Nothing will charge.
- Thread starter Daniel Pope
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Plus1
if you cant get it to charge this way and the charger seems to be working you may have let the batteries sit to long and sink to low in voltage if you have a regular RC battery charger that will charge NiMH or NiCad batteries you can use it to get enough voltage into the batteries that they will charge up with the lipo charger.
Very true. Someone else has "revived" some LiPo from the low-voltage crypt LOL.
One thing to check for... do any of the batteries feel "fat or puffy"? Soft on the sides when you push on them almost like my knee felt when I had "Water on the knee" a few years ago.
Have you done this successfully? I would not expect this to work unless you were to disassemble the pack so you can access the cell taps directly, the smart board charging circuit will likely defeat all attempts to commence charging otherwise.
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I have done this with other packs using only the power leads not the balance taps. I have done this with my CCTV battery which has a balance board and protection circuitry much like the DJI batteries, so should also work on these. The idea is to run just enough power into the cells to get them active again so the Lipo Charger can take over. When I do this for old cells I hook up let the charger run 10 min then try the lipo charger if it doesn't start charging, I go 20 min and ad 10 min per try eventually enough voltage gets stored that it will be able to start charging on its own. I don't think DJI's circuit boards are all that smart anyhow considering they let me charge up two different batteries that have coded out for overcharging just nano seconds after they coded out
I have
I have also recovered over discharged packs on several occasions, using a lab power supply to individually bring cells up to 3V before charging normally. What I can say about that is it is largely a waste of time for any pack that is used in a high current draw application. Over discharge usually increased IR significantly and irreversibly.
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when I have that overcharge code on two of my batteries I was concerned they were both going to end up in the trash I had just bought them and was only days past from being able to return them. I wont buy aftermarket batteries so I paid a premium price for them I flew both batteries and tried again and for a second time they both flashed the over charge code. this time I put them in the AC and powered up everything and looked at the battery in the app it showed one cell below all the others that would explain my problem I put them back on charge a\with battery power on to try and peak them to 100% got about 10 seconds in and the lights started flashing again I shut the batteries down and repowered it up this time they went full charge but then still threw the code put then back in the drone to see how they looked and still one cell below the others. I drew both down till they shut off and recharged and all has been well since.
I would like to take a pack apart and see if the board will still work if I disconnect the balance leads and install a proper balance connector at least with that if I have a cell slightly lagging behind I could tap that cell and bring it up to the rest. the problem with that is I wouldn't be able to see the separate cells in the app anymore and would have to measure them from time to time to make sure they are doing what they should. I do understand the over discharge issue, but a single event shouldn't be that detrimental. I have close to 100 batteries from single up to 6S packs have always stored them around 50-60% , but I also pull them out every threes months and test them to make sure they aren't dropping below normal charge recovery.
I had quite a number of LI-ion batteries folks have given me that the internal resistance had increased on quite a bit from over discharge I was building Box mod type Vape devices for 4 years and customers would regularly vape they're batteries down to 2.7 volts per cell in spite of the voltage meter I always installed on the device so they can see when voltage was getting low. I could never understand why folks did that other then to lazy to swap batteries at the proper voltage.
I would like to take a pack apart and see if the board will still work if I disconnect the balance leads and install a proper balance connector at least with that if I have a cell slightly lagging behind I could tap that cell and bring it up to the rest. the problem with that is I wouldn't be able to see the separate cells in the app anymore and would have to measure them from time to time to make sure they are doing what they should. I do understand the over discharge issue, but a single event shouldn't be that detrimental. I have close to 100 batteries from single up to 6S packs have always stored them around 50-60% , but I also pull them out every threes months and test them to make sure they aren't dropping below normal charge recovery.
I had quite a number of LI-ion batteries folks have given me that the internal resistance had increased on quite a bit from over discharge I was building Box mod type Vape devices for 4 years and customers would regularly vape they're batteries down to 2.7 volts per cell in spite of the voltage meter I always installed on the device so they can see when voltage was getting low. I could never understand why folks did that other then to lazy to swap batteries at the proper voltage.
I think the balance leads need to be connected to the smart board for the pack to work. In some instances a dead pack can be bought out of hibernation and will accept a charge if you leave that connector off the board for a while. That suggests to me that the cell taps are being constantly monitored by the smart board (the packs do seem to self discharge faster than a bare lipo pack without smart electronics.
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Yeah that's kind of my worry with taking the taps off the board. my guess is if it didn't see those you would possible get a broken cell warning. I have noticed the discharge feature is fairly rapid.
I have managed to get an inspire pack to charge by simply disconnecting the balance tap connector for half an hour and reinstalling. I wish now I had measured the cell voltages at the time just for interest sake. That pack would charge ok however was retired shortly after ad the usable capacity was significantly down, I think 40% from memory. It was a gift from someone who had left it idle for 12 months straight after flying it.
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a buddy of mine has a phantom pack that was only running 12 min he got some good use out of that battery. he uses it for firmware updates and wont part with it or Id have one to take apart. I'm actively looking for one though so its just a matter of time. I have 10 packs at present, one has close to 60 cycles on it if I remember correct so I may end up just pulling that one its still running great flight time though. I have programmer skillset would be awesome to break into the onboard chip and see what all it keeps track of, but that's not always an easy task. do you know if the inspire battery control board is the same as the one in the phantom 2 series? because I know where one of those are that's dead jut don't know if its a board of cell issue
