BATTERY WARNING!!!!!!

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Hi Guys....

I consider myself an experienced phantom pilot, with over 300 flights under my belt with no issues whatsoever. I have five batteries, and i try to rotate them so they all have equal flight time. Today, i put a fully charged battery in my bird (36 flights) and took off. I ascended to 25 meters and started to fly forward, when all of a sudden the bird started to auto descend, i immediately put full power to her, and she dropped from the sky like a rock, slamming down onto my cement driveway and destroying her!!!!! Meanwhile, the battery was showing 54% before she fell. I am sick to my stomach!!!!! i had over $3000 invested in her, with iosd mk2, h33d gimbal and go pro, avl58 fpv system, futaba t8j radio and receiver and 5 batteries and hard case.

Now my only choice is to spend another $700 for a replacement p2 with h33d gimbal, and put my electronics back in her.... but for what????? For it to possibly happen again???? I take very good care of my stuff, and this is maddening!!!!! I have heard stories of them falling from the skies, but always assumed pilot error..... This was not pilot error. It was in auto land for a mere 2-3 seconds before just falling out of the sky.

If DJI cant make batteries that will last more than 36 flights, then they aren't worth a penny!!!! I am disgusted about this, and I am sure I have no recourse with dji.... too bad, so sad i am sure.

It was a great hobby while it lasted..... Just another failed piece of crap from china i can add to the growing list of failed trash that I have paid dearly for. Appliances, tools, etc.

PS....

Let me just reiterate..... I ALWAYS assumed that a phantom would not just fall out of the sky.... I always thought that, worst case, it would perform an auto land, which may be in an area that wasnt ideal for that to happen, but that it wouldnt just lose power and crash. I guess I am extremely lucky, in actuality, because I took off from my backyard, and started to fly over my house towards my front yard, unknowing that my wife had just pulled into the garage in her brand new Audi A5. The phantom crashed onto the driveway right in front of the garage. If it had been 45 seconds earlier, i would have crashed onto her new car, which, would have been even more disastrous.

David
 
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David, sorry for your loss. I am afraid there was some pilot error but also some battery issues. The mistake was when she was auto landing you full throttled her back up. The reason for the auto land was the battery most likely dropped to 8% and she was comming down to save herself. You sent her back up and the battery died In air. Have had the same thing happen to me. I was lucky, she came down in a tree and was salvageable. I also have multiple batteries. Rotated the around but wasn't smart enough the first time to realize the auto land. But this time I was watching and saw the battery dr from 65% Dow to 8% and the bird auto landed and this time I let her. Jumped in my car and found her with "find my Phantom"
Came home charged and checked the battery, cells looked good in assistant pushed the power and held it for 5 seconds all four led lit. Scratched my head.
Powered up the Phantom and hovered at 3 ft over yard. Watched and saw the battery do it again after 6 minutes hovering she came down. Trashed that battery and now cross my finger on leach long flight as I fly over a lot of woods and water. I know this doesn't help you much but you may the understand what may have happened. Sorry my friend.
 
Hate to hear the loss of your bird bro !! I know how ya feel !
I guess your assuming this is always pilot error was mistaking huh !!
 
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Sounds like a bad cell. Depending on how old the battery is, you can contact DJI and file a claim.
 
Hi Guys....

I consider myself an experienced phantom pilot, with over 300 flights under my belt with no issues whatsoever. I have five batteries, and i try to rotate them so they all have equal flight time. Today, i put a fully charged battery in my bird (36 flights) and took off. I ascended to 25 meters and started to fly forward, when all of a sudden the bird started to auto descend, i immediately put full power to her, and she dropped from the sky like a rock, slamming down onto my cement driveway and destroying her!!!!! Meanwhile, the battery was showing 54% before she fell. I am sick to my stomach!!!!! i had over $3000 invested in her, with iosd mk2, h33d gimbal and go pro, avl58 fpv system, futaba t8j radio and receiver and 5 batteries and hard case.

Now my only choice is to spend another $700 for a replacement p2 with h33d gimbal, and put my electronics back in her.... but for what????? For it to possibly happen again???? I take very good care of my stuff, and this is maddening!!!!! I have heard stories of them falling from the skies, but always assumed pilot error..... This was not pilot error. It was in auto land for a mere 2-3 seconds before just falling out of the sky.

If DJI cant make batteries that will last more than 36 flights, then they aren't worth a penny!!!! I am disgusted about this, and I am sure I have no recourse with dji.... too bad, so sad i am sure.

It was a great hobby while it lasted..... Just another failed piece of crap from china i can add to the growing list of failed trash that I have paid dearly for. Appliances, tools, etc.

PS....

