old batteries

sdtag · Jan 11, 2022

Hey everybody.
Happy 2022. It's been a while.
It's been a long while.
I haven't flown my P2V+ in a couple of years now. I decided to get it out and see if it still works.
I have 3 batteries and none of them will charge. I tried all kinds of things hoping to stumble on to a solution.
Nope nada.
Is there anything I can do to revive these old batteries. I see I can still buy them on Ebay and Amazon.
Hoping for a clue, otherwise I'm buying a new battery.
just one...

Andy9 · Jan 12, 2022

Buy new ones.
Those batteries are dead.

OdysseyShane · Jan 12, 2022

I am in the same position. I have 2 bad Mavic Pro batteries, and a bad Phantom 4 battery. It seems wasteful to just throw them away.

Andy9 · Jan 13, 2022

That's why electric-driven devices are not so ecological friendly as many want to claim.

sdtag · Jan 13, 2022

sdtag said:
Hey everybody.
Happy 2022. It's been a while.
It's been a long while.
I haven't flown my P2V+ in a couple of years now. I decided to get it out and see if it still works.
I have 3 batteries and none of them will charge. I tried all kinds of things hoping to stumble on to a solution.
Nope nada.
Is there anything I can do to revive these old batteries. I see I can still buy them on Ebay and Amazon.
Hoping for a clue, otherwise I'm buying a new battery.
just one...

well I tried to charge all 3 batteries and they never responded. I followed some voodoo I found on the internet but of course it didn't work. I may as well hop up and down on one leg and hope for a miracle haha.
I really try not to buy everything on Amazon but I ended up ordering two batteries on Amazon. I compared between Ebay and Amazon and even though Amazon was about 15 bucks more I just feel more comfortable with their shipping time and their easy return process in case something goes wrong.
The new batteries are coming so I charged up everything else. So far so good. Now lets see if I remember how to fly the dam thing this weekend. haha watch for some new crash videos on youtube haha
I want to take one of my old batteries apart and check out the circuitry inside. How do you take these apart. I see the little tiny lock tabs on the end cap but I can't get them all to release at the same time.
...die hard haha
thanks everybody

Jason1823 · Jan 21, 2022

To get the top of the battery off its just a matter of getting a screw driver under the clips and working your way around that battery. FYI it will pretty much break a couple of the clips every time. Also if your interested it is possible to resolder the battery management board with a couple adapters and run a slandered 3s lipo. I run my phantom off of these OVONIC 50C 5000mAh 11.1V 3S Lipo they work pretty well.
If your interested in doing it, it takes a couple hours and some patience. I can dig up the instructions i used if you want.

Jason1823 · Jan 21, 2022

Jason1823 said:
To get the top of the battery off its just a matter of getting a screw driver under the clips and working your way around that battery. FYI it will pretty much break a couple of the clips every time. Also if your interested it is possible to resolder the battery management board with a couple adapters and run a slandered 3s lipo. I run my phantom off of these OVONIC 50C 5000mAh 11.1V 3S Lipo they work pretty well.
If your interested in doing it, it takes a couple hours and some patience. I can dig up the instructions i used if you want.

Here is the form i used for instructions. Phantom 2 battery mod - use any lipo with your p2! - RC Groups

i followed this sorta i just mounted the battery board on the side of the drone instead and sawed the battery cap so it holds the lipo in the drone. The wiring is a little difficult and i ended up taking the main board out of the drone so i could work on everything from above instead of through the little battery door.

sdtag · Jan 21, 2022

I already bought two Phantom batteries on Amazon but thank you for this. I will keep this in my back pocket and I may end up making this mod. I wish I would have known about this before I bought the two batteries, I would have done this mod in a heartbeat! I still might. I'm a wiring fool. Thank you very much!

Jason1823 · Jan 21, 2022

No Problem.
FYI I got a couple aftermarket batterys for the phantom and I took one apart and the wiring is completely different than an oem one so not sure if you can change the cells on an aftermarket.

Have fun flying and if you want to have some real fun you should enable naze-m mode in the software and set it up so the left (it might be right can't remember) switch on the controller turns on manual mode and the phantom 2 will then fly like a fpv quad. It disables all auto leveling as well as gps when you flip the switch down. It will do flips so watch out.

sdtag · Jan 22, 2022

haha yeah I did that once and lasted about 5 seconds before I crashed. I tried it when I was too close to the ground - no time for corrections, and I never tried it again. After that I concentrated more on taking good videos, getting smooth pans, etc. Slow and boring haha
I still have my original 3 dead DJI batteries. I knew I was saving them for a reason! I did manage to get the end cap off of one of them. It's a start.

Jason1823 · Jan 24, 2022

sdtag said:
haha yeah I did that once and lasted about 5 seconds before I crashed. I tried it when I was too close to the ground - no time for corrections, and I never tried it again. After that I concentrated more on taking good videos, getting smooth pans, etc. Slow and boring haha
I still have my original 3 dead DJI batteries. I knew I was saving them for a reason! I did manage to get the end cap off of one of them. It's a start.

Do you run the stock gimble or do you use a gopro?

sdtag · Jan 24, 2022

stock gimble and camera.
Of course I heard about the camera popping off on a hard landing years ago so I made my own little keeper thing. I started to make a bunch of them, I was going to sell them on Ebay, but I couldn't get them to be consistent enough and look professional enough so I gave up. But I have mine.

Tomdownunder · Oct 15, 2022

sdtag said:
stock gimble and camera.
Of course I heard about the camera popping off on a hard landing years ago so I made my own little keeper thing. I started to make a bunch of them, I was going to sell them on Ebay, but I couldn't get them to be consistent enough and look professional enough so I gave up. But I have mine.

Reviving and old thread, just to suggest that batteries may not charge if completely flat as charger won't recognize them. A jump start from a battery with some life in it (hook up in parallel with a good battery for a short time) may give enough juice for the charger to recognize and then charge the dead battery.

Andy9 · Oct 15, 2022

All right, but do you fly with these batteries? I wouldn't because I would not trust them.
If you did, how were the flight times?
What about the voltage of each cell?
Any serious difference between them?