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Battery Rapid Discharge Problem

Joined
Mar 15, 2016
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I have been a drone pilot from the first Phantom, through Phantom + and for the past couple of years with the Q500 4K. I do real estate stills and video and have done a tone of both.
Because of vacation I had not used the bird for about a month and had not charged the batteries in that time. All five batteries had been working fine and I got at least 20 minute flight time on all. I got the call for a couple of drone shots that day and so didn't have time to charge them. So I shot the first shot on the first battery without incident, but needed to use a second battery to finish up. It started out fully charged, but the low battery warning came on within a couple of minutes. I landed and went to my next assignment. When I put in the third battery and started up all the lights blinked like crazy and the ST10+ showed a totally discharged batter. I switched to a new one which showed fully charged so I took her up to about 300 feet doing a few stills on the way up. After maybe 5 minutes the warnings started up. I brought it down as fast as I could, but before I could land it fell out of the sky from about 20 feet breaking the landing gear and air frame.
I repaired it over the next couple of days, calibrated the compass successfully and hovered it at a couple of feet over the lawn. Same rapid discharge of all the fully recharged batteries.
Anybody got any ideas about repair?
 
Sounds like your batteries are just at the end of their life. Lipo batteries, as all lithium batteries, are damaged by being at full charge for any length of time - even after 24 hours. Lithium, especially lipo, should be stored at between 3.8 and 3.9 volts.
 
Thanks, Mike!
I hope you are right. 2 of my 4 remaining batteries have had a lot of use. Can you recommend a good charger that will let me monitor the batteries and let me store them at the correct charge?
 
You'd want what's called a "hobby charger". They charge all types of battery chemistry. Since these batteries are only 1C charge allowed, you'd need a charger cable of only about 60 watts. Something like the ThunderPower TP610c would work and charge your batteries in about an hour.

Here's the catch - these batteries have proprietary "connectors". This means that you'd have to make your own jig to allow your batteries to connect to "standard" connectors. I heard that someone has done this and is selling them for the "H" batteries, anyway, but I've not checked.

For now, I just check the voltage of these batteries on the st16 screen and just have to fly around or charge a little to get into the 3.8 - 3.9 volts range. Good Luck!
 

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