Let me just reiterate..... I ALWAYS assumed that a phantom would not just fall out of the sky.... I always thought that, worst case, it would perform an auto land, which may be in an area that wasnt ideal for that to happen, but that it wouldnt just lose power and crash. I guess I am extremely lucky, in actuality, because I took off from my backyard, and started to fly over my house towards my front yard, unknowing that my wife had just pulled into the garage in her brand new Audi A5. The phantom crashed onto the driveway right in front of the garage. If it had been 45 seconds earlier, i would have crashed onto her new car, which, would have been even more disastrous.

David
 
This sounds VERY familiar to me. Just 2 weeks ago I had a similar crash. Flying around a local, vacant ball field, 11.4 volts on screen. My P2 decided it had enough and just went down HARD in the woods next the field. Luckily my eagle eyed wife spotted it while we were searching. The crash was hard enough to bend one of the arms right next to the motor, time for a new body. I very carefully dismantled and reassembled the bird piece by piece and board by board. I didn't see anything broken or cracked inside. I went through a standard and advanced IMU calibration. Bottom line now though is that it will not fly in a stable fashion. Where is was very stable even in mildly gusty skies, it now drifts about a bit and wants to yaw to the right. Any ideas what may be broken or out of kilter??
 
Agreed. Would be great if these "smart" batteries were a little smarter and gave some indication of pending doom. And even better still if DJI had an exchange program for them!
 
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David, sorry for your loss. I am afraid there was some pilot error but also some battery issues. The mistake was when she was auto landing you full throttled her back up. The reason for the auto land was the battery most likely dropped to 8% and she was comming down to save herself. You sent her back up and the battery died In air. Have had the same thing happen to me. I was lucky, she came down in a tree and was salvageable. I also have multiple batteries. Rotated the around but wasn't smart enough the first time to realize the auto land. But this time I was watching and saw the battery dr from 65% Dow to 8% and the bird auto landed and this time I let her. Jumped in my car and found her with "find my Phantom"
Came home charged and checked the battery, cells looked good in assistant pushed the power and held it for 5 seconds all four led lit. Scratched my head.
Powered up the Phantom and hovered at 3 ft over yard. Watched and saw the battery do it again after 6 minutes hovering she came down. Trashed that battery and now cross my finger on leach long flight as I fly over a lot of woods and water. I know this doesn't help you much but you may the understand what may have happened. Sorry my friend.
I have the same issue with the batteries. I haven't felt comfortable trusting my current 3 batteries. Each one goes from 60% to 11% within minutes. And the chart says I still have 84% battery life left. So, I've been staying below 50 feet and all line of sight. I was disgusted with the DJI response so picked up the OFEELY 11.1 V 6000 mah battery on Amazon for Father's Day. Well, so far no luck. Powers up. Lights flash but I'm getting a "Not DJI Intelligent Battery !" as a battery error message. Now I'm going to go hunt the boards and see if there's a decent work-around with firmware. (I checked before purchasing and was told that they worked great) Now for the recheck. I feel for your loss.
 
If I knew how, I would make and sell a parachute that deploys with a sensor that can detect a sudden rate of rapid decent that is compact and attaches to the center top of the quad copter.?
 
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I'm thinking of one of the MaxAmps unlocked battery assemblies.. then I can use any three cell lipo packs I want and also use a aftermarket charger.
 
So far I feel lucky, one battery went bad out of 7, running the other six in rotation but I know it's a roulette wheel and one of these days it'll hit my number. I just hope I'm over. Land when it does. I know why they call the area I live in Tidewater, Virginia, lotsa water.
 
Here's a parachute vid...
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Fximaging. I see you have over $3K invested. Lets assume that some of the ground gear like batts, hard case, transmitter etc. are still usable. Also let's assume you can salvage $1K of the electronics etc. If you lost, say, $2000 and you got 300 flights, that comes to $6.67 per flight. I would bet you enjoyed yourself on almost everyone of those flights and would have paid almost seven bucks per flight if you had to for some reason. Let's say you lost $2500 over the same 300 flights. That would come to $8.33 per flight. I don't know about you buy it doesn't seem so bad when you break it down like that.

I thinks my math is right but it's late....
 
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I believe a foud what is wrong, the battery is causing this failure, even fully charged it thinks is in a critical level performing an emergency landing. you must go to the app and deselect the option Go-home on djiassistent/advanced/battery. It works for me
 
I don't trust P2 DJI batteries.
I had 5 go bad on me - 2 puffy and 3 autoland. In the 3 that autolanded, 1 of them was a PH2-5200 (version 2). The 4 had the pulled firmware 2.6 and all was re-calibrated using the 8% discharge @ every 20 cycles.

Question.. Has any one exceeded 100 charges on 1 battery??? OR am I doing it wrong??
 
Reading various threads and youtube vids, it seems if a battery is below 90 percent useful life, it runs a much increased chance of failure, regardless of what the lamps or asst software indicates.
 

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