Well, after it hit me too with the “controller is not charging” issue I surfed the web to see if other have the same problem.
It does look like there are plenty of users with the same issue.
The symptoms are that the charger shuts off before the battery is full.
First at three lights and then already at two lights.
It also seems that the remote shuts off during use way too early, even if the battery was really only 50 percent charged.
I did read that by bleaving the charger on even when the lights are off, that the battery gets more charge.
I tried this and had the charger on over night.
Didn’t really change much, just two lights when turned on and seem to discharge quickly.
Some reported that they opened the controller and measured that the battery was basically full but the remote (and app) said 50 % or less
I did open my remote and checked on the battery, sure enough, I meassures 8.36volt and that should be pretty much all it can do. At least way more then the 50% stated.
This behavior screams to be a connection issue.
If the controller doesn’t see the voltage it assumes it has less charge. Not sure why it would stop charging but I assume that the charging is controlled by the battery itself since there seems to be some electronic on the battery. My guess is that this is the load balancer that is needed is on the battery.
Anyway, I checked the board since the battery seems fine but I couldn’t see much just like anyone else.
As stated , a voltage drop is easy to get with a bad contact.
Since we have multilayer pcb boards there is not much one can do.
Except for one thing. Since I had nothing to loose I just went for it.
Surface mount devices can’t be soldered with a solder gun, instead you use a hot air solder station.
I remembered some time ago that some PlayStations hat a solder problem and it helped to “re-flow” those boards.
Well I took my smd solder station amd set it to 250 degree.
I am just guessing here , I am not sure if this was too hot or too cold to do anything.
I then concentrated my “re-flow” around the area of the batterie plug. On both, the front and the back of the pcb. Just the area around the plug. That’s it.
I tried not to heat up the parts too much since they are easy to kill if the get too hot.
What can I say., I let the board cool of and put the remote together, the remote showed 4 lights as I would suspect with a full battery.
The app connected showed 97%.
It all seemed to fit
I connected the phantom 4 and let it sit to drain the battery of the controller.
Slowly but surely the battery went down to 49%. It took quite a while to get the battery to discharge. Looked fine to me.
No shutting down or anything else weird happening.
Once the controller was at 49% I turned it off and put the charger on.
The controller charged what seems normal back up till all 4 leds came on.
When I connected the app it showed 90% for the battery.
It could be that yhe battery can’t hold a 100% charge after a year and 50 flights. I would thing that’s too low but for now I take this as I can use it to fly again. Perhaps leaving the charger on even with the lights off it will go eventually to 100%.
So, it does look like there is a bad solder point somewhere on the board regarding the battery connection and or voltage sensing.
I am not telling you to go and fry your board, which is easy to do.
But if you have a spare, because you payed for a new controller, or if you have nothing else to do and like to screw with things then that’s something you could try.
That would only work, if at all, if the battery shows a full charge when meassured but the controller doesn’t see the charge and shuts if prematurely.
Perhaps someone with more knowledge in smd soldering and re-flowing could chime in?? As i said , i am not even sure about the temperature setting and time i applied the hot air.
If this would work and we would have a definitive temperature it could be as easy as putting the board into the oven for a few minutes. Lol.
Perhaps DJI (or someone who works at DJI) would be so nice to publish the part of the drawing that relates to the charging and voltage sensing on the board so we don’t have to guess.
I know, long shot to ask for it.
But going thru the web seeing how many people have problems with this “not charging” issue it would be a good move from DJI.
Anyway, if anyone is up for it let us know how it went.
Again, no promises or warranties, you do it on your own.
I just telling my experience with this experiment..
Rainer.
It does look like there are plenty of users with the same issue.
The symptoms are that the charger shuts off before the battery is full.
First at three lights and then already at two lights.
It also seems that the remote shuts off during use way too early, even if the battery was really only 50 percent charged.
I did read that by bleaving the charger on even when the lights are off, that the battery gets more charge.
I tried this and had the charger on over night.
Didn’t really change much, just two lights when turned on and seem to discharge quickly.
Some reported that they opened the controller and measured that the battery was basically full but the remote (and app) said 50 % or less
I did open my remote and checked on the battery, sure enough, I meassures 8.36volt and that should be pretty much all it can do. At least way more then the 50% stated.
This behavior screams to be a connection issue.
If the controller doesn’t see the voltage it assumes it has less charge. Not sure why it would stop charging but I assume that the charging is controlled by the battery itself since there seems to be some electronic on the battery. My guess is that this is the load balancer that is needed is on the battery.
Anyway, I checked the board since the battery seems fine but I couldn’t see much just like anyone else.
As stated , a voltage drop is easy to get with a bad contact.
Since we have multilayer pcb boards there is not much one can do.
Except for one thing. Since I had nothing to loose I just went for it.
Surface mount devices can’t be soldered with a solder gun, instead you use a hot air solder station.
I remembered some time ago that some PlayStations hat a solder problem and it helped to “re-flow” those boards.
Well I took my smd solder station amd set it to 250 degree.
I am just guessing here , I am not sure if this was too hot or too cold to do anything.
I then concentrated my “re-flow” around the area of the batterie plug. On both, the front and the back of the pcb. Just the area around the plug. That’s it.
I tried not to heat up the parts too much since they are easy to kill if the get too hot.
What can I say., I let the board cool of and put the remote together, the remote showed 4 lights as I would suspect with a full battery.
The app connected showed 97%.
It all seemed to fit
I connected the phantom 4 and let it sit to drain the battery of the controller.
Slowly but surely the battery went down to 49%. It took quite a while to get the battery to discharge. Looked fine to me.
No shutting down or anything else weird happening.
Once the controller was at 49% I turned it off and put the charger on.
The controller charged what seems normal back up till all 4 leds came on.
When I connected the app it showed 90% for the battery.
It could be that yhe battery can’t hold a 100% charge after a year and 50 flights. I would thing that’s too low but for now I take this as I can use it to fly again. Perhaps leaving the charger on even with the lights off it will go eventually to 100%.
So, it does look like there is a bad solder point somewhere on the board regarding the battery connection and or voltage sensing.
I am not telling you to go and fry your board, which is easy to do.
But if you have a spare, because you payed for a new controller, or if you have nothing else to do and like to screw with things then that’s something you could try.
That would only work, if at all, if the battery shows a full charge when meassured but the controller doesn’t see the charge and shuts if prematurely.
Perhaps someone with more knowledge in smd soldering and re-flowing could chime in?? As i said , i am not even sure about the temperature setting and time i applied the hot air.
If this would work and we would have a definitive temperature it could be as easy as putting the board into the oven for a few minutes. Lol.
Perhaps DJI (or someone who works at DJI) would be so nice to publish the part of the drawing that relates to the charging and voltage sensing on the board so we don’t have to guess.
I know, long shot to ask for it.
But going thru the web seeing how many people have problems with this “not charging” issue it would be a good move from DJI.
Anyway, if anyone is up for it let us know how it went.
Again, no promises or warranties, you do it on your own.
I just telling my experience with this experiment..
Rainer.
