Phantom lost connection and fell from the sky for no reason.

If you charged your battery full and flew it down to 60% landed and then flew it again it would be fine.
Most have had a car at some point that wouldn't start, you ran the battery down and it would no longer turn over,then you waited 10 minutes and it turned over again BUT only for a few seconds..
Your phantom is fine if charged and flown down to 60% and lower but when it was charged days ago it's like your car battery its
got enough left to turn the car over abit but has NO staying power.. There are Lots of crashed phantoms for the same reason, and most said they hadn't charged up in days or longer.. These batteries are not like a Duracell flashlight battery, You can set the number of days before you batteries self discharge, I have mine set at 2 days, if something stops me from going out they discharge.. I Always charge up the day of or the night before I fly.
Dale
 
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Ok, this is new to me. What's the best self discharge time to set and what's negative about making it longer rather than shorter. Where are these setting changed? Thanks for the info


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But the argument is that it shouldn't read as 60% charged. That is a defect. If I check the charge on my car battery that has enough to just turn it over its not going to read as "good to go." All of these analogies are great but at the end of the day a battery that is reading as 60% charged, when it's really at a critically low 1% or lower is incorrect and flawed. Sounds like the "intelligent" battery is not so intelligent.
 
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But the argument is that it shouldn't read as 60% charged. That is a defect. If I check the charge on my car battery that has enough to just turn it over its not going to read as "good to go." All of these analogies are great but at the end of the day a battery that is reading as 60% charged, when it's really at a critically low 1% or lower is incorrect and flawed. Sounds like the "intelligent" battery is not so intelligent.
Going back to my flashlight story... from observing the light when it first comes one.. it appears that the battery is not dead. But once a functioning load is applied the voltage very quickly drops.
 
Those were the only files that said they were from today. And again with the flashlight story a flashlight with a battery that is reading as 60% is not going to die within 3 seconds, it will read as a low battery.
 
Hey everyone,

I frequently read this forum and regularly get useful information and tips from y'all. Thank you for that.

Unfortunately today I pulled my phantom 3 advanced out at my brothers house, turned it on and calibrated the compass and was locked into satellites (don't remember how many, but I have flown here before and had no problem acquiring 16 satellites). Status bar indicated it was safe for a GPS flight. I used auto take off and immediately brought it up to about 30-40 feet when the motors suddenly stopped and it fell and smashed on to the street and busted into a ton of pieces. As it fell I looked down at my iPad to see if there was something I could do and there was no live feed and said there was no signal.

I have contacted DJI and they gave me an RMA with an estimated return of 2 weeks. Will this be covered under warranty? Also will they be able to verify this was not user error, there is a flight log that shows a flight of less than a minute. I bought it off amazon about 4 months ago.

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This is very concerning not only to me but I'm sure the entire community. Having the engines suddenly turn off in mid-flight is a huge liability. I am sorry for your loss and I hope you can get it fixed but I have to say that I would be very surprised if this were a "mechanical / electrical" malfunction rather than human error.
 
I agree with the flashlight theory. However you would think that if you have an intelligent battery that can be programmed to self discharge however often I want, that DJI could also write into the program to indicate that it is dead as soon as it enters self discharge.
 
I personally dont think its a self discharge kind of thing. the only thing really "smart" about the battery is that the charger is built in to it. Rather than an outside device. What everyone is calling a charger is nothing but a power supply. And that "smart" charger keeps track of charge cycles.
 
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I don't get all this 'fly with less than x% charge'. Sorry. I have been flying these things for two and a half years and often fly with batteries that are less than 75% full. I have also flown with half charged battery that has been sitting for a few days. All with no issues.

I see that analogies with car batteries and flashlights, but they don't use LiPo technology.

I don't get that a deleting battery will suddenly stop turning the props and cause the phantom to fall like a brick. Surely the battery would not switch off immediately, but would rather keep trying to turn the props and slowly deflate power output so that the craft would slowly descend and not drop.

If there is a scientific basis for these arguments (or scaremongering if you prefer) then I'd love to hear them. Until then, I'll keep doing what I have been. Flying.
 
I don't get all this 'fly with less than x% charge'. Sorry. I have been flying these things for two and a half years and often fly with batteries that are less than 75% full. I have also flown with half charged battery that has been sitting for a few days. All with no issues.

I see that analogies with car batteries and flashlights, but they don't use LiPo technology.

I don't get that a deleting battery will suddenly stop turning the props and cause the phantom to fall like a brick. Surely the battery would not switch off immediately, but would rather keep trying to turn the props and slowly deflate power output so that the craft would slowly descend and not drop.

