Battery error...

Mark V · Sep 11, 2015

Hi everyone,

I was out flying over a river estuary a little before sunset today and had already flown one battery down to 31% with no problems. Landed and switched batteries. I flew out to about 300 meters distance and no higher than 60 - 70 meters and started working my way back following one of the channels of the river back towards my location when I got a red flashing status bar and a Battery Error warning. This lasted for a couple of seconds then the status bar returned to normal. I still had 79% battery left and I had started the flight at 100%. I immediately flew back to home and landed safely but was freaked out since I was over water most of the time. I'm on firmware 1.4 and had successfully been testing some of the new Intelligent Nav features as well. This has never happened to me before. Has anybody else had a brief Battery Error warning that returned to normal very quickly? The battery only has a handful of charges on it.

PB30X · Sep 11, 2015

Interesting and Noted! Didn't have a chance to check out the characteristics of the newest firmware, but did you successfully update all batteries?

Mark V · Sep 11, 2015

I believe that I did although the 1.4 update didn't behave the same as the 1.3 update. When I updated to 1.3 I performed the usual update process with all 3 of my batteries, I have 1 x TB47 and 2 x TB48s. Of course, the battery that was in the AC during the AC update is updated at that time, then I switched to the other two batteries and went through the normal update process for those (standard 4 beeps until completion). My batteries this time around didn't exhibit the same behaviour. Also, when I do an About I don't get battery versions. Not sure if that used to be in the app but it sure isn't in 2.2. Do you think I should attempt to update again?

Mark V · Sep 11, 2015

I just checked that battery here at home in the app and it still shows 69% charge and 4.00 volts across all cells. 6 charges and 99% battery life.

PB30X · Sep 11, 2015

Mark, I always leave my card in the gimbal post updates until everything is done including all batteries, then if need beings for the RC I check the txt statuses before updating the RC.. I then, "my rule of thumb" put it back in the gimbal and do a "reformat" once again and reinsert the .bin file then update the RC IF NEEDS BEING.. In this case the RC did not have to be updated unless you do not have the FW 1.3 as mentioned and outlined. When you turn the AC on for the first time with the problem battery It should start the sequence beeps then the 4 beep sequence and the 2 center led lights on the battery should be lighting up, and leave it be, until you hear the confirmation beeps D-DD and should continue until turned off, DO NOT EVER retract (REMOVE) battery while AC is under power.. Hope this helps, just think you need a clean reformat new bin file and she should be good to go unless this battery did not take the FW 1.3 originally..

gray52 · Sep 11, 2015

What percentage of life do your batteries now display? Sine I've upgrade all mine were at 100% now my tb47 is 95% and tb48 97% so something's messed up with the battery firmware.

Mark V · Sep 11, 2015

PB30X, appreciate your feedback. My RC is at 1.3. I checked the .txt files as well. Of course, it's quite confusing that there appears to be a bug in the firmware that's populating the .txt files with a Jan 2014 date... as noted elsewhere. I attempted to update the batteries a couple of times and the Inspire just sat there... so I assumed they were good to go. Although I suppose the fact that nothing happened should be indicative of something strange as well. I suppose another possibility would be a tiny temporary communications glitch that simply went away as it didn't happen with the other battery. I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this.

Rodrigo Pereira · Nov 22, 2015

I had this message today! My I1 is upgraded for a long time and I never had problems, but yesterday I calibrated all my batteries and one of them, when I was flying, showed me this message very quickly. Fortunately I managed to land without problems. Flying with 100% charge ever. The message appeared with 50% od battery. This is Insane!!! I almost sh##t my pants!

The Editor · Nov 22, 2015

Mark V said:
Hi everyone,

I was out flying over a river estuary a little before sunset today and had already flown one battery down to 31% with no problems. Landed and switched batteries. I flew out to about 300 meters distance and no higher than 60 - 70 meters and started working my way back following one of the channels of the river back towards my location when I got a red flashing status bar and a Battery Error warning. This lasted for a couple of seconds then the status bar returned to normal. I still had 79% battery left and I had started the flight at 100%. I immediately flew back to home and landed safely but was freaked out since I was over water most of the time. I'm on firmware 1.4 and had successfully been testing some of the new Intelligent Nav features as well. This has never happened to me before. Has anybody else had a brief Battery Error warning that returned to normal very quickly? The battery only has a handful of charges on it.

