P3P cries that motor is overloaded and there is a voltage issue...

B- Scene Films · Mar 27, 2025

I have a P3P that I bought new back in 2015. I am not sure how many hours it has on it but it's not that many. I have always babied the drone and cared for it such that today it is in the same condition as the day I bought it. It has never been crashed. Still has the original factory props on it. I have 4 batteries for it. I used it to fly a mission about 2 years ago to generate an orthomosaic and it worked just fine. I bought a more modern Mavic drone after that since the remoteID requirement was approaching it's deadline and I figured it was time to get a more modern drone and leave the P3P as a backup. Today I decided to see how it was doing as I was going to pick up a remoteID module for it so it could be used as a real backup device. I charged up all the batteries - No issue there. I fired up the P3P and let it do it's usual warm up and it came ready just fine. I took off with about half throttle ascending straight up. The GO application cried that a motor was overloading and it then followed this up with a warning about low voltage. It then forced a landing. I checked the battery status in GO and it looked just fine. Checking the log in AirData, there is no record of the low voltage event. I removed the battery and replaced it with another fully chargd one and tried the flight again and got the exact same results. Again AirData shows no power issue with the drone from the log.

I know the drone is pretty old. Any ideas on why these two conditions might have occurred? The overload makes no sense as I was ascending pretty slowly at about half throttle and the power issue - NO idea what that is about...

Attached are screen shots of the events in question from the GO app as well as a copy of the two log files. Any insights here are greatly appreciated.

B- Scene Films · Friday at 3:45 PM

Did I stump the experts here?

Oso · Saturday at 1:54 PM

B- Scene Films said:
I have a P3P that I bought new back in 2015. I am not sure how many hours it has on it but it's not that many. I have always babied the drone and cared for it such that today it is in the same condition as the day I bought it. It has never been crashed. Still has the original factory props on it. I have 4 batteries for it. I used it to fly a mission about 2 years ago to generate an orthomosaic and it worked just fine. I bought a more modern Mavic drone after that since the remoteID requirement was approaching it's deadline and I figured it was time to get a more modern drone and leave the P3P as a backup. Today I decided to see how it was doing as I was going to pick up a remoteID module for it so it could be used as a real backup device. I charged up all the batteries - No issue there. I fired up the P3P and let it do it's usual warm up and it came ready just fine. I took off with about half throttle ascending straight up. The GO application cried that a motor was overloading and it then followed this up with a warning about low voltage. It then forced a landing. I checked the battery status in GO and it looked just fine. Checking the log in AirData, there is no record of the low voltage event. I removed the battery and replaced it with another fully chargd one and tried the flight again and got the exact same results. Again AirData shows no power issue with the drone from the log.

I know the drone is pretty old. Any ideas on why these two conditions might have occurred? The overload makes no sense as I was ascending pretty slowly at about half throttle and the power issue - NO idea what that is about...

Attached are screen shots of the events in question from the GO app as well as a copy of the two log files. Any insights here are greatly appreciated.

Here are your flights when put through Mike's flight viewer so that others can also help. As always, thanks to @msinger

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

Seems as if neither of the batteries were fully charged when you started. Perhaps they are no longer capable of reaching max voltage. Also, they both seemed to drop voltage on all cells rather quickly which would be expected behavior with older batteries. The cell deviation showed a higher than expected value a few times.

When the errors occurred, it seems as though the cell voltages were at or near the lower control limit for safe flight. My guess is that is the root cause of your issues. Guess only though. I've forgotten much of what I thought I knew at one time. Cheers!

RodPad · Saturday at 6:47 PM

I downloaded his flight logs this morning was going to use msingers site.
Got busy with other stuff.

I easily agree that looks like a battery issue. Motors are not getting enough Voltage / Current for the load

Rod ..

B- Scene Films · Saturday at 8:19 PM

Oso said:
Here are your flights when put through Mike's flight viewer so that others can also help. As always, thanks to @msinger

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

Seems as if neither of the batteries were fully charged when you started. Perhaps they are no longer capable of reaching max voltage. Also, they both seemed to drop voltage on all cells rather quickly which would be expected behavior with older batteries. The cell deviation showed a higher than expected value a few times.

When the errors occurred, it seems as though the cell voltages were at or near the lower control limit for safe flight. My guess is that is the root cause of your issues. Guess only though. I've forgotten much of what I thought I knew at one time. Cheers!

Interesting. The batteries indicated they were full when I used them but now they will not charge to full anymore so clearly they are headed for the battery recycle. Odd as 2 of them failed like that. My other two still work but now I am gun shy with them. Time to buy a new set of batteries I guess. 22 charges on those two batteries. Both made in 2015 tho - Maybe their age is what killed them.

Thank you gentlemen.