Remote Control Battery

M

Melvoid

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I'm posting this in General Discussion because it my apply to more than just my Phantom 3 control. For the first time ever, I neglected to turn my remote control off after using it the other day. I'm not a terribly regular user, so a charge generally lasts several weeks for me. Well, later that evening, my wife heard a beeping. After turning everything down or off, we finally figured out that it was coming from my quadcopter case, and it was the remote. It was down to one LED and was fairly warm. I shut it off immediately and let it cool down overnight, and it took a full charge the next day.

I'm wondering, if I hadn't noticed the beeping, and if would have discharged completely, would I have ruined the battery?
 
That's a very good question. I honestly don't know if the remote has over discharge protection. I've never had my remote below half charge (2 lights). I'm sure someone in here knows though.
 
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I remember asking about proper care of remote batteries in another thread that talked about proper storage levels of LiPo's. While everyone (including DJI) is aware that properly maintaining the aircraft batteries by not storing them fully charged or empty, to the extent that DJI even incorporated auto discharging to safe a level on the aircraft batteries starting the P3 series, nothing is done or said about the LiPo battery in the remote. The answer given to me about the remote battery was not to worry about it as it doesnt have the high current draw that the aircraft batteries do. That made no sense though, a LiPo is a LiPo and I'd think the same storage procedures would apply to all of them. That being said, I rarely charge my remote, I'll use it and use it and when it gets down to 2 lights I'll charge before flying and leave it alone again until it gets down to 2 lights. So far no issues after 2 years, and I've maybe charged it 10 times?
 
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Here's the specs from DJI:
Screenshot_20200630-200540_Chrome.jpg
 
I don't know if it would switch off either - but I suspect not... There IS a control circuit board in the controller lipo but I think that just deals with control of charging/discharging. However, just being switched on, the discharge would have been so slow that it's unlikely that serious damage would happen to the battery as long as it wasn't left flat for an extended period.

As an aside, my controller battery is now 5 years old and just recently started losing all its charge, going completely flat in less than a month - just old age I guessed. So I opened up the controller, removed the battery and stripped it down, removing the controller board from the end of the battery. I then soldered a balance lead and an XT30 connector onto the battery, a matching lead and connector going to the outside of the controller and put it all back together, minus the battery.

Since then the battery has had no problems at all with losing charge and I use it externally to power my controller and can, in fact, use any of my other 2-cell batteries for that too. I can also use my usual lipo balance chargers to set them all to about 50% storage charge when not in use, which is useful. :)
 
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I was wondering why a Lipo wouldn't have a balance plug?
It's because the bit of electronics within the battery control board deals with the task of balancing when the battery is being charged. My battery board seemed to have become unserviceable, (as witnessed by a pretty fast total discharge), so when I removed it completely I had to fit some balance leads instead.

There's some theory about the setup here:-
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Thanks for all the replies. In my case, it was maybe 6 or 7 hours that it was left on, and among the beeping, there was one LED left... and I think a red one. I'm not going to do it again to verify that red one, though. But again, it charged up just fine. It's also about 4 years old and I usually use it down to two LEDs, then charge it.
 
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Thanks for all the replies. In my case, it was maybe 6 or 7 hours that it was left on, and among the beeping, there was one LED left... and I think a red one. I'm not going to do it again to verify that red one, though. But again, it charged up just fine. It's also about 4 years old and I usually use it down to two LEDs, then charge it.
Sounds normal, the red led is the power led and it was red (instead of the usual green) because the RC wasn't connected to the AC (the AC was powered off).
 

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