Stage 1&2 Battery Level Tail Light Warnings

[WessexWyvern]

I took my P2 out for a flight this evening and as usual made sure the aircraft was in full view by the time the iOSD was reading 30% battery life but this time there was something different - the rear LEDs were flashing rapid red, level 2 battery warning (suggesting <15% power remaining).
As I had intended to run the battery right down anyway I held on to one of the skids and waited for the motors to quit; which they did at 15% as indicated on the iOSD.
I've never done this before but I have often flown back with a little less than 30% many times and to the best of my knowledge I have never had rapid red flashing LEDs.
The batteries were fully charged but hadn't been flown for a 10 days or so, the only difference with today's flight is that I had recently calibrated the IMU and upgraded to v3.04.
So if you rely on your iOSD, particularly if you have upgraded to v3.04 it may pay you to keep a close eye on the Phantoms LED lights, at least for a few flights to ensure they agree with your display.

 

[goldfishrock]

Re: A WARNING for iOSD users!!!

Are you sure that the IOSD is at fault and not the battery? I've just had a battery replaced as I was getting strange values output on the IOSD ranging from 255% down to 10%. I knew the IOSD wasn't faulty as this didn't happen with other batteries I tried.

There are several postings on the forum about spurious readings from batteries

 

[WessexWyvern]

Re: A WARNING for iOSD users!!!

Hi, I've just tried it out with my two other batteries and I suspect I may have been mistaken about the %tages - the flights went as follows.


Steady green flashing lights at the rear until 30%

Rapid red flashing lights from 30% down to 15%

Auto land initiated at 15% or just below.


I didn't have time to check the original battery this evening but there is one issue that I'm not in any doubt about and that is the Phantom goes from steady green to stage 2 warning at 30% with no stage 1 steady red flashing light phase.

 

[ElGuano]

Re: A WARNING for iOSD users!!!

I didn't have time to check the original battery this evening but there is one issue that I'm not in any doubt about and that is the Phantom goes from steady green to stage 2 warning at 30% with no stage 1 steady red flashing light phase.

I think the whole point of the stage 1 warning is to give you a visual indicator of battery status without initiating auto-land or any else more drastic. From page 11 of the P2 manual: "[Rapid red flashing]: 1st Level Low Battery Capacity Warning"

http://download.dji-innovations.com/dow ... 1.1_en.pdf

There were some battery problems (which I think have been resolved now) where the iOSD indicator would freak out and display something completely different than what the battery pack LEDs displayed, but that wasn't a fault with the iOSD but rather how the Naza was interpreting a bad battery signal. If one of your batteries is not triggering red lights at <30% and still does so if you run it down under 10% for a "calibration discharge," I'd suggest contacting your dealer for a replacement...the LEDs themselves aren't a huge deal, but a battery that is doing something different and wrong from normal behavior worries me.

 

[WessexWyvern]

Re: A WARNING for iOSD users!!!

If one of your batteries is not triggering red lights at <30% and still does so if you run it down under 10% for a "calibration discharge....

I think I have nailed the precise nature of the problem down to the stage 2 lights being incorrectly triggered at 30% battery life.

My initial reaction was to blame the iOSD and I think I was wrong to do so. I'm going to assume that my first observations were skewed by a little panic over whether I could ever trust the telemetry being fed to my display. For that reason, for the time being Im going to ignore them.

The second two batteries gave identical results:

Rapid flashing lights at 30% then after a few minutes flight time autoland initiated at 15%

What seems to be happening is that the stage 2 warning is coming on prematurely.

 

[WessexWyvern]

Re: A WARNING for iOSD users!!!

It might be worth adding that I was getting the 'non intelligent battery' pop up when I connect to the Naza assistant despite being3 genuine batteries from a reputable. establish UK dealer.

 

[ianwood]

Re: A WARNING for iOSD users!!!

