Another P3P down! Battery Error

[vmp]

So my P3P just fell out of the sky. I have one broken propeller, camera came right off, and so did the battery.
Picture of damage:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/c1nef6l6eyva6mp/IMG_3991.jpg?dl=0

As usual, I turned on the P3 and wait for it to get GPS connectivity before I take off. The P3 finished warming up and the status was green.

I started off by accending to ~390 feet and started going forward full throttle. When it was approximately 800 ft away from me, I got a "Critical Battery Error" or something along those lines. I can't remember because I know some other people have had a similar issue and immedialtely thought "Oh ****!!!, I need to bring it back ASAP". So I stopped moving forward and started to come back in reverse at about 26 MPH. When The P3 was 464FT away from me, it stopped and started to free fall. I was able to see that the propellers literally stopped moving as it came down full speed. I ran to the crash site and saw it on the grass just sitting there sideways. The battery was sitting on the ground powered on. The camera was a few feet away from where the P3 crashed.

Interestingly enough, as all of this was happening, I was not upset or sad. After seeing this same thing happen to others, I just figured it would happen to me sooner or later.

Some info about the P3 status:
Battery was at 94% when I got the Critical Battery Error.
The time window that show you how much flight time was left said 14 minutes.
I was flying in P-GPS the whole time.
At no point in time did I do the CSC thing. I just went forward on the right stick, saw the error, then went back on the right stick until it stopped and went down.
I did not have the memory card in the camera because I was just taking it around the neighborhood and did not plan on taking any pictures or video. I do however have the flight data and have uploaded to the cloud.

Some will probably say that maybe the battery was not in all the way. Well, that would be hard to believe in my case because I had to fight to get the battery out of the P3 each time that I needed to remove it so that I can charge it.

EDIT:
A little more info that I forgot:
I was running the latest firmware on the P3P, controller and battery. I have been on the latest since it came out.
I was one of the first people to receive the P3P, so it is not brand new and not my first time flying it.
I have a total of 4hr of flight time, 43 total flights, 177, 503FT flown, since I got it.
Every time that I put the battery in, it is all the way in.

 

[danjordrone]

Hope u find a solution to this im just fairly new to flying phantoms but by how u describe it sounds to me like a bad battery or something seeing battery as empty or close to.I cant offer much help only to say did you carry out latest firmware updates etc and IMU and gimbal calibration
stick calibration to
I suspect you did all this

 

[VoicOfReason]

Perhaps fighting with the battery indicated a small defect that lead to a poor battery connection?

 

[Serpent]

Sorry about your loss, man. It does sound like a defective battery. Please let us know how you get on with DJI about this?

 

[highcastle]

Sounds like the battery was not fully clicked into the slot

 

[Mal_PV2_Ireland]

Fighting with the battery is very common with a new phantom. You always have to make sure that you hear it click into place even if it feels tight.
My initial thoughts are you suffered 1 of 3 possible problems,
1: battery not seated properly and loosened itself with flight vibrations
2: a mistaken csc as you said you were pulling full back, maybe you inadvertently tried to descend at the same time and moved both sticks by mistake
3: complete battery failure.
only my opinion but I'd look at those 3 scenarios first in that order with my experience

 

[Serpent]

I don't buy it that people say the battery is not properly seated. For me, my batteries have always been a tight fit and hard to pull out.
IMO a bad connection would cause a complete failure / reset and not a power deficiency. I'm not an electronics buff and someone else will probably tell me that you can have a partial connection on the battery spades and it would still run but not optimally. I'm an all or nothing on this one.

 

[NoOne]

I don't buy it that people say the battery is not properly seated. For me, my batteries have always been a tight fit and hard to pull out.
IMO a bad connection would cause a complete failure / reset and not a power deficiency. I'm not an electronics buff and someone else will probably tell me that you can have a partial connection on the battery spades and it would still run but not optimally. I'm an all or nothing on this one.

I wouldn't be so sure about this. My new battery I received had a tighter fit than the original battery that came with it. I thought I had mine all the way in but apparently it did not click and I didn't notice. The next day I took off and got the critical battery error close by. Luckily I hadn't full throttled her yet and was just easing her out practicing recording smooth footage. I was able to get her back home safely and took her in nice and slow but I could easily see how I could have lost it in the water had I full throttled it backwards. When I checked mine after I brought it in, it had about an 1/16" gap. Sounds like when you went backwards that it slipped out far enough to cut the power if you ask me.

 

[Mal_PV2_Ireland]

I'm only giving my opinion of a few years of phantom ownership but unless you get that click it's not seated properly for me no matter how tight it feels (just read back, only in a phantom forum you could type that without getting banned for being filthy)

 

[NoOne]

I'm only giving my opinion of a few years of phantom ownership but unless you get that click it's not seated properly for me no matter how tight it feels (just read back, only in a phantom forum you could type that without getting banned for being filthy)

Lol. I thought the same thing while I was typing out my response....

 

[Drogon]

I had a similar warning message on Friday. I brought the P3 down quickly. The battery was not seated properly. Scared the poop out of me.

 

[danjordrone]

Has anyone ever done any kind of vibration test on any of these phantoms in flight

 

[vmp]

Hope u find a solution to this im just fairly new to flying phantoms but by how u describe it sounds to me like a bad battery or something seeing battery as empty or close to.I cant offer much help only to say did you carry out latest firmware updates etc and IMU and gimbal calibration
stick calibration to
I suspect you did all this

Thanks.

And yes, everything was calibrated and etc... I don't think it is relevant to this case though. I never lost connectivity with the DJI Pilot app (using iPad Air 2) and the P3 did not fly away. It simple just stopped as if it lost all power.

 

[vmp]

Sounds like the battery was not fully clicked into the slot

I wish that was the case, because if it was, then I would buy another P3 right now. But I am concerned that it will happen again and rather see how support will handle this.

 

[danjordrone]

Did this happen with the supplied battery or an extra battery

 

[Mal_PV2_Ireland]

Did this happen with the supplied battery or an extra battery

What's the difference?

 

[vmp]

Fighting with the battery is very common with a new phantom. You always have to make sure that you hear it click into place even if it feels tight.
My initial thoughts are you suffered 1 of 3 possible problems,
1: battery not seated properly and loosened itself with flight vibrations
2: a mistaken csc as you said you were pulling full back, maybe you inadvertently tried to descend at the same time and moved both sticks by mistake
3: complete battery failure.
only my opinion but I'd look at those 3 scenarios first in that order with my experience

1: Battery was seated just fine. When I said that I have to fight with it, I mean that I have to press super hard on the battery tabs (to the point where fingers hurt) in order to get the battery out.

2: First and foremost, pulling back on either one of the sticks SHOULD NOT cause CSC. If it does, then the device is defective as it should not happen. Second, I was pulling back on the right stick, the one used to move back and forward. Not the left stick.

3: This is the only thing that makes sense to me.

 

[Bigdz]

Reading these post...man there is a lot of green horns flying phantoms these days. No disrespect, but seems like people are just getting it, flying it, with out any research or reading of the manual(more then once) sorry had to get it out there.
Okay let it rip...

 

[vmp]

I had a similar warning message on Friday. I brought the P3 down quickly. The battery was not seated properly. Scared the poop out of me.

That is good to know. Do you happen to remember what the exact error was? I can't remember the one I had because I was too focused on trying to bring it back.

 

[Drogon]

That is good to know. Do you happen to remember what the exact error was? I can't remember the one I had because I was too focused on trying to bring it back.

I'm sorry I wish I could remember exactly. It did say something about a critical battery error and was flashing red at the top of the pilot app.