So it happens even after a short stop? I though this issue can appear when batteries are left a few days and then flown again half discharged.
I'm so curious to know more about this as with my current hexacopter, I never had issues like this with nanotech lipos and the blue zippys, some of my jobs do require this kind of workflow: drive to a village, make a few pictures in the center than move to another one .. and so on. I almost never needed to fly more than 5 minutes, and with my lipo's I used them on 2 locations, than charged in the car to full.
With the inspire I'm risking doing the same ?
I didn't received my Inspire yet (can't believe the package didn't reached to DHL even if I received the tracking code on 9th september) and don;t know what this is, but it sounds as a setting for the batteries, they do have something like this, what is the minimum and maximum you can set ? Where do you setup this , in the DJI GO app ?
thank you.
yes this will only happen on the inspire "smart" batteries, you wont have this issue with any other lipo battery. its a setting in the app you get to by having the battery in the inspire turned on and connected to the RC so you can see the live feed video, at the top of the app there will be a battery power percentage display, click that and it opens a window that shows individual cell voltage, times charged and overall battery health/life and so on.
You can set the self discharge for anywhere from 1 day to 10 days on this screen, and when that amount of time occurs if the battery is left fully charged and unattended it will discharge itself down to like 50-60% to prevent damage that can occur from storing fully charged lipo batteries. Apparently they swell up and explode or something.
Some people think that using only part of a fully charged battery and then going back later and using the rest of it is the cause of this issue but like i said i do it all the time and have no problems with my self discharge set to the max of 10 days and always having used them within this time. By default this self discharge time is set much lower than the 10 day max, i forget exactly, and im nearly certain that it is the cause of this problem based on my experiences.
This is pure speculation here as to why i think this happens since no one ever answers the question as to what self discharge time they have set when i ask in these type of threads but im guessing the people with the issues are using batteries set to a day or so self discharge. im guessing that the time starts counting down from time fully charged and doesnt disable until the power reaches the target discharge rate of 50-60% or whatever it is so for example if you charge a battery and wait a day or two and fly it down to 80% and wait another day or two before flying it again it still triggers the self discharge cycle cause it thinks its still 100% and when it gets lower after some use on the second flight it says hey wait a minute, I dont have as much power left as i should, lets adjust that %50 left to 6% or whatever.
These are so called smart batteries and im quite certain they do not display actual battery power left but rather the amount that can be used without causing permanent damage based on cell voltage levels and as such 0% power reported isnt really 0% power available. The manual states that you should drain the batteries from 100% till they shut themselves off every 10 charge cycles to reset them and maintain optimal battery health. Some people freak out about this cause draining normal lipo batteries to 0 is very very bad for them and im guessing many people with these issues arent performing this reset procedure which could also be a factor in causing the sudden drop issue.
It makes no sense that they would recommend something harmful in the user manual so its only logical that my theory here is correct, they have faulty firmware/code/algorithms which get out of wack and report incorrectly, especially when the self discharge feature activates. Thats why the power levels sometimes suddenly drop drastically. The drain till powers itself off procedure resets it and makes it more accurate. Im nearly certain of this cause the 2 batteries i had the sudden drop problem that self discharged sat at 0% for 30 minutes or more before they powered off when doing this and the batteries with no issues shut off at 3% or shortly after hitting 0% consistently.
Now with that being said i should also note that this occurred on older firmware versions and supposedly they corrected the problem in one of the last two newest versions, however dji isnt known for their ability to fix problems very effectively and nearly every new version so far has introduced new problems/bugs. I cant test it because im still running older firmware and have no intention of updating to current for various reasons. Its hard to say for sure if the OP updated the firmware and performed the battery reset procedures correctly or if this problem still exists despite their attempted fix or if his problem is due to a new bug in the latest version or if his battery is getting weak if its older and been charged 100 times or whatever. However there is no logical reason why you shouldnt be able to use part of a healthy battery and then use the rest of it the same or next couple days without problems.