I get the non-intelligent battery message very briefly when I put a battery in while the USB is connected to the Phantom Assistant. The reason why that happens is the main power spades connect to the Phantom before the I2C pins for the intelligent battery do. As soon as the battery is all the way in, the message should go away.

I think the title of this thread is misleading.

 

[WessexWyvern]

Re: A WARNING for iOSD users!!!

I get the non-intelligent battery message very briefly when I put a battery in while the USB is connected to the Phantom Assistant. The reason why that happens is the main power spades connect to the Phantom before the I2C pins for the intelligent battery do. As soon as the battery is all the way in, the message should go away.

I think the title of this thread is misleading.

I agree - I think I was probably mistaken in my original evaluation of the situation and intend to change it once I get a chance to test the battery that I was using at the time. I have said in a previous post that I was wrong to blame the iOSD but want to ensure that my observations were erroneous before I do so.

There is definitely a problem though and logically it must be the firmware as the battery characteristics seemed normal in the second two batteries and so were the flight characteristics. It's acting as if I had changed the level 2 warning to go off at 30% in the Naza assistant (which I have checked and double checked).

 

[ElGuano]

Re: A WARNING for iOSD users!!!

I get the non-intelligent battery message very briefly when I put a battery in while the USB is connected to the Phantom Assistant. The reason why that happens is the main power spades connect to the Phantom before the I2C pins for the intelligent battery do. As soon as the battery is all the way in, the message should go away.

I think the title of this thread is misleading.

I agree - I think I was probably mistaken in my original evaluation of the situation and intend to change it once I get a chance to test the battery that I was using at the time. I have said in a previous post that I was wrong to blame the iOSD but want to ensure that my observations were erroneous before I do so.

There is definitely a problem though and logically it must be the firmware as the battery characteristics seemed normal in the second two batteries and so were the flight characteristics. It's acting as if I had changed the level 2 warning to go off at 30% in the Naza assistant (which I have checked and double checked).

No worries about the title so long as we're in troubleshooting mode. Once you're pretty sure of the cause (or at least sure that the iOSD is acquitted) feel free to change the title or PM a mod if you can't.

If you're getting premature level-2 consistently on a particular battery, I'd still contact the dealer on that-it's very possibly a bad battery. The issue of auto-land triggering early (particularly when throttle is applied) been discussed/reported before and people have had batteries replaced because of it.

 

[WessexWyvern]

Re: A WARNING for iOSD users!!!

I'll have to complete the checks but if it turns out that the first battery was in fact acting in the same way as the second two I'd say they were all normal (ie they get a reasonable flight time and all auto land at 15% on the iOSD) and it's something else that is causing the lights to be triggered.
It all hinges on being able to test battery #2 (that happens to be the number I had previously written on it).

 

[WessexWyvern]

Re: A WARNING for iOSD users!!!

Reading back over what I had written in the original post:

As I had intended to run the battery right down anyway I held on to one of the skids and waited for the motors to quit; which they did at 15% as indicated on the iOSD.

and after watching the autoland sequence today for the first time, what I saw was completely normal - it's normal for the motors to shut down or at least reduce to idle power at 15% if it thinks it has landed right?. I was holding onto it therefore preventing it from descending any further, it detected this and cut to idle power.

 

[EMCSQUAR]

Re: A WARNING for iOSD users!!!

Wess - your title warning IOSD users is actually accurate. There is some latency/delay in the readings maybe not so much for P2 users who see a % of battery - but for others where we see voltage - there is a noticable delay in accurate voltage readings.

 

[riblit]

Re: A WARNING for iOSD users!!!

I get the non-intelligent battery message very briefly when I put a battery in while the USB is connected to the Phantom Assistant. The reason why that happens is the main power spades connect to the Phantom before the I2C pins for the intelligent battery do. As soon as the battery is all the way in, the message should go away.

I think the title of this thread is misleading.

I dunno about that Ian. I get the same brief message when the USB is connected and I power up the battery. The battery is fully inserted at that stage.

