Phantom 4 Pro Battery Dead/No Lights

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I just purchased a P4P through craigslist from some guy. The drone is in amazing condition and I got 1 battery with it. I already had the P4P+ but lost the drone(so I still have 2x of my old batteries)

Anyways, the battery they gave me was dead. The light wouldn't turn on when pressing the button. I searched and searched and found out this basically happens when the battery is left in storage too long. I am assuming they left the battery on low charge and it just slowly drained to this critical level where it doesn't even charge. I left it on the charger for about 3 hours with no change. I know my charger works cause my other 2 batteries charged up fine.

So me being the wanna tear everything apart kinda person decided to disassemble the battery. I put my multimeter on the two main terminals on the board and get a voltage of ~2.8. I am assuming this is bad because the battery should be 15+ if I am correct. I tested each individual cell and I got roughly ~0.75 on 3 cells and ~0.35 on one cell. I disconnected what I assume is the balancer cable(or at least thats what other posts referenced it as) and put it to charge. Surprisingly I am actually getting the cells to slowly raise in voltage. I will be closely monitoring this and making sure I don't exceed 3.5v on a single cell, plus I don't want to burn my house down.

I saw a video of someone taking it apart and replacing a chip, that is way to complicated and I don't trust myself so I'd rather just buy a new one. Even if I manage to fix this, it might take a couple dozen test low altitude flights before I trust this battery for a real flight.

Anyone else had this issue? If so what did you do to fix it?
 
With having a phantom before, you are already aware of the damage that will occur even with a “low altitude” test flight. Is it worth the risk?
Not in my book.
 
I just purchased a P4P through craigslist from some guy. The drone is in amazing condition and I got 1 battery with it. I already had the P4P+ but lost the drone(so I still have 2x of my old batteries)

Anyways, the battery they gave me was dead. The light wouldn't turn on when pressing the button. I searched and searched and found out this basically happens when the battery is left in storage too long. I am assuming they left the battery on low charge and it just slowly drained to this critical level where it doesn't even charge. I left it on the charger for about 3 hours with no change. I know my charger works cause my other 2 batteries charged up fine.

So me being the wanna tear everything apart kinda person decided to disassemble the battery. I put my multimeter on the two main terminals on the board and get a voltage of ~2.8. I am assuming this is bad because the battery should be 15+ if I am correct. I tested each individual cell and I got roughly ~0.75 on 3 cells and ~0.35 on one cell. I disconnected what I assume is the balancer cable(or at least thats what other posts referenced it as) and put it to charge. Surprisingly I am actually getting the cells to slowly raise in voltage. I will be closely monitoring this and making sure I don't exceed 3.5v on a single cell, plus I don't want to burn my house down.

I saw a video of someone taking it apart and replacing a chip, that is way to complicated and I don't trust myself so I'd rather just buy a new one. Even if I manage to fix this, it might take a couple dozen test low altitude flights before I trust this battery for a real flight.

Anyone else had this issue? If so what did you do to fix it?
Yip me had same from crashed p4,keep battery's now have another I'm thinking good collection of battery's now sure enough they fell bellow dji charger specs,,same used muti meter and say only 2.3volts I think,it did go up slightly to 2.7 or close to that but I did not want to leave charger going..gave up till I at least get a trickle charger to work properly,,I have heard though it pays to unplug the cable with 4 wires (red) something to do with program of its circut board,,once it has a few more volts then plug up for original dji charger,,I be doing this very soon,,the original charger won't charge if battery drops to far so if anyone got any in storage pull them out for a top up,,these battery's in NZ like 320 each,,pphheeww,I don't fly the p3 much these days but still keep it ready to go,,
1563093282744225572408.jpg
1563093337651-879843068.jpg
 
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Isn't there some kind of trick of pressing the battery button for 5 sec to reset it. Then charge normally? Think I read that, anyone?
 
Pressing the button one time for just until the light comes on will reset the timer on it’s countdown to auto-discharge.
If you hold the button for about five seconds, it will indicate the health of the battery. Each light will represent about a 25%.
 
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Yip me had same from crashed p4,keep battery's now have another I'm thinking good collection of battery's now sure enough they fell bellow dji charger specs,,same used muti meter and say only 2.3volts I think,it did go up slightly to 2.7 or close to that but I did not want to leave charger going..gave up till I at least get a trickle charger to work properly,,I have heard though it pays to unplug the cable with 4 wires (red) something to do with program of its circut board,,once it has a few more volts then plug up for original dji charger,,I be doing this very soon,,the original charger won't charge if battery drops to far so if anyone got any in storage pull them out for a top up,,these battery's in NZ like 320 each,,pphheeww,I don't fly the p3 much these days but still keep it ready to go


Yea that is what I read or saw somewhere too. That is what I am referring to as the balancer cable but not really sure what it does. I tried with it plugged or unplugged and nothing is really happening. I got the lights to come back and I've charged each cell to 3.5v+. Nothing changed aside from the lights acting different now. I'll try to bring them close to 4v each and try again. If that doesn't work then I guess I'll consider it trash and forget about it. It's already pretty risky trying to recover this.

I did speak with the guy who sold me the drone and they got another battery. I'm having them check it to see if the lights appear and hopefully it'll be a working one and I'll get that one sent to me.
 
UPDATE:

So the lights on the battery showed it at 75%. I tried to put it on original charger and it gave me the charging moving lights. After a few animations it just shuts off. It seems to now show full when I click the button. When I turn it on, it does the moving animation but doesn't permantely stay lit like a normal battery would. I think I spent too much time on this battery. I won't bother trying to recover this anymore. Unless new info comes out on how to reset the chip or get it reprogrammed to work again.
 
P4 battery has a processor that monitors its state with all kinds of parameters. If something goes wrong with the battery, like a severe discharge above, the processor won't let it be used. There is a video on youtube of a guy re-programming the battery processor and clearing the error codes. It's in Romanian language, so you'll have to watch it with subtitles. That said, a battery that's been discharged that low has cell damage anyway. I would not be using it with a drone. DJI just had official P4 batteries in stock on their website a couple of day ago, but they sold out quick. You can still find the on ebay etc. HomeDepot sells them too, but you have to google for it
 
by the way, disconnecting a balance cable from that board, assuming you have the latest battery firmware, most likely will throw an internal error code. I've read it somewhere here I believe
 
I would charge/discharge the original "dead" battery a few
times to stabilize the battery internal chemicals.
Been there... Done that..

Jerry
 
DJI just had official P4 batteries in stock on their website a couple of day ago, but they sold out quick. You can still find the on ebay etc. HomeDepot sells them too, but you have to google for it
HomeDepot now sells DJI batteries???
 

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