Just wondering if you possibly also had the old motors on your first one. I love the speed that I get with my P3A but like Frank, I run older firmware to keep it fast. 1.3.002. Then my P3P came with 1.6.4 firmware and there is a speed and handling difference. The P3P isn't really much slower but its acceleration speed is a lot slower. In other words, it takes longer to get up to speed and this may be what you are seeing also. It still goes plenty fast... It just takes longer to get up to full speed. The good thing is that all my batteries have the 1.6.4 update run fine on my P3A with the 1.3.002 fw. I'm pretty sure that the acceleration difference is simply in the firmware because both of my rc's are the B series.
What do about new slow P3A?
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This is complete BS. It is really tiresome to keep reading so many DJI conspiracy theories. If you believe this why are you still flying a P3?
Thanks to @exit 4 for illustrating clearly that subjective observation is not reliable.
Yes my old P3A had the earlier style motors that as I mentioned in another thread were also louder than the motors in my new craft. I'm guessing you may be correct in that maybe it takes a little longer to get to top speed vs earlier models/firmware. It sure seems slower but just maybe it is just slower getting up to speed. Nice observation.
One last crazy thought. Could the slower response times have anything to do with the remote being the 300c model? Just throwing it out there.
Could be but mostly you are seeing the difference in the 2 birds. The newer motors were put in along with slowing down the controls when DJI was first addressing the shell cracking issues. There is a major difference between the older motor version and the new motor. The old was crisp and reacted faster. If you try maxing out your gains, you will get that quicker response but still... It will not respond as fast as your old phantom. This was one of the fixes with the new motors and there really haven't been many cracked shells since they came out. Also when I was reading a different thread, this movie was posted and has some great info -
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Actually what Frank is saying is true but just not stated correctly or in a way that you as a newer owner can see because Frank's not trying to start a conspiracy. It's simply DJI making changes to correct problems. What Frank was trying to say was that DJI was changing the safety low voltage cut offs because back then the 1.5.1 update was causing the P3's to drop from the sky. They were trying to limit the batteries voltage to slow the bird down when the birds were over heating but they accidently set the parameters to shut the motors down and unfortunately there were birds falling from the sky all over the place. A few hours after that update problem was found DJI told everyone to go back to the 1.4.1 until it could be fixed and they immediately took the 1.5.1 update off of their update site. A couple days later they had revised the 1.5.1 update and came out with the 1.5.3. It was a well known bad update that DJI fixed right away. They were trying to gear up for the geo-fencing that started a couple months later. The 1.6.4 update was the first update with significant changes in speed and control. This wasn't a conspiracy, just simply a way to help maintain the battery cell levels better and keep the more stabilized platform in the air. Like Frank said, the 1.4.1 updates and earlier flew faster and had different set parameters. Then the 1.7 updates brought in the geo-fencing. DJI simply reduced the speed and battery limits for safety while ramping everything up to accommodate the geo-fencing program. DJI is trying to keep up with the times, there's no conspiracy going on
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You agree with this statement from Frank? "Dji became determined to program the Smart Batteries to not last as long thus needing replaced sooner."Actually what Frank is saying is true but just not stated correctly or in a way that you as a newer owner can see because Frank's not trying to start a conspiracy.
I agree with your statement that DJI is just trying to keep up with the times.
Yup but translated, Frank means that DJI programmed the batteries to stop discharging as low as they use to - to maintain a safe limit, so you now have to change it out sooner to a fresh charged battery. He's talking about one battery just being discharged, not wearing out sooner. So you can't discharge the batteries as low as you use to before they need to be recharged.
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Well, as you say I am new to P3. Granted the current battery critical level is hard coded at 10%. Maybe it was adjustable to a lower value in the past but pushing beyond 10% would be crazy - and damaging to the battery.
It's not the percentage of battery left, it's the low voltage cut off for each cell. I think the cut off is 3.5v now and if it drops lower, instead of killing the battery and dropping the bird out of the sky, it slows you down maybe even to a stop or until the voltage climbs above the low 3.5v cell limit. Before that they would just shut off and fall from the sky, now it will let you slowly crawl home if needed.
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I recently had a warning message saying something like warning propulsion is limited to help keep battery safe (something to that affect) when flying home after an 11 minute flight and the percentage showing 48%. At the time my VS was 35mph full throttle heading home from 2k' out. It was night and very humid, flying over the ocean. I didn't see it during flight because I had my eye in the bird. I only saw it during flight playback. I slowed it back down a moment after that message kicked in by coincidence so I have no idea what would have happened if I kept it full throttle. The only thing I notice is a slower decent and I don't mind it that much. My phantom still zips at 35mph, plenty fast for e to get around.
It doesn't make any difference what screen name you use, you still use the same wording ect with how you respond and state your opinion. I have already talked with Cassidy about you, and I can tell you it might be wise to pick one account to post with...