 

[xgeek]

Re: A WARNING for iOSD users!!!

I only see that message if I power up while the assistant is already open. If I power up and then open the assistant I don't see it.

I just think it's a timing issue on initialisation.

 

[ianwood]

Re: A WARNING for iOSD users!!!

I dunno about that Ian. I get the same brief message when the USB is connected and I power up the battery. The battery is fully inserted at that stage.

All it takes is a few milliseconds between the two events to generate the message which will take time to percolate to your screen. It likely also is the brief time it takes to initialize the I2C connection and establish that it is in fact an "intelligent" battery. Either way, I don't think it is anything to be concerned about.

 

[WessexWyvern]

Re: Tail Lights. After further testing it would appear that this is a warning light error rather than a battery problem (in my case at least).

The Stage 2 fast flashing red warning kicks in at 30% (as indicated by the iOSD) and there is no stage 1 slow flashing red stage at all, thus occurs on all my 3 batteries.

My dealer claimed that this is because I was in Naza mode and when I politely tried to point out that the manual didn't mention this I was told it was probably in the updated manual - I doubt this but I will read the manual once more to see if he is right.

I've decided to change the battery level warnings slightly to 31/16% respectively to see if forcing the Naza assistant to write something to the Naza makes a difference.

I spoke to another dealer who also suggested trying this and wasn't aware of any change in tail light indication when switching to Naza mode.

I believe this is a firmware 3.04 issue as it seems to be effecting a growing number of people albeit manifests itself in slightly different ways.

Re: battery calibration (running the battery down to 8% or until it can no longer be switched on as recommended by DJI every 20 flights) I've recently tried this and although it doesn't correct the rail light error, I do seem to get a considerably longer battery life as a result although so far I have been relying on the length of my gopro recordings as an indication.

 

[erico]

Tonight I decided to discharge my battery I think I was having problems with .. ie phantom landing before the 15% I had set .
I set it up beside me and turned it on .. it was 98% charged . I continued to watch as each battery light changed and looked at my iosd and all worked 100% .. I had it set in naza mode . when it hit 25% the red rapid light started to flash . I then stopped it and changed it to phantom mode using the assistant and the lights started to blink slowly as per manual . I changed back to naza mode and the lights flashed quickly again . I changed back again to Phantom mode and then watched the lights blink quickly at the 15% which is correct.
I will try hopefully tomorrow on Phantom mode to see if it flies with out the auto landing at the 30 % and not in Naza mode which I have been using just lately.

Btw it took 2:15 hours from 98% to 8% with motors running . It would be great to get 25% of that if I was flying

 

[WessexWyvern]

Thanks for that infoRmation. I haven't found time to check the manual to see if it is supposed to skip stage 1 in Naza mode but at least I know I'm not the only one.

 

[MrC]

I'm on firmware v2.0, in naza mode. Have never updated to 3.04. (P2Z)
I was watching the rear red battery warning today. All I got were the fast flashing reds, i continued to fly normally for another 2-3mins when it then started to auto-descend.

So i think in naza mode the lights must be different, no first set of slow flashing reds. Just fast flashing at first stage then autoland at second stage. They flashed at same speed for whole procedure.

I was expecting to see the slow reds first. I have never used it in phantom mode and its always just flashed fast, no slow flashing first.

From the manuals:
Phantom user manual : （1） When battery power drops below 30% and LED indicator will blink red slowly.
（2） At lower than 15% the LED indicator will blink red rapidly, the PHANTOM 2 will also begin to descend and
land automatically.

From Naza-M guide/manual : There are both first level and second level protections. The first level protection has LED warning. During second
level protection the aircraft will land automatically with LED warning.

So doesn't mention a slow flashing red at first level in the naza guide...

 

[WessexWyvern]

Many thanks Mr C - that explains everything and all is right with the world once more. Now to brew some more beer - DaaB!!!