If there is a scientific basis for these arguments (or scaremongering if you prefer) then I'd love to hear them. until then, I'll keep doing what I have been. Flying.

I agree. There is definitely some "scaremongering" going on, not on purpose per se but with a lot of misguided information. I mean, that's everyones worst fear of the thing just shutting off in mid-flight. How often does that really happen outside of human error is what I'd like to know.
 
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I have flown with partially charged batteries too many times to count. I just don't buy this as being a reason for failure. What would the scientific reason for this be? If my battery has 3 bars, I fly it again.
Now, having said that, I'm talking about batteries I just used. I won't use a partially charged battery that sat around more than 1 day. I do think the battery status can be unreliable if you don't absolutely know how long a battery has been used, and that can lead to unexpected sudden critical status when you thought it had plenty of juice.

I agree. I've never tried a flight with a battery showing less than about 60% charge, but I've flown many, many times (have about 250 flights overall) with something well below "fully charged" with no problems.

If you grab a battery that shows 40% (just an example) I would NOT fly with it. Once a reasonable load is placed on the battery, it's liable to display a significantly lower value pretty quickly. If you hover for a moment, then try to climb to 100 - 200 feet, you're going to put quite a sudden load on that "weak" battery and you'll possibly get into the warning range quite quickly.

I've flown many times, even "blind" just for a few minutes to get a quick shot/video and never run out of battery power in the process. The user manual states that one should never take off with other than a fully charged battery, but I, personally, don't accept that as "gospel." It's more common sense than anything else. If you're taking off with a 50% battery and expecting to be airborne for 15 - 20 minutes, you'll probably crash your craft!
 
I don't get all this 'fly with less than x% charge'. Sorry. I have been flying these things for two and a half years and often fly with batteries that are less than 75% full. I have also flown with half charged battery that has been sitting for a few days. All with no issues.

I see that analogies with car batteries and flashlights, but they don't use LiPo technology.

I don't get that a deleting battery will suddenly stop turning the props and cause the phantom to fall like a brick. Surely the battery would not switch off immediately, but would rather keep trying to turn the props and slowly deflate power output so that the craft would slowly descend and not drop.

If there is a scientific basis for these arguments (or scaremongering if you prefer) then I'd love to hear them. Until then, I'll keep doing what I have been. Flying.
You are far to intelligent a guy to make anyone believe that you really think that a LiPo acts any differently than a lead acid battery in this particular example. I, in the grand scheme of things, have flown hundreds of flights on less that fully charged batteries. But none that were less than charged AND sitting around for a day or two. I tested the thought, and DID have a critical voltage warning. That same battery now has 15 additional flights no it and never another issue. The problem is that we really don't have the facilities to monitor what needs monitored to actually SEE whats happening. It may be an issue with the smart side of the battery doing something weird when the voltage drops so too quickly. It may not be the actual battery its self.

The thing is that its easily duplicated! The part about totally shutting down... that really isn't a concrete truth. It could very well have spun down and lost lift. The observation would be no more prop noise and it falling from the sky. There have been more than one crash where the operator stated that the bird shut off and crashed, only to find that it was powered up until impact. Initial frantic observation in a stressful moment are never 100%!!
 
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You are far to intelligent a guy to make anyone believe that you really think that a LiPo acts any differently than a lead acid battery in this particular example. I, in the grand scheme of things, have flown hundreds of flights on less that fully charged batteries. But none that were less than charged AND sitting around for a day or two. I tested the thought, and DID have a critical voltage warning. That same battery now has 15 additional flights no it and never another issue. The problem is that we really don't have the facilities to monitor what needs monitored to actually SEE whats happening. It may be an issue with the smart side of the battery doing something weird when the voltage drops so too quickly. It may not be the actual battery its self.

The thing is that its easily duplicated! The part about totally shutting down... that really isn't a concrete truth. It could very well have spun down and lost lift. The observation would be no more prop noise and it falling from the sky. There have been more than one crash where the operator stated that the bird shut off and crashed, only to find that it was powered up until impact. Initial frantic observation in a stressful moment are never 100%!!

In the case of mine doing this all of the led went dark and there was silence as it fell...until the splat. My daughter video taped it from her iPod.

It was most definitely the fact my batteries had all auto discharged. They are not what they read after they hit this state and the smart battery should be flagged by the djigo app as a battery which has self discharged.

The battery isn't just smart because it's got a charger on board but also because it can discharge the battery as well.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
 
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Mine was exactly the same. Props were completely stopped as it tumbled through the air (if the props spun down, it wouldn't have tumble like it did). I also looked down at my iPad before impact to try to see if I could do something to rescue it and there was no live feed and the status bar across the top indicated the drone was no longer connected.
 

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