Out For a Swim

[tstowe]

I had my Phantom 2 Vision Plus over water... Salt Water.

It lost GPS lock and drifted into a branch. It did a flip and plopped into about two feet of water. It took me about five minutes to get to it, find it and get it out of the water.

Once I was back on the dock I pulled the battery. A few minutes after I pulled it the battery started smoking.

At home, I dunked it in 91% isopropyl alcohol for two hours. Flipped it and soaked the camera/gimbal for another two.

I'm going let it dry for two days before I try it.

Any luck it will work again? What are my chances?

 

[tstowe]

No one?

I have the top off. Their appears to be a little residue left. I'll get another bottle of alcohol and go over all the electronics with a q-tip to try and clean everything off.

One positive... Everything looks dry and I don't see any scorch marks.

 

[tgreenstone]

From other posts i have seen, salt water is NO good. Even with soaking it, you may have help save a little of it.

The fact that it started to smoke was probably an ESC frying. After you let it sit out and dry, a slow step by step check up will help you figure out what may still be good.

Here is the link to the other member that is having a similar issue.

Hope it helps! viewtopic.php?f=27&t=28309

 

[tstowe]

From other posts i have seen, salt water is NO good. Even with soaking it, you may have help save a little of it.

The fact that it started to smoke was probably an ESC frying. After you let it sit out and dry, a slow step by step check up will help you figure out what may still be good.

Here is the link to the other member that is having a similar issue.

Hope it helps! viewtopic.php?f=27&t=28309

Well, from what everyone said on the other page... I'm screwed. :O(

 

[tgreenstone]

Any water is tough, Salt water is the satan of everything. It sadly may be looking that way.

 

[tstowe]

Ok... I have one good battery left.

Once everything is dried out will it hurt the remaining battery if I try and power it back up?

 

[tgreenstone]

Ok... I have one good battery left.

Once everything is dried out will it hurt the remaining battery if I try and power it back up?

Someone may correct me if i am wrong, but testing it at this point may be risky. The working battery will put the full amount of juice into the system. If there is a bad short someplace, it may send that pulse back the battery making it start to swell. That's bad. Once a lipo swells, the safest thing is to get rid of it safely.

 

[RDCF550]

You're not going to hurt the battery, but, even if it all fires back up and works exactly like it did before, it will at best be a ticking time bomb just waiting to not power up at some point, and worst fall from the sky and hurt someone or be unrecoverable.

The PCBs have a coating on most of them to keep that type of corrosion happening, but it's not a 100% barrier, and in some cases if something does get in there all that stuff does then is not let it get out and makes it even more difficult to clean.

Unless you pulled it completely apart, FC and all, and cleaned it up better than when it was new right after the fact, the damage has already begun. Salt water and especially anything with sugar in it, soda and the like, will just wreck electronics, and the longer it's left in there the worse it gets. It can be fairly difficult to get every little bit of it cleaned out of there without tearing things down as much as they can be.

Rice is useless. That stuff belongs where it does the most good, in Chinese food.
Drowning it in alcohol really only dilutes the problem at best, and at worst lets the offending liquid get into even more places.

I don't mean for it to sound hopeless, but it's really the type of, the quicker you do the right thing about it the better the chances there might be to save it, deal.

 

[tstowe]

I've got a friend who fixes cell phones and the like. He wants to give it a try.

I'm ordering another one tonight.

 

[morph000]

In the old days when I was in IT and service I used to clean pcb's with Isoprope (Isopropyl Alcohol) when they had spillages on them.
A tech told how their shop always washes down pcb's under the tap! (after disconnecting batteries etc..)
I started using that approach a while after and found it offered pretty good results BUT...you must be sure the board has dried out 100% before powering up again.
MOST important to ensure water under SMC (surface mount chips, aka flatpacks) has had a chance to dry.
So - get to it fast, wash or hose the boards down, shake 'em down well, let 'em dry out 100% (hot full sun for a few hours or in a warm to hot airflow) and see what happens.

 

[tstowe]

Too late. :O)

I sold it. It shipped out yesterday.