What is the Best way to discharge Battery?

Joined
Aug 10, 2014
Messages
175
Reaction score
0
I'm curious as to how people are discharging their battery after every 20 flights?

How do you do it?
 
Bring it down close to the ground and fight the landing ... in other words... after 12% it is trying to land on it's own but you can apply throttle to keep it up in the air... keep it up untill it reaches your desired % and land... i hover it all the way to 0% with no problems but you need to land immediately at 0... the battery will shut itself off if you stay at zero too long.
 
DBS said:
Bring it down close to the ground and fight the landing ... in other words... after 12% it is trying to land on it's own but you can apply throttle to keep it up in the air... keep it up untill it reaches your desired % and land... i hover it all the way to 0% with no problems but you need to land immediately at 0... the battery will shut itself off if you stay at zero too long.

That seem overly complicated/risky...

Why not just make sure you're on the ground prior to 1% and let it idle (while safely landed) down to zero? It's not like the bird has to be inflight to drain the battery...
 
Lowepg said:
That seem overly complicated/risky...

Why not just make sure you're on the ground prior to 1% and let it idle (while safely landed) down to zero? It's not like the bird has to be inflight to drain the battery...


That's why i mentioned "hover till you reach your desired %" ... then went on to explain how i do it ... i do it that way to get it over with... no big deal...

Don't understand why you say "overly complicated" ... it's a simple , straight forward , " hover then land " proceedure...

I see what you mean about risky if you don't pay attention... but i have confidence in my "landing from 12 inches" skills so i don't worry about it... never had a problem
 
It's a pity the charger doesn't have the ability to condition batteries since it seems to be so important.
There should be a setting to discharge then recharge and a further switch position to automatically discharge or charge to the optimum storage level about 50%
I remember we had a canon camcorder charger used to discharge if required then recharge to optimise capacity.
 
Not to be a wise guy, but after getting it drained down low in flight, couldn't you just land, take the props off, and then fire up the motors without the props until it's down to 0? No chance of crashing when the battery turns off then.
 
Not a good idea you will over rev the motors. I did it. , started making some weird noises. Plus it would take forever with no load on it.
 
DBS said:
Lowepg said:
That seem overly complicated/risky...

Why not just make sure you're on the ground prior to 1% and let it idle (while safely landed) down to zero? It's not like the bird has to be inflight to drain the battery...


That's why i mentioned "hover till you reach your desired %" ... then went on to explain how i do it ... i do it that way to bet it over with... no big deal...

Don't understand why you say "overly complicated" ... it's a simple , straight forward , " hover then land " proceedure...

I see what you mean about risky if you don't pay attention... but i have confidence in my "landing from 12 inches" skills so i don't worry about it... never had a problem

Fair point... I should have just said "riskier" than just landing and letting the battery die.

btw- can you make your signature fonts bigger? :)
 
DBS said:
Bring it down close to the ground and fight the landing ... in other words... after 12% it is trying to land on it's own but you can apply throttle to keep it up in the air... keep it up untill it reaches your desired % and land... i hover it all the way to 0% with no problems but you need to land immediately at 0... the battery will shut itself off if you stay at zero too long.
+1
This is exactly what I do, it's easy and very natural. You come back from a flight and the % is fairly low. I just hold it off in a hover at about a foot or two off the ground - it goes fairly quickly - when I get to 8% I ease off the up throttle and it lands at about 7%. If you land and let it idle it takes forever.
 
DaveTown said:
Not to be a wise guy, but after getting it drained down low in flight, couldn't you just land, take the props off, and then fire up the motors without the props until it's down to 0? No chance of crashing when the battery turns off then.

What you could do is land, stop the motors, then restart the motors and leave them at idle until you reach 8% or less. Make sure the controller remains on so the bird doesn't attempt a RTH. The good point of having the props on is it will maintain some airflow over the electronics.

Alternatively, you could slip a length of trim molding through the landing gear to hold it down, or velcro it down and run the props flat out until the battery runs down.
 
DO NOT -
Initiate a flight -
Land -
And then let it idle on the ground... the motors will slowly spin up and it will tip over!
 
Had propellers on - one thing led to another and it went into Go Home mode and I crashed.

My Bad.

Is there another way to discharge these batteries without having to use the drone itself?

Ordering new props - Now grounded ... I also have repairs to do.

Currently I am using drone without props on to discharge and have the idle set to low with something heavy keeping the throttle down, so as not to over rev the motors (without props on)

My friend claims he runs them like this till they stop. I thought 8% was the mark?
 
Lowepg said:
btw- can you make your signature fonts bigger? :)

Nope... i just tried... might need to add a booster :lol:

Davekyn said:
My friend claims he runs them like this till they stop. I thought 8% was the mark?

