P3 turned off and fell from the sky

[UnrealDrones]

Unfortunately no tech is perfect, and this seems to be a good example of this. I wish you the best of luck with your refund! Hope the next one works great

 

[Leenanj]

The latest upgrade does address this battery shutdown issue.

When you hit full throttle there is maximum current draw that exceeds the
battery capability and it thinks there is a short circuit and shuts itself down.
This is more likely to happen with a very cold battery.

The latest upgrade limits full throttle until battery warms up.

 

[gmc256]

Jaked, The exact same thing happened to me. I called tech-support they were excellent, I strongly recommend that you do that but be prepared to be on hold for a very long time. That said it will be worth your weight, since this does not appear to be pilot error. When it happened to me my battery was fully charged, it flew out to about 1000 feet and up about 192 feet and suddenly fell onto someone's house. All I could think of was worrying about it landing on a human being and causing harm. So glad that wasn't the case.

Others have talked about the cold, and the're spot on. That said the temperature outside when I was flying mine was 54°C. Once again the black box will come to your rescue so buckle up, the incredibly honest with them I'll ask you to fill out a form stating the back story, and hope for the best. If you need return shipping instructions but ones they provide are somewhat vague, so don't hesitate to reach out to me if you like. Hopefully you still have the manufacture box because that is undoubtedly the best way to return your bird for repair. I took it a step further and placed The manufacture box in yet another box cradled in peanuts. Good luck!

 

[msinger]

Jaked, The exact same thing happened to me.

Kind of. But, the OP took off with the battery at 58%. And, then ascended at a steep, fast pace.

 

[Sinisalo]

Why were you already above your neighbors roof 4-5 seconds after takeoff? you are supposed to do a 1 minute hover and then go easy on the sticks when you fly in a cold climate which I imagine Canada is right now. I bet your spare battery got cold during your first flight, you swapped it out and tried pushing it so it failed.

Edit:
I just downloaded your flight record and looked at it on healthydrones, well it seems that your issue was indeed as others have mentioned the fact that your battery wasn't fully charged. It is my bet that your battery was auto discharging. This probably would have happened without it being cold. I do hope that you can get a replacement but DJI says that you should only take off with a fully charged battery.

 

[flyNfrank]

jaked_902, your logs show the following:

- You took off with a battery that was only 58% charged.
- At takeoff, the battery voltage was 15.35V (about 3.83V per cell).
- When the battery shut off, the voltage was 11.95V (about 2.98V per cell).

The battery will auto shut off when the voltage drops below 3V per cell. That is by design to prevent the battery from damaging itself. See more details here.

Since you climbed at such a rapid pace, it caused the voltage to drop to a very low level since your Phantom was drawing a lot of power to achieve that feat. You would have been fine if you had taken off with a fully charged battery.

Start with, msinger is right on the money with his info. He really should be at least thanked as looking over this data takes time. I have almost 2hrs alone looking over this members data myself. There is some strange parts I found in his data that I have not seen before in other flights.

Sad part is, from the point in which he launched his P3 to point of failure....was only 8 seconds. And due that I can't tell if the recent firmware had been installed or not. This flight consisted of getting a couple feet off the ground and had it also flying away from him. So in other words. At 2ft it traveled away as it climbed in altitude. As we know with the Smart Battery software it has a Return To Home safe point bar that displays near top of the monitor.

It is just unfortunate to see this happen considering the number of posted Crash Threads on this same subject of dropping from sky due to battery not fully charged.

 

[JustinJ]

Should have hovered for a moment before applying full sticks up & away...

I don't see why DJI should offer any warranty repair / replacement!?

DJI clearly state in the flight battery doc to "make sure the batteries are fully charged before each flight"

OP clearly did not do this!

