits the 20th cycle. DJI once recommended draining the bat. at that 20th interval and recharging it back to the max to maintain the battery, but sorry, I forgot if they re commented on that claim.
 
Hey guys,
Just ordered a couple of new batteries for my P3A. I was wondering what are some good practices to ensure the best battery health going forward?


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An interesting topic from which I did follow the break-in method for my P4 batteries with a good vid can be seen here.
 
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Avoid discharging below 20%.

Charge just before you fly and set the auto discharge at 1 day.

LiION don't like being over discharged and the age fastest when kept at full charge.
Disagree with having the auto discharge at a one day setting . There's a one to ten setting for a good reason. It all depends on the frequency of your outings. For example if once you came home and put your battery on charge and know that you're going to be going out again in the next 2 or 3 days having a one-day setting would make no sense, a five-day setting would be more advantageous. Now if you're pretty certain that you're not going out for a week or two then a shorter setting would be better.

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Disagree with having the auto discharge at a one day setting . There's a one to ten setting for a good reason. It all depends on the frequency of your outings. For example if once you came home and put your battery on charge and know that you're going to be going out again in the next 2 or 3 days having a one-day setting would make no sense, a five-day setting would be more advantageous. Now if you're pretty certain that you're not going out for a week or two then a shorter setting would be better.

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Simple, if you have it on 1 day setting and may fly in a few days, just press the battery button and you bought yourself another day. Keep doing that once a day until before the day you fly. Currently I have mine set to 2 days but thinking of changing it to 1.


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Disagree with having the auto discharge at a one day setting . There's a one to ten setting for a good reason. It all depends on the frequency of your outings. For example if once you came home and put your battery on charge and know that you're going to be going out again in the next 2 or 3 days having a one-day setting would make no sense, a five-day setting would be more advantageous. Now if you're pretty certain that you're not going out for a week or two then a shorter setting would be better.

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If you know your going out in three days
Disagree with having the auto discharge at a one day setting . There's a one to ten setting for a good reason. It all depends on the frequency of your outings. For example if once you came home and put your battery on charge and know that you're going to be going out again in the next 2 or 3 days having a one-day setting would make no sense, a five-day setting would be more advantageous. Now if you're pretty certain that you're not going out for a week or two then a shorter setting would be better.

Sent from my HTC 10 using PhantomPilots mobile app
The OP's question was about maximum battery health/life. It is a well known fact that keeping LiPO batteries at 100% charge causes a significant reduction in usable capacity. Best practice is to charge to 50% after flying and bring up to 100% close to when you plan to fly. You may choose, as it seems you have, to prioritise convenience over extended service life. I answered the OP's question.
 
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If you know your going out in three days

The OP's question was about maximum battery health/life. It is a well known fact that keeping LiPO batteries at 100% charge causes a significant reduction in usable capacity. Best practice is to charge to 50% after flying and bring up to 100% close to when you plan to fly. You may choose, as it seems you have, to prioritise convenience over extended service life. I answered the OP's question.
Sorry but I'll have to disagree with this post also, I have read in numerous threads the best battery practice is to charge your battery to 100% upon arriving home and allow the auto discharge feature to reduce it down to the 50% mark for storage. And the reason given which makes complete sense to me is that the battery cells are not properly balanced if you just unplug it mid-charge. But the auto discharge future does the proper balancing of the cells getting it to that magic 50% number.

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Sorry but I'll have to disagree with this post also, I have read in numerous threads the best battery practice is to charge your battery to 100% upon arriving home and allow the auto discharge feature to reduce it down to the 50% mark for storage. And the reason given which makes complete sense to me is that the battery cells are not properly balanced if you just unplug it mid-charge. But the auto discharge future does the proper balancing of the cells getting it to that magic 50% number.

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No need to apologise. i hope, for the sake of battery longevity people don't follow your poor advice though. To charge to full and allow to auto discharge to 50% you are taking half a charge cycle out of the batteries useful life. The battery circuitry achieves cell balance during the charge cycle by implementing bleed resistors to limit the voltage present at the terminals of the higher voltage cells in the pack, most of the bakancing occurs at the end of the charge cycle. What you are proposing will achieve nothing more than to decrease the usefull service life if the pack.
 
