i am having issues with my batteries. Sometimes they charge sometimes i get a blue error warning on the charger. Both of the batteries are a little puffy top and bottom. Please advise.
Battery error blue light
- Thread starter Victor
- Start date
@Victor
How many cycles on your batteries?
Are you using the Yuneec supplied charger?
Using the Yuneec charger, I have at times gotten the error light when I did not seat the battery fully.
If you pull the battery out, and re-seat it does the error go away?
If you have many cycles on the batteries, have you been storing them at a storage voltage (15.2-15.6 volts)?
Usually a puffed battery is sign that it is internally failing or has reached the end of life.
It is your choice, but I would not fly with a puffed battery. It is not like an RC car, where you can walk over to it and retrieve it. If it fails in flight, your aircraft is going to fall like a brick.
Please let us know what your find out.
How many cycles on your batteries?
Are you using the Yuneec supplied charger?
Using the Yuneec charger, I have at times gotten the error light when I did not seat the battery fully.
If you pull the battery out, and re-seat it does the error go away?
If you have many cycles on the batteries, have you been storing them at a storage voltage (15.2-15.6 volts)?
Usually a puffed battery is sign that it is internally failing or has reached the end of life.
It is your choice, but I would not fly with a puffed battery. It is not like an RC car, where you can walk over to it and retrieve it. If it fails in flight, your aircraft is going to fall like a brick.
Please let us know what your find out.
All 5 contacts have to make connection before the battery will charge. It's not uncommon for the the small pins make poor contact and re-seating the battery a couple of times usually fixes the problem. You can clean the contacts with a pencil eraser if needed.
Do you store your batteries around 15.4 volts?
PatR
Premium Pilot
If the batteries are puffy the blue light may be his charger trying to tell him something. It may well be that when he does manage to obtain a charging connection he is being lucky. When a battery becomes puffy, it's reached end of life.
CraigCam
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For sure the factory battery if noticeably puffed is compromised. If you could measure resistance, you’d see the cell that went south as it’s resistance value will be higher then the other cells. Unfortunately, to really maintain these batteries you need a good third party charger that lets you set charge rates and gives you the ability to store or discharge. I like the HiTec 2 I purchased last year very much and it helps me keep all my batteries from misbehaving.
The suspect battery may still be relegated to use for ground testing, calibrating, set up of camera, and close hover tests for stick behavior and GPS lock accuracy. I have one I labeled “set up only” that I use to calibrate at new locations and get everything ready. I won’t fly any distance with this one and only hover directly in front of myself at no higher then 8’. This battery is fine for the gathering of current GPS tables as well in new areas or after lengthy periods of non flying (rare though as I try to fly at least one battery everyday) but it’s stored in a metal box now and discharged waiting for next time I need it in the field.
And I’ve had a fire from a Blade 3000 3 cell battery that was charging so I’m very battery paranoid and spend an inordinate amount of time managing them as I own way too many quads and three 480s.
And finally I realized that despite the claims of flight times possible, pushing to those limits will reduce the life of the battery. I now try to never fly into any LV warnings and that really helps. I’m always looking to finish at 10.5 so I’m down and shut off before 10.4 volts. I plan my missions to be solid for ten minutes and then watch where I am and my voltage levels during the next five. I would never be out doing anything risky after that ten minutes as that last third of power can suddenly drain under bad conditions such as too far away, too high up, too much headwind coming home, and numerous other ways weak power can change flight behaviors.
The suspect battery may still be relegated to use for ground testing, calibrating, set up of camera, and close hover tests for stick behavior and GPS lock accuracy. I have one I labeled “set up only” that I use to calibrate at new locations and get everything ready. I won’t fly any distance with this one and only hover directly in front of myself at no higher then 8’. This battery is fine for the gathering of current GPS tables as well in new areas or after lengthy periods of non flying (rare though as I try to fly at least one battery everyday) but it’s stored in a metal box now and discharged waiting for next time I need it in the field.
And I’ve had a fire from a Blade 3000 3 cell battery that was charging so I’m very battery paranoid and spend an inordinate amount of time managing them as I own way too many quads and three 480s.