 

[Wingfan04]

Everything is (was) relatively new, under 2 dozen flights, batteries were charged the night before. Here is the flight data:

So OP says one thing but data logs show another Hmmmmmmm

 

[ParsnipHysorter]

Why were you already above your neighbors roof 4-5 seconds after takeoff? you are supposed to do a 1 minute hover and then go easy on the sticks when you fly in a cold climate which I imagine Canada is right now. I bet your spare battery got cold during your first flight, you swapped it out and tried pushing it so it failed.

Edit:
I just downloaded your flight record and looked at it on healthydrones, well it seems that your issue was indeed as others have mentioned the fact that your battery wasn't fully charged. It is my bet that your battery was auto discharging. This probably would have happened without it being cold. I do hope that you can get a replacement but DJI says that you should only take off with a fully charged battery.

Indeed too much jumping to conclusions about the cold. I fly mine all the time in much colder temperatures, sometimes to -20 F, and have had no issues (but I do always start with a fully charged, room-temperature battery). Sounds like it was in auto-discharge and would have happened in the cold or not. Always best to top off your battery before the flight just to ensure its not in auto-discharge.

 

[JustinJ]

Indeed too much jumping to conclusions about the cold. I fly mine all the time in much colder temperatures, sometimes to -20 F, and have had no issues (but I do always start with a fully charged, room-temperature battery). Sounds like it was in auto-discharge and would have happened in the cold or not. Always best to top off your battery before the flight just to ensure its not in auto-discharge.

Agree totally!

& if battery has sufficient charge (not sure of EXACT %) it will not accept top-up charge (from what I have noticed when ensuring batteries have as much charge as poss prior to my flights)

 

[msinger]

Sounds like it was in auto-discharge and would have happened in the cold or not.

Batteries do not auto discharge while in use. I know this is a popular theory as of late, but it doesn't make much sense. Please feel free to go into more detail if you know more about this than you've shared so far.

 

[Wingfan04]

& if battery has sufficient charge (not sure of EXACT %) it will not accept top-up charge (from what I have noticed when ensuring batteries have as much charge as poss prior to my flights)

Sure it will accept a top-up charge. You simply need to turn the battery "On" before connecting to the charger

 

[jaked_902]

No, I did not hover but the drone ran on the ground before I took off, as I understood the suggestion was to do, and everything was green on the app.

The battery was fresh from the charger, indoors, showed 98% in the Go app, and the Phantom had just completed a full-battery flight with no issues, and the battery in question has less than 12 flights on it. I was not watching the iPad once the rotors were spinning, I choose to watch the phantom on takeoff instead, so if the battery suddenly discharged to 58% I was not aware. I believe that to be irrelevant anyway, as it is not considered unsafe to fly a battery out, so what difference does it make if it is during takeoff or midway through a flight.

I have never resisted pushing the throttle full during a flight, so apparently this would have occurred eventually anyway. According to the flight record, the battery was 58% at takeoff and 57% at landing, so it did not "run out", the battery failed. I had similar problems with my P2 batteries, but they would show up as faulty and I wasn't able to take off with them in the first place, or they would force an RTH shortly after takeoff.

I'm not sure why a similar fail safe wasn't put in place for these batteries. FWIW, the outdoor temperature was not cold, it was very warm for this time of year, average in general for evening temperatures for our climate (typical for spring, fall, early winter). The copter was warm and the battery came from inside my house 5 minutes prior, so temperature should not be a factor. If average temperature here is unsuitable for use of this product then there should be warnings, at bare minimum, when purchasing.

 

[syotr]

There is a documented fault in the battery management. DJI should step up and take care of these failures. I can fly my P1 with a battery at 25% no problem. It won't shut off and fall from the sky.
DJI may replace your P2, Inspire, or P3 if it crashed due to battery | DJI Phantom Forum

 

[jaked_902]

Jaked,

When was the 58% battery charged last? To me it seems, from all the similar posts that once the battery enters self discharge, the firmware doesn't read or report the correct voltage. Many machines shutting off in FFF (fast forward flight). You wouldn't have had 58% really left in the battery. DJI just released new FW to address this 2 days ago.

