Phantom lost connection and fell from the sky for no reason.

[Timelinex]

I hope they do the right thing and replace your bird! Alot of people are explaining how the battery monitor works, which is great, but the 'why' has absolutely no bearing on whether its a hardware failure VS user error.

Not everyone that buys a drone is on this forum reading about it's glitch's (nor should they be expected to). The battery should either indicate the true charge or it should auto block use when it has been sitting around for X hours. The only way I would put this liability off the companies shoulders is if it clearly states on the battery that the charge indicator is not reliable after X hours of non-use. Then the user was clearly warned.

 

[Tim_alabim]

Having totalled a p3p already...


I took four batteries. All set to ten day discharge. All fully charged. I kept checking two for fifteen days straight. Each day both answered with ~100% and four green lights.

The other two batteries on day 15 had ~55% percent and two solid one blinking.


Sent from my SM-T810 using Tapatalk

When you checked the 2 batteries, you reset the discharge clock, no? That would explain why the 2 you checked stayed at 100% charge and the other 2 did not.

 

[dottat4]

When you checked the 2 batteries, you reset the discharge clock, no? That would explain why the 2 you checked stayed at 100% charge and the other 2 did not.

Yes that's my point

Two were safe to fly. Two were not. So if you know you aren't going to use your batteries within the discharge time you can extend it by hitting the power button to reset the countdown.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

[alokbhargava]

I believe batteries are NOT that intelligent.

 

[ianwood]

You can fly on less than fully charged batteries if they were just in use from full e.g. you land and take off again after a short period. I will do up to 10 different take offs and landings on set with the same Inspire battery which uses the same logic as the P3.

However, you should not fly on a partially discharged battery that has been sitting around for a long time. There are flaws in the "smart" battery logic that will make it appear to discharge rapidly and the P3 will go into auto-land or worse. Always charge your batteries to full before use.

I am not saying that is the issue in this case. I assume someone looked at the logs that were posted.

 

[phantom13flyer]

It's also a good idea to have the voltage reading on the main screen. You will also noticed that full left stick and full right stick at the same time will decrease your voltage a lot. I personally think it's a bad idea to use 100% right or left stick and especially at the same time. But having the voltage reading on the main screen has made me more aware of this and more cautious which is probably a good thing too.

 

[alokbhargava]

However, you should not fly on a partially discharged battery that has been sitting around for a long time. There are flaws in the "smart" battery logic that will make it appear to discharge rapidly and the P3 will go into auto-land or worse. Always charge your batteries to full before use.

I totally agree with you.

There is a term called "battery learning process". System tries to determine the battery characteristics every time it's booted and maps it into its logic. P3 logic doesn't do this or I'm unaware of it. The idea to do this is to take care of battery to battery differences and battery aging. One need not start with 100% charge and logic should follow the new curve.

I'm sure future models will have such intelligence built into batteries of Phantom.

For the time being let's charge to 100% and follow the well defined discharge path that's known to the inner intelligence of the batteries.

 

[Mario_SB]

Has anyone here gotten anywhere near 100 charge cycles?

 

[jggraham]

Look at it this way. It might make a bit more sense... Drain the batteries in a non-led flashlight until it is noticeably dim. Now leave it sitting, turned off, for 48 hours. Then turn it back on. Initially, the light will be nearly full brightness, but very quickly dim again. The P3 battery is designed to drain insanely fast, wit ha very high power output. It can EASILY start any real car! The little electronics involved in the flight controller and gimble use nearly nothing for power, and at a significantly reduced voltage. So startup crap really never puts a draw on it. Spinning up the motors is a big jolt, and climbing is about maximum drain. What you did basically is spike the draw on a falsely indicating power system. When the power dropped, from that huge drain, the system shuts down to prevent damaging anything.. except it leads to a crash.

Post your flight log from the tablet and we can see this happening possibly

I finally found the correct flight log. If you wouldn't mind taking a look whenever you get a sec I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[PhotoGuyAaron]

Hey everyone,

I frequently read this forum and regularly get useful information and tips from y'all. Thank you for that.

Unfortunately today I pulled my phantom 3 advanced out at my brothers house, turned it on and calibrated the compass and was locked into satellites (don't remember how many, but I have flown here before and had no problem acquiring 16 satellites). Status bar indicated it was safe for a GPS flight. I used auto take off and immediately brought it up to about 30-40 feet when the motors suddenly stopped and it fell and smashed on to the street and busted into a ton of pieces. As it fell I looked down at my iPad to see if there was something I could do and there was no live feed and said there was no signal.

I have contacted DJI and they gave me an RMA with an estimated return of 2 weeks. Will this be covered under warranty? Also will they be able to verify this was not user error, there is a flight log that shows a flight of less than a minute. I bought it off amazon about 4 months ago.

View attachment 36491View attachment 36492View attachment 36493View attachment 36494

This totally sucks and I feel for you. My signal cut out as well and resulted in a crash taking out props but that was all. This was my first P3P and was about to be sent back to where I bought it for Warrenty replacement for damage to the gimbal caused in shipping. It all worked out but was very stressful.

The area I was flying in was way too tight and full of power lines and trees not to mention 6 story buildings on two sides. A realtor talked me into it but I should have known better....any way between low satellites and signal cutting out I lost total control at around 30 feet. My prop guards saved my *** or I would have had motor damage as the P3P wrestled with tree branches and leaves on the way down. Looking at the log I saw signal cuts in and outs. Did not see # of satellites.