Probably no real mystery on this one.
A 'Battery Error' will come up while flying if cell balance drifts out by more than a few millivolts.
This usually occurs when a heavy load is asked of the pack (hard climb out or fast flying). Once the cells come back within a closer difference to each other (usually a few seconds) the message goes away.
Keep an eye on the pack but this shouldn't be an issue.

Mark V · Nov 22, 2015

The Editor said:
Probably no real mystery on this one.
A 'Battery Error' will come up while flying if cell balance drifts out by more than a few millivolts.
This usually occurs when a heavy load is asked of the pack (hard climb out or fast flying). Once the cells come back within a closer difference to each other (usually a few seconds) the message goes away.
Keep an eye on the pack but this shouldn't be an issue.

@ The Editor: Thanks very much for the post. I'm not as concerned about it now as I was when it first happened. I believe it has happened again but since nothing seemed to happen and everything returned to normal virtually immediately I'm just going to keep an eye out for it and fly cautiously as per usual.

Rodrigo Pereira · Nov 22, 2015

Hi! I was able to simulate the problem after what happened today when I was flying. I do not know if it's the same, but it seems a poor contact in serial pins that pass the battery information to the radio. This is what was appeared to me...

The Editor · Nov 22, 2015

Rodrigo Pereira said:
Hi! I was able to simulate the problem after what happened today when I was flying. I do not know if it's the same, but it seems a poor contact in serial pins that pass the battery information to the radio.

The contact and sprung data pins should be kept clean to ensure reliable data flow.

JMac · Feb 12, 2016

I had the same message pop up on my Madian flight. First time for my pro and first battery. So is that firmware issue or bad battery. I am running the latest on both battery and unit. The message went away after 5 sec or so. I little scary for my first flight with the pro. Thanks

Jason

Rodrigo Pereira · Feb 13, 2016

JMac said:
I had the same message pop up on my Madian flight. First time for my pro and first battery. So is that firmware issue or bad battery. I am running the latest on both battery and unit. The message went away after 5 sec or so. I little scary for my first flight with the pro. Thanks

Jason

The problem is in the 4 small pins that connect the battery into Inspire, if any of them fails to touch the battery gives this warning, it happened to me. You want to make a test? Block one of the pins and turn the Inspire on. was enough to give a good cleaned and checked every flight that never appeared again.

JMac · Feb 13, 2016

Rodrigo Pereira said:
The problem is in the 4 small pins that connect the battery into Inspire, if any of them fails to touch the battery gives this warning, it happened to me. You want to make a test? Block one of the pins and turn the Inspire on. was enough to give a good cleaned and checked every flight that never appeared again.

Thanks for the knowledge! It was the first time it was up. I will check all the pins today and see if something is not right on the unit or the battery. I will see what I find! Thanks for your input.

Jacky Poon · Feb 13, 2016

I had the same problem on my last flight with one of the new TB48, only had 4 cycles on it. The error message appear on the top bar for like 1/2 second or so... not sure if it's the pins tho, I was monitoring the battery at the time and nothing unusual showed up there... very very strange

As anyone would do - I fly straight back and landed right away, the pack still had 55%... flow the rest of my other 7 batteries without any problem and as I had to do a deep cycle with one of my TB47 I decided to do a deep cycle on this TB48 as well. Nothing unusual during the discharge hovering above the ground and all seemed to be fine recharging back up.
Will get back out on Monday and will do some extensive checks and monitoring over this TB48... if the problem occur again I think I'm going to set it aside... got a important job coming up so let's keep everything under control!

Interestingly I've gone through the Log stored in the tablet and it shows no record of the error whatsoever... as for that it would be really hard to ask for an exchange for a new one

so finger crossed it's just an one off!

The Editor · Feb 13, 2016

Rodrigo Pereira said:
The problem is in the 4 small pins that connect the battery into Inspire, if any of them fails to touch the battery gives this warning, it happened to me. You want to make a test? Block one of the pins and turn the Inspire on. was enough to give a good cleaned and checked every flight that never appeared again.

No - there is redundancy built in to this system.
Each pin is sprung but they share common data accros pairs of pins. This way if any one pin fails on the same data bus connection is still maintained.
It is very unlikely you would get a connection failure on two of the pins at the same moment in time.
This is why it was built this way.
It is good practice to keep the pins clean but failure of any single one will not constitute failure of the aircraft.