Also there is no conspiracy to anything I mentioned!
Actually what Frank is saying is true but just not stated correctly or in a way that you as a newer owner can see because Frank's not trying to start a conspiracy. It's simply DJI making changes to correct problems. What Frank was trying to say was that DJI was changing the safety low voltage cut offs because back then the 1.5.1 update was causing the P3's to drop from the sky. They were trying to limit the batteries voltage to slow the bird down when the birds were over heating but they accidently set the parameters to shut the motors down and unfortunately there were birds falling from the sky all over the place. A few hours after that update problem was found DJI told everyone to go back to the 1.4.1 until it could be fixed and they immediately took the 1.5.1 update off of their update site. A couple days later they had revised the 1.5.1 update and came out with the 1.5.3. It was a well known bad update that DJI fixed right away. They were trying to gear up for the geo-fencing that started a couple months later. The 1.6.4 update was the first update with significant changes in speed and control. This wasn't a conspiracy, just simply a way to help maintain the battery cell levels better and keep the more stabilized platform in the air. Like Frank said, the 1.4.1 updates and earlier flew faster and had different set parameters. Then the 1.7 updates brought in the geo-fencing. DJI simply reduced the speed and battery limits for safety while ramping everything up to accommodate the geo-fencing program. DJI is trying to keep up with the times, there's no conspiracy going on
You are right on target. The only thing was I didn't feel like I needed to go into that much detail because those that were around during that time knew the details. Where as the new guy just needed to be told a reason why they don't need to break the walls down to do updates.
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Well you made me read the manual: "When Critical battery level warning is triggered and the aircraft begins to land automatically..." Critical battery level warning currently can not be set below 10%. There are early threads on here discussing setting this to 5% to prevent the auto landing in a critical situation, i.e. over water. There is a tremendous amount of discussion on the forum about batteries and auto landing. I agree that monitoring cell voltage is better than % charge but after reading may threads on here there seems to be a consensus that DJI does not include cell voltage in their % charge algorithm - which is a bad thing.
Anyway, just for grins I think I will set critical warning up to 25% and see if auto landing is triggered - later this evening, too hot now.
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You're right Frank, and I apologize. I should have said, "I respectfully disagree with your opinion."
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The critical low battery level and the 3.5 voltage reduction control warning are 2 different things. You could have 80% left on your battery and then have one cell drop to below 3.5v and now with the current updates, it will slow the bird down to even stopping it mid air. It has nothing to do with landing the bird. Shockwaves post is exactly what I am talking about with the limited propulsion message -
If he had kept it full throttle, it wouldn't have mattered because his speed had already been reduced through the app when he got the warning message to keep the voltages at a safe level of 3.5v or above. Next time you fly, set the battery level monitor to show on the tablet and watch how the voltages drop the faster you go. Then they will climb back up quickly after you have stopped the bird and let it hover where it's at.
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Thank you for this clarification. This is exactly the way it should work to prevent the bird from dropping from the sky. I would love to see some documentation, especially the cell voltage trigger point because that is what I watch. However I can't see how this behavior would impact performance when all cells are good. I can believe the descent rate may have been reduced to keep OPs from inducing the death wobble by dropping down through the prop wash too quickly. I have gotten into trouble doing that with my home-brew birds.
One of the new gauges I created for dashware shows what you are referring to really well. You're able to see both the live (animated) volts, and the Stick display which displays the stick movement on the R/C. Basically, it shows how increased elevator input and/or throttle input lowers the volts. Btw the CsvView is another decent option to see how this takes place.
There are some not to sure how things work. Even though the above image doesn't show everything, it will hopefully give a few some kind of an idea.
The graph shows 2 separate lines of data. The data displayed in the graph is R/C Throttle and Battery Voltage.
Blue Line - battery volts
Red Line - r/c throttle stick input
Green Arrows are pointing at the High & Low points of the 2 mentioned data lines.
Basically the bottom of the graph shows a number bar that runs from '0' to '227.5' seconds. That represent the number of seconds of this particular flight. The next line is the blue line which displays Volts. And the red line displaying the R/C Throttle stick.
So what you are looking at is when the aircraft is launched at the start of the flight. The green arrows on the top pointing at the red line is the Throttle Stick on the R/C being pressed up on the 1st hump to get the aircraft off the launch pad and in the sky. The 2nd hump which doesn't go as high was to gain a little more altitude.
The arrows on the bottom pointing at the blue line shows the dip in volts from launching the aircraft. You might be curious why the 2nd hump drops down lower then the 1st hump when the stick obviously did not go up as high demanding more volts. The reason is this graph display is only showing the 2 lines of data. There is other functions taking place in the flight that also require the use of volts, and the data for that is not included on this graph.
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