What was the area around you like? Trees buildings or power lines? DJI may be able to do some Warrenty magic if you give them the long and any footage you may have. I wish you the best of luck!

-Aaron

 

[PhotoGuyAaron]

This totally sucks and I feel for you. My signal cut out as well and resulted in a crash taking out props but that was all. This was my first P3P and was about to be sent back to where I bought it for Warrenty replacement for damage to the gimbal caused in shipping. It all worked out but was very stressful.

The area I was flying in was way too tight and full of power lines and trees not to mention 6 story buildings on two sides. A realtor talked me into it but I should have known better....any way between low satellites and signal cutting out I lost total control at around 30 feet. My prop guards saved my *** or I would have had motor damage as the P3P wrestled with tree branches and leaves on the way down. Looking at the log I saw signal cuts in and outs. Did not see # of satellites.

What was the area around you like? Trees buildings or power lines? DJI may be able to do some Warrenty magic if you give them the long and any footage you may have. I wish you the best of luck!

-Aaron

Definitely send your tablet/phone log in the the app. As well as any footage to Dji for your rma number.

 

[jggraham]

This totally sucks and I feel for you. My signal cut out as well and resulted in a crash taking out props but that was all. This was my first P3P and was about to be sent back to where I bought it for Warrenty replacement for damage to the gimbal caused in shipping. It all worked out but was very stressful.

The area I was flying in was way too tight and full of power lines and trees not to mention 6 story buildings on two sides. A realtor talked me into it but I should have known better....any way between low satellites and signal cutting out I lost total control at around 30 feet. My prop guards saved my *** or I would have had motor damage as the P3P wrestled with tree branches and leaves on the way down. Looking at the log I saw signal cuts in and outs. Did not see # of satellites.

What was the area around you like? Trees buildings or power lines? DJI may be able to do some Warrenty magic if you give them the long and any footage you may have. I wish you the best of luck!

-Aaron

This was in a neighborhood on top of a mountain with great signal and 14-16 satellites. No power lines, trees, or any other obstructions, it died and fell 10-15 ft away from me at the end of the driveway. Like I said I have flown here before without any problems. Drone just died 30 seconds after takeoff with 58% battery life. I have looked at the flight log with healthydrones.com and cannot see anything. No warnings and it shows the battery was 58% at takeoff and landing, landing being when it died and fell to the pavement I assume.

If DJI cant pull the info they need from the drone, then I will happily provide whatever they want. They did not want me to send anything except the drone and all of the broken pieces and controller.

 

[Luap]

I finally found the correct flight log. If you wouldn't mind taking a look whenever you get a sec I would greatly appreciate it.

Here is the video ot that log.

Like said above there appears to be some issue with the smart battery.
A smart battery keeps track of its full capacity, charged capacity and current capacity. You can see those three data fields in the video. It also logs the amps whilst you fly. So its "simpIy" a matter of reducing the current capacity by amps that were used (coulomb counting) to know the SoC. Add voltage as a further indication of SoC.
Here some explanations on how it should work.
Li-Ion BMS - White Paper - Estimating the State Of Charge of Li-Ion batteries
But in your case and a few others, there must have been some drifting (maybe firmware bug when auto discharging) and the calculated current capacity made by smart battery is too high.
It should see though that voltage is so low that it has to land immediately and not let drone increase altitude. (a further bug)
These crashes usually happen at take off with a battery at less than 70% , when user inputs full throttle and within first 2 minutes.
Another log of similar crash.

Can you still get the DAT files? If so download the ones dated same date of crash and post it in Drop Box. Many more fields to check in Dat files.

 

[dirtybum]

Did you start off with a Fully Charged battery?

Same thing happened to me this morning, with fully charged battery, double checked, still in place after 120ft fall! Just 200ft any heading away when "no signal" appeared followed by a drop

 

[MikeK]

I wouldn't put it pass it that the batty vibrated loose.

Just an assumption.

That seems more plausible. If a battery is not sufficiently charged to support a flight wouldn't it indicate? What this fellow has described is an instantaneous loss of power with no warning at all.

I once had a Syma x5c (toy-grade quad) take off (indoors), rise about five feet, then just drop onto a carpeted floor. It started up again as per normal, rose up a few feet, dropped, and started running again. I replaced the battery and the problem was solved. When I pulled on the battery's connector-plug wires one of them pulled right out with very little effort.

These Phantom batteries are not simple two or three component devices. I've never taken one apart but I'm led to believe they contain numerous cells along with control circuitry. All it takes is a loose connection somewhere and a little vibration.

 

[jggraham]

That seems more plausible. If a battery is not sufficiently charged to support a flight wouldn't it indicate? What this fellow has described is an instantaneous loss of power with no warning at all.

I once had a Syma x5c (toy-grade quad) take off (indoors), rise about five feet, then just drop onto a carpeted floor. It started up again as per normal, rose up a few feet, dropped, and started running again. I replaced the battery and the problem was solved. When I pulled on the battery's connector-plug wires one of them pulled right out with very little effort.

These Phantom batteries are not simple two or three component devices. I've never taken one apart but I'm led to believe they contain numerous cells along with control circuitry. All it takes is a loose connection somewhere and a little vibration.

It was confirmed a few months ago that this common issue was a bug in one of the DJI firmware updates, 1.5.x I can't remember exactly which one it was.