Another cause could be high internal resistance in the battery cells to have a resting charge of 3.83v per cell and pull down to 2.98. What is the battery life reading and how many cycles on the failed battery? I still think it's the firmware after a self discharge. Again, when was the last charge on the battery that took a nap?

Sorry about the crash.

SD

Thanks SD.

This battery was charged fully the previous evening (<24 hrs.). When I hit the button on the battery, before inserting it, it showed full (all bars). When I connected it (via DJI Go app), I don't recall it saying lower than 98%, but like I said I was watching the Phantom, not the screen. I saw green (safe to fly GPS mode) and took off.

It must have discharged incredibly quickly, as the duration of the flight was under 15 seconds, even if it was 58% by takeoff, that should have given me enough time to fly home safely. The previous flight was minutes, and I received a warning as expected when the battery reached 30% and I flew it home and even stopped and tested an RTH landing before the battery fell to critical.

I have 3 batteries, the one that came with it which may have been used a dozen times, and two I bought separately that may have been used 6 times each. I typically leave them alone and only plug them in the night before I might fly. All 3 are genuine DJI batteries.

Mordor - firmware was upgraded

I guess next step will be to call DJI on Monday. I'm guessing there will be a few million Phantoms arriving in new pilots' hands tomorrow, so hopefully this is a relatively rare occurrence.

 

[msinger]

It must have discharged incredibly quickly, as the duration of the flight was under 15 seconds, even if it was 58% by takeoff, that should have given me enough time to fly home safely.

If the battery is in good health, it would be impossible for it to discharge from 100% to 58% that quickly. If the battery was really showing 4 lights, then I can only assume the battery is defective. Either way, the battery shut off because the voltage dropped to a dangerously low level. If the battery is defective and it still is showing 4 lights when half depleted, then DJI might really replace it for free.

 

[JustinJ]

Sure it will accept a top-up charge. You simply need to turn the battery "On" before connecting to the charger

What's the point of that? (Seriously asking!)

I'm only talking maybe 5% or so in my case..

But I have my own routine etc.. never had any problems with any batteries personally

I don't personally see the logic... & it is also not possible to "turn on" all types of intelligent batteries to ensure they're what you consider "fully" charged.

I have found the batteries are actually "smart" enough to know if they actually need to top-up (the very small % I am referring)

 

[ParsnipHysorter]

Batteries do not auto discharge while in use. I know this is a popular theory as of late, but it doesn't make much sense. Please feel free to go into more detail if you know more about this than you've shared so far.

Maybe not while in use, but a battery can be in auto-discharge mode when the flight is began. The "popular theory" that makes no sense you say, goes that voltage is not properly monitored by the battery during auto-discharge so a battery that appears to be nearly full by both the LEDs and in the App actually are not. A lot of Lipo batteries experience a voltage spike when discharge is stopped which can be misread for a healthy voltage and state of charge, but there is no substance behind the sensed voltage level... the voltage can drop dramatically once a heavy load is placed on it. Voltage is never a great indicator of state of charge of batteries unfortunately, no matter their chemical design. Voltage is just an easy-to-read symptom of what is going on behind the scenes but it can be "tricked", so to speak.

However now that the OP says it has been <24 hours since the battery was charged I don't see how this could have been the issue. It is strange how it says it started at just 58% charge. OP are you certain you had topped it off just the day before? Perhaps an unfortunate incidence of a bad battery that we all hope we don't encounter.

 

[msinger]

Maybe not while in use, but a battery can be in auto-discharge mode when the flight is began.

Are you suggesting this is a fact, your theory, or a flaw in the DJI smart battery design?

 

[Tony Wilson]

I was told when you conduct a FW update you should leave the update on the SD card and place all of your batteries in the bird so they get updated also with the latest FW. I've done it with every update and have yet to have any issues with my P2V, P3S or P3P.