Swelling Battery

[DonWiley]

After a 22 minute flight today I tried to remove the battery from my P4P will little success, after about 2 minutes of trying if finally came free. The battery has started to swell when discharged and when you look in the side vents you can also see the swelling between the cells. So far it's the only one of my batteries doing this.

I'm pretty sure I know the answer on what to do with it, retire it. Are there any other suggestions? Is there anything I can do to stop or reverse the swelling to extend it's life?

 

[Thermographer]

A swelled battery is not a good thing, you need to stop using it and dispose of it properly.

 

[dronesky]

Be glad you got it back in one piece dispose battery properly is all you can do

 

[Blade4]

Yep. I had one swell. Fastest track to Home Depot that batt ever made.

 

[Blade4]

After a 22 minute flight today I tried to remove the battery from my P4P will little success, after about 2 minutes of trying if finally came free. The battery has started to swell when discharged and when you look in the side vents you can also see the swelling between the cells. So far it's the only one of my batteries doing this.

I'm pretty sure I know the answer on what to do with it, retire it. Are there any other suggestions? Is there anything I can do to stop or reverse the swelling to extend it's life?

No you can't. That batt is toast and done.

SO!

I learned a lot in the last month.

What I did wrong...

Stored my batts at 100% for like... LOL Ever... I had no idea, nor did I research it. I figured if they cost that much I should be able to do about anything. I figured I was covered by the "smart" battery circuits. Geeze. Well as they discharge they do warm up... So did I store them in a nice room temperature place? Heck no. Had them in a sealed Sterilite container. So they heated each other as they discharged. I am lucky my house didn't burn down. So ya, I get the idiot award and I got to retire 4 batts.

I learned a heck of a lot from Drone Valley and a few other YouTubers. Ya I actually downloaded the DJI Battery manual and read it cover to cover. Learned even more.

What I am doing right.

Bought 6 new PH4HC batts. I fly them THAT DAY if I charge them to 100%. I make sure I can discharge them to NO LESS than 25%. Only every 20 flights do I go down to 12% to reset the Circuitry. THAT is all you are doing by the way. People think you are resetting "battery memory" like on NiCads. No you are simply resetting the logic in the batts so they can better calculate their respective life and health so to speak for you to read on the Go Ap, if you will.

Once I am down to 25% or so, AND the batt is stable... I give them an hour after flight. Then if I am not flying I charge them up until the 3rd bar starts flashing plus a few minutes. I know they are close to 55% at that point. I simply store them in the open, or a fire bag if I go away for extended periods.

Finally I use automatic upload to AIRDATA. What a WEALTH of information about your batts. WELL WORTH THE TIME AND EXPENSE. I have identified a new batt as a possible return to DJI as it has a cell already acting up on it. Not from bad care but has been doing that since new. Thanks AIRDATA.

 

[Alvaro L]

we need more post like your's, Blade4. More people explaining why they think their batteries could have failed.

 

[Blade4]

we need more post like your's, Blade4. More people explaining why they think their batteries could have failed.

well do not quote me on this and please do your own research. However, as I understand it the voltages on a healthy battery all across the board as you look at the go app battery page or even on Litchi you can see the voltage of each individual cell. Those voltages need to stay exactly the same or very very close to it you have a 0.07 tolerance before it becomes what they call a major deviation if you get multiple major deviations on ANY It's time to retire that battery.

That part I know for sure the part I am unsure of is at what point does that deviation cut out the battery in total in a matter where your ship is in flight it cuts off everything and you can't restart and you're basically a gliding bowling ball at that time.

so part of my preflight take off before I start engines is to have a flow.

I obviously look at the first screen that pops up every item and make sure there are no red lights.

I have my battery page essay into my C2 Button

I will also go into the "about" page because in there it shows the serial number but it also gives you a nice bit of information. It gives you a green "good connection" message and I found that to be comforting. I hope it's accurate.

I then will double check the sensors you never know when your compass calibration could go a little off. I also like to see the status of the IMU. between each flight.

reason I do that is because for a while my drone with toilet bowl. What what does toilet bowl mean

It means that when I would want the drawing to stop it would actually sit and go into a circle for one or two or a bit and then come to a stop that's bad. 90% chance that his year I am y it means that when I would want the drawing to stop it would actually sit and go into a circle for one or two or bits and then come to a stop that's bad. 90% chance that is year IMU.

After that if I'm near people I will almost always do a Percision launch. Because it's nice that means I'll also be able to do a precision landing. It's just another fail safe might be a little bit too much for some people but I can also say that that's my procedures to anybody that might be investigating it like lawyers trying to get into my pockets that kind of thing. Since I fly professionally.

I do a little bit of a stick check left right back for us uptown and then I go fly it might take an extra two or three minutes but hopefully that will mean happy safe John flights for quite some time with happy safe long lasting batteries.

 

[Blade4]

I know I went on here a little bit but a lot of that all comes from being a professional pilot Ifly a citation jet for a living 560 XLS plus and I am a military trained UAV/ UAS pilot as well and so some of that's just plain habit.

 

[Alvaro L]

Thanks for the tips. It is hard to discuss here with people with zero culture about aviation safety, so we never get to know how people actually treated the batteries that failed on them, just want to get the warranty coverage sorted out etc, and DJI quite unprofessionally IMO won't tell anything about failure models and rates.

 

[Blade4]

well they should pay me for plugging them, but Airdata.com is extremely professional and for six bucks a month you can't go wrong for the amount of information that they give you not only about your drones but about your batteries and they remind you when maintenance needs to be done and they tell you exactly what Maintenance needs to be done… So you can perform that maintenance and then in the remarks that you can comment that you performed that maintenance per Airdata and DJI recommendations which will go along way for warranty stuff and or a possible insurance claims down the line. And that would go good for say like a State Farm personal effects policy. I have one of those in And sure enough I had a drone crash and I got a nice check for $3000. That went along way as I was
provide my information and my preflight practices etc. Long story short, I got my check and I also was able to cash in on DJI care refresh. That whole thing is costing me about $40 monthly but I've got a lot of equipment so if one wants to really be covered they certainly can.