8% is the "suggested" number from DJI "or untill the battery will no longer turn on"

Davekyn said:
Had propellers on - one thing led to another and it went into Go Home mode and I crashed.

My Bad.

That's why i'm sayin... just hover untill you hit the number you want... never mind all this landing and idleing if you aren't sure how the Phantom firmware works in those situations... you know how to fly ... you know how to land ... don't land untill you see the number your shooting for... easy breezy

(Oh... maybe not when it's breezy... do it on those calm days)
 
Why are you so worried about discharging the battery's ? I've had mine sit for weeks and never had a problem. And yes I've been flying with lipos for years. Your just putting more time on your motors , esc , and gimbal etc. if was that worried I'd just fly it till they ran down to 50%.
 
LOL - you make is sound as if someone is having an anxiety attack?

I could care less about the my mishap - I'm feeling fairly confident with the repairs I have thus far made and now I have props in the mail. I could do with a little break from flying this thing at any rate.

I like to look after my stuff the right way and find it interesting to hear how others maintain their equipment.

Thanks for the feed back - much appreciated.
__________________

On slow ideal with the throttle held back (using a weight) -( props off) - the motors stop spinning when battery hits 15% - is how I ended up doing it. _ I took it down a little more by holding the control sticks in the start up position. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz till 10% ... Next time I will do it at the end of a run and see what happens with the Go Home cutting in - whilst out in a large field. Alternatively - I might search for some kind of battery discharger to save all this BS &^%$ing around to fully discharge the battery. I find nothing SMART about the DJI battery setup whats so ever.
 
Its really easy and safe. After a flight a battery will be 50% or less, more than likely. With props on slip a heavy bar through the legs and run to 8%. I use a small elastic band from the stick to the home lock swtich to keep the revs up a bit. It does not take long AND you are safely on the ground.

Sent from Samsung S4 via Tapatalk
 
DBS said:
Bring it down close to the ground and fight the landing ... in other words... after 12% it is trying to land on it's own but you can apply throttle to keep it up in the air... keep it up untill it reaches your desired % and land... i hover it all the way to 0% with no problems but you need to land immediately at 0... the battery will shut itself off if you stay at zero too long.

Just to throw my tuppence into the mix and I think this information answered by someone who know's will help not only myself but others........When the battery runs down to the point where it gives you a countdown from 10 seconds and tells you to land I don't see this as percentage as I have battery life remaining visual in minutes only for the Phantom battery. I know at this point it has 20% charge remaining as afterwards I plugged it into the software to check and that's what it told me roughly 1000Mah charge and 20% level - makes sense - right?

So two things here? How do you know what percentage is remaining whilst flying it, is it something in the settings of the DJI Software or are you using different flight software and.....

Are you saying that after my countdown from 10 ends I can still keep the bird afloat, obviously you can but as I see know percentage just mins flight time remaining I'm unsure as to what to do or what happens after the countdown ends as I have not pushed the boat that far yet? Hope all that makes sense.

Help on the matter, as always would be appreciated.

Thank you all kindly now, and DBS do mod that signature we need it bigger and we know your the man who can....Hahahahahahaha :) Just jestin' now.
 
Snowdug said:
DBS said:
Bring it down close to the ground and fight the landing ... in other words... after 12% it is trying to land on it's own but you can apply throttle to keep it up in the air... keep it up untill it reaches your desired % and land... i hover it all the way to 0% with no problems but you need to land immediately at 0... the battery will shut itself off if you stay at zero too long.

Just to throw my tuppence into the mix and I think this information answered by someone who know's will help not only myself but others........When the battery runs down to the point where it gives you a countdown from 10 seconds and tells you to land I don't see this as percentage as I have battery life remaining visual in minutes only for the Phantom battery. I know at this point it has 20% charge remaining as afterwards I plugged it into the software to check and that's what it told me roughly 1000Mah charge and 20% level - makes sense - right?

So two things here? How do you know what percentage is remaining whilst flying it, is it something in the settings of the DJI Software or are you using different flight software and.....

Are you saying that after my countdown from 10 ends I can still keep the bird afloat, obviously you can but as I see know percentage just mins flight time remaining I'm unsure as to what to do or what happens after the countdown ends as I have not pushed the boat that far yet? Hope all that makes sense.

Help on the matter, as always would be appreciated.

Thank you all kindly now, and DBS do mod that signature we need it bigger and we know your the man who can....Hahahahahahaha :) Just jestin' now.

The app shows a battery percentage in the top right hand corner of the screen.

I got so used to not having the flight time remaining before the latest firmware I actually never look at it.
 
Davekyn said:
....
Is there another way to discharge these batteries without having to use the drone itself?
....
Sure, you can use a quality RC Charger which has LiPo discharge function to get a a nice constant current draw discharge of the battery.
 

Recent Posts

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
143,094
Messages
1,467,597
Members
104,980
Latest member
ozmtl