And finally I realized that despite the claims of flight times possible, pushing to those limits will reduce the life of the battery. I now try to never fly into any LV warnings and that really helps. I’m always looking to finish at 10.5 so I’m down and shut off before 10.4 volts. I plan my missions to be solid for ten minutes and then watch where I am and my voltage levels during the next five. I would never be out doing anything risky after that ten minutes as that last third of power can suddenly drain under bad conditions such as too far away, too high up, too much headwind coming home, and numerous other ways weak power can change flight behaviors.
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Yes Im definitely with you on the battery side. I have one that errors blue. Its a little puffy, so I was only going to use that one for testing, It is a must to purchase a third party charger, that stock one will kill your batteries within a year.
PatR
Premium Pilot
I doubt the stock charger can damage a battery unless the voltage cutoff becomes faulty. The charge rate is too slow to heat up a battery and it does balance the cells reasonably well. Someone that removes a discharged battery from their H and instantly start to re-charge it is certainly inducing cell damage. Li-po's do not like to be charged when they are hot, and immediately after a flight they are much too warm to be safely charged. They also do not like to be stored fully charged for any length of time.
What does "kill your batteries" is usually more associated with how they are used. people that use the low voltage warnings to establish when they land are beating their batteries to death. Li-po cells are at minimum voltage at 3.2 volts and often sustain some level of damage if driven to that level. At 3 volts/cell they have assuredly been damaged to some extent. The more a cell is driven down to the lowest possible level the sooner it will fail. Using two damaged batteries (not puffy) in my possession as reference, the H batteries are pretty much toast when discharged to 12.8 volts, which works out to 3.2v/cell. Being driven that low seems to leave them in a state where they will still accept a charge but they won't provide useful flight time anymore. Maybe 4 or 5 minutes of flight is the best they can do.
People that have been using li-po's for a long time learned they should never be discharged more than 70% of their capacity. Those that prefer their batteries last a long time limit themselves to using 60-65% of capacity. I haven't checked the numbers because I have never flown my H's to the low voltage auto land level but I have read that occurs at ~27% remaining at the indicator. If we were to assume that Yuneec uses an accurate voltage measurement system it would appear the H auto lands when battery voltage reaches a level less than 30% of battery capacity, which is not good for a battery. Sure, we can obtain the absolute maximum time in the air with each battery but in doing so we will be causing our batteries to fail much, much sooner than they should.
Each of us has the option of obtaining 200-300 cycles from each of our batteries or much much less. How we use and treat them is what determines battery cycle. Beating them to death to get the longest flights you can is perfectly acceptable as long as you're prepared to buy new batteries all the time.
What does "kill your batteries" is usually more associated with how they are used. people that use the low voltage warnings to establish when they land are beating their batteries to death. Li-po cells are at minimum voltage at 3.2 volts and often sustain some level of damage if driven to that level. At 3 volts/cell they have assuredly been damaged to some extent. The more a cell is driven down to the lowest possible level the sooner it will fail. Using two damaged batteries (not puffy) in my possession as reference, the H batteries are pretty much toast when discharged to 12.8 volts, which works out to 3.2v/cell. Being driven that low seems to leave them in a state where they will still accept a charge but they won't provide useful flight time anymore. Maybe 4 or 5 minutes of flight is the best they can do.
People that have been using li-po's for a long time learned they should never be discharged more than 70% of their capacity. Those that prefer their batteries last a long time limit themselves to using 60-65% of capacity. I haven't checked the numbers because I have never flown my H's to the low voltage auto land level but I have read that occurs at ~27% remaining at the indicator. If we were to assume that Yuneec uses an accurate voltage measurement system it would appear the H auto lands when battery voltage reaches a level less than 30% of battery capacity, which is not good for a battery. Sure, we can obtain the absolute maximum time in the air with each battery but in doing so we will be causing our batteries to fail much, much sooner than they should.
Each of us has the option of obtaining 200-300 cycles from each of our batteries or much much less. How we use and treat them is what determines battery cycle. Beating them to death to get the longest flights you can is perfectly acceptable as long as you're prepared to buy new batteries all the time.
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