Cruzroy Battery Mod

Greg Huntoon · May 29, 2020

An interesting Github thread on battery firmware decoding/reprogramming, primarily for the Phantom 3, however, there is mention of Inspire 1 TB47 batteries specifically. For example: Both could be reprogrammed using ev2300 and bqEVSW of bqStudio software after unsealing and getting full access to IC programming interface. They say the battery management chip for the TB47 is bq76940 + bq78350. They also say the P3 firmware isn't encrypted. I'm betting neither is the TB47 or TB48 although some are saying the batteries are protected and would need to be unsealed.

Battery firmware · Issue #17 · o-gs/dji-firmware-tools FYI - not lite reading for most and some of the youTube videos are in Romanian.

Anyway, an interesting read none the less.

cruzroy · Jun 15, 2020

OK guys, anyone out there,,,,,,,IN from HONG KONG, a 9000 mah inspire 1 battery, i will try to give out all info later tonight if anyone is still on this forum thread

Dobmatt · Jun 15, 2020

cruzroy said:
OK guys, anyone out there,,,,,,,IN from HONG KONG, a 9000 mah inspire 1 battery, i will try to give out all info later tonight if anyone is still on this forum thread

Waiting eagerly for your report

...

Greg Huntoon · Jun 15, 2020

Dobmatt said:
Waiting eagerly for your report ...

Same... Other than the battery and replacement parts, there's no real reason the Inspire 1 can't remain in the air for many years to come, especially if you don't crash.

InspireEagle · Jun 15, 2020

I'm waiting to

Dobmatt · Jun 15, 2020

Greg Huntoon said:
Same... Other than the battery and replacement parts, there's no real reason the Inspire 1 can't remain in the air for many years to come, especially if you don't crash.

There's a few other brave ones, who followed Cruzroy's pioneering idea, most recently Dominick Little. Unfortunately there's no hope for the majority of us without necessary skills ...

cruzroy · Jun 15, 2020

ok guys, weight in TB47, TB48 and TB90

TB47 = 588.6 grams
TB48 = 672.8 grams
84.2 grams difference
TB90 = 973.9 grams
301.1 grams difference from a TB48

cruzroy · Jun 15, 2020

Dobmatt · Jun 15, 2020

cruzroy said:
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Thank you, Cruzroy, for all your efforts, successful or not regardless. The longer I'm observing these attempts to solve the issue, the more I'm convinced that there's much more involved than just DIY skills

...

rufffus · Jun 16, 2020

Your old battery shuts down because there is too big difference on voltage between the cells. Next thing: TB74 is 3.7V standard lipo, TB48 is 3.8V HV lipo. And last thing: your new 9000mah battery shows 5700mah on DJI GO. So it looks like it was built with brand new board from TB48 battery or somehow it was reseted to "brand new" state (that would be cool). But still no one knows the code to unseal and edit battery parameters

cruzroy · Jun 16, 2020

after looking at this battery, WHAT i think is its been built all together, my design is plug in and use, the problem i think is when plugging in balance leads and power supply, it keeps resetting the board, buy building it as one, you charge like a dji battery and place in drone, the board never gets disconnected from lipos, if that makes any sense......i wonder if im over thinking this...there is no magical code???

Greg Huntoon · Jun 16, 2020

cruzroy said:
after looking at this battery, WHAT i think is its been built all together, my design is plug in and use, the problem i think is when plugging in balance leads and power supply, it keeps resetting the board, buy building it as one, you charge like a dji battery and place in drone, the board never gets disconnected from lipos, if that makes any sense......i wonder if im over thinking this...there is no magical code???

That totally makes sense to me. This is probably why you should use the stock charger? The stock charger has no balance leads. The powerhead also doubles as a smart charger so the stock charger is nothing more than a power source. The powerhead doesn't care what the capacity of the cells are, it just measures the internal resistance so it knows when to stop charging regardless of the capacity. The only issue I can see with this setup is you can't increase the charge rate to 1C so it could charge in an hour which is probably better for the cells but a larger capacity will just take longer to charge. You have no control over the amps going in.

That setup is way cool and a really clean solution. If it works, please provide the source for the battery. Thumbs Up.

Greg Huntoon · Jun 16, 2020

FYI for anyone who doesn't know -

You can long term store LiPos for 6-12 months. The trick is to get the cells down to 50% first. Never long term store Lipos fully charged, life will shorten dramatically and they will outgas and swell. My experience with Lipos is they will naturally discharge so if stored at 50%, after 6-12 months they should be down to 30-40%. The issue here is DJI. The Inspire 1 smart powerhead does discharge to 50-60% which is good, the shorter the duration (days) for this the better. The problem is the powerhead is a power leach so the DJI batteries will discharge faster than standard Lipos discharge so you can't long term store DJI Inspire 1 batteries unless you open the powerhead and disconnect the balance connector. Even doing this, I'm not sure if you can long term store them for 6-12 months unattended.

If you don't feel like disconnecting the balance connector you need to inspect them frequently, like every 1-2 months, and charge them back up to 50%.

FYI, the same applies to a tablet or any device with a Lipo. If I need to long term store a tablet, discharge the battery to 50% then power off the device (don't hibernate) power it off. For what its worth, I still have my Apple iPod Touch first generation and its Lipo is going strong. Never leave a device with a Lipo sit unused fully charged for over 1 week, never.

Don't let Lipos discharge too low, try to keep them around 50%. Some people think their batteries are dead when they get too low. Some do die but some can be brought back by giving them some juice to bring them back up above the low voltage cutoff most smart chargers don't like. Kind of like those videos where people say they revive dead DJI batteries. The batteries were never dead, just below the low voltage cut off of the powerhead so they wouldn't charge without drastic measures.

Check out Basic to Advanced Battery Information from Battery University and learn about various battery chemistries.

cruzroy · Jun 16, 2020

just a note: there are a few guys in HK that make these batteries..."OR DO THEY" they might purchase from one and resale to another, i think i found the gentleman that produces them, because i got a quote for as high as 450 plus 50 shipping, and i do understand that some work is involved to make these items, but i dont believe its worth 500 a unit, that said, the gentleman would like me to test before he give ok to share batteries, not the so called way its built, and i could reverse engineer this thing, but for now i wont, i thought it was a great price for the job, the wait for it was like ARRGGG!!! that was only problem so far, i will post a photo of a label made for battery, if anyone could translate it would be great!

cruzroy · Jun 16, 2020

but what i see is that its a TB48 head, and the battery will only read 5700, but thats not and issue if the battery continues past 5700mah or remains there but just dont look like it depletes,, the problem with like clips and adding batteries to each arm, those batteries just start to balance the voltage as the main battery depletes, in-turn does not give you the time you need, BUT if all the cells where incorporated into or directly to board, it wont do that, i wont know about the symptoms of this till i fly, i