How to drain battery

[DBS]

Re: How to drain battery

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That being said... If you DON'T take your battery down under 8 volts from time to time it will have a negative effect on battery health and give shorter flight times sooner...

If you DO take your battery down below 8% (or all the way till lights off) from time to time... you will notice increased flight times because you are exercising the bottom end of the battery... your battery's overall health and life span will be extended as well.

Under 8 volts, ouch! Under load it should not drop below 3.0, better 3.1 Volts and some LiPo manufacturer even recommend not below 3.2 Volts per cell. This means with the Phantom 3S2P batteries the lowest under load should be 9.0-9.6 Volts.
Lipo batteries do not have a memory effect so discharging them low doesn't change the true available battery capacity however LiPo batteries lose capacity over time and with charge cycles therefore the deeper discharge is there so that the intelligent controller can "learn" the true available capacity and correctly display it. The lower you can discharge it without going below the safe discharge voltage on any cell the more accurate the capacity can be measured with the following charge cycle.

I deeper cycle my battery by flying with it down to the 15-30% let them cool and then I use charger that I have for my other RC batteries to slowly discharge the battery further.

Oops ... typo... I meant 8 percent as I mentioned earlier and later in that same comment

 

[tedw123]

Re: How to drain battery

You should never drain completely or battery damage will occur. DJI suggests not below 8%.

Not true... DJI states "at least until 8% or until the battery won't turn on anymore"... they make no such claim of "never drain completely or battery damage will occur"

I fly mine all the way to zero regularly and leave the phantom on until the lights turn off... then a quick check shows the battery is still at 10volts or more...

0% on the app battery meter doesn't mean 0 volts.... DJI made this a smart battery system for a reason... for their "anyone can fly it" campaign... they knew many flyers wouldn't know the lipo rules so the battery keeps itself safe...

That being said... If you DON'T take your battery down under 8 volts from time to time it will have a negative effect on battery health and give shorter flight times sooner...

If you DO take your battery down below 8% (or all the way till lights off) from time to time... you will notice increased flight times because you are exercising the bottom end of the battery... your battery's overall health and life span will be extended as well.

It's not a DJI statement, it's a statement anyone should know pertaining to LiPo batteries! Google "safe to drain lipo batteries all the way" and you might learn something!

 

[Sketch6995]

Re: How to drain battery

I'm not sure what you guys are flying, but, my phantom 2 v+ does NOT shut down until it's running at 0% for about 30 seconds. You are also SUPPOSED to drain the batteries flat every 20 cycles as part of good HEALTH per DJI... so.. not sure where the false info come from.

Anyway, I bring my phantom in close at 8%, and then keep force-hovering until 0% (you can fight it from landing..) .. then let it sit until it dies on it own.. then re-charge... I'm over 100 cycles on each of my 2 original batteries.. no issues.

thats exactly what ive found, you can hover it until the battery reaches 0%, but is there a way to use the charger to drain a battery? if so, how? do you just plug it in and then turn on the battery?

the manual talks about static draining, but it doesnt explain how to do this.