Sorry but I'll have to disagree with this post also, I have read in numerous threads the best battery practice is to charge your battery to 100% upon arriving home and allow the auto discharge feature to reduce it down to the 50% mark for storage. And the reason given which makes complete sense to me is that the battery cells are not properly balanced if you just unplug it mid-charge. But the auto discharge future does the proper balancing of the cells getting it to that magic 50% number.

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If this is true, why is there no mention of this in the DJI battery manual?


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If this is true, why is there no mention of this in the DJI battery manual?


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Do you know how many things that are in the manual that are written poorly and or completely omitted. Such as upon landing to even mention the CSC as part of the landing procedure which will cause your drone to usually tip over. The manual tells you what to do, it's not going to tell you every single thing that you should not do. Why would it tell you don't unplug your charger in the middle of a charging cycle, they would assume that people are just going to simply charge their battery to completion. And besides, does it tell you to unplug the charger mid cycle as suggest above to preserve battery longevity? Quoting the manual is a two way street. I'm just trying to make the point that either way will work, it's not so detrimental either way. But it would be nice for DJI to spell it all out in the manual.

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No need to apologise. i hope, for the sake of battery longevity people don't follow your poor advice though. To charge to full and allow to auto discharge to 50% you are taking half a charge cycle out of the batteries useful life. The battery circuitry achieves cell balance during the charge cycle by implementing bleed resistors to limit the voltage present at the terminals of the higher voltage cells in the pack, most of the bakancing occurs at the end of the charge cycle. What you are proposing will achieve nothing more than to decrease the usefull service life if the pack.
Here's a link to the official DJI battery "Safety Guidelines" and it doesn't say a thing about unplugging the charger mid point for battery longevity. It's does say to discharge the battery to 30%-50% for storage, and how the auto discharge feature will bring it down to 65% for longevity.
https://www.drone-world.com/media/p3/DJI_Intelligent_Flight_Battery_Safety_Guidelines_en.pdf
 
Here's a link to the official DJI battery "Safety Guidelines" and it doesn't say a thing about unplugging the charger mid point for battery longevity. It's does say to discharge the battery to 30%-50% for storage, and how the auto discharge feature will bring it down to 65% for longevity.
https://www.drone-world.com/media/p3/DJI_Intelligent_Flight_Battery_Safety_Guidelines_en.pdf
The OP asked what practices may provide for improving battery life. The DJI guidelines you have kindly linked to include the mandatory instructions/warnings manufacturers are required by IEC 62133 to issue with products containing rechargeable cells (including LiPO).

Back to the topic- I suspect we are in common ground with respect to storage SOC, 50% being commonly accepted as ideal.

What you may also be aware of is that LiPO batteries do not suffer from what is often called memory effect. Partial discharges and charges have no appreciable effect on service life or performance.

LiPO's do however have a finite number of charge/discharge cycles. Your proposed practice of charging to 100% and allowing the auto discharge to bring the cells down to storage level is wasting half a charge cycle every time you do it.

I prefer to discharge my batteries in the air and get 50% more life and enjoyment from my packs.
 
I don't really know about discharging, I'm so **** hooked. I literally fly all 4 batteries everyday, most days twice a day. The only thing I'm doing for my new batteries is not flying them below 50%. I plan on doing this for 10 times.


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I don't really know about discharging, I'm so **** hooked. I literally fly all 4 batteries everyday, most days twice a day. The only thing I'm doing for my new batteries is not flying them below 50%. I plan on doing this for 10 times.


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You should get many happy flights then. All I might suggest is that you allow the batteries to cool to ambient temperature before charging.
 
Charge your battery and fly. Rinse/repeat. Enjoy the hobby.

People way over-complicate this thing and squeeze every little bit of fun out of anything.
 
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+1

The care and feeding of Lipos is easy and straight forward. People have injected all kinds of unfounded fears and hear-say into the care of these things...

Charge your battery and fly. Rinse/repeat. Enjoy the hobby.

People way over-complicate this thing and squeeze every little bit of fun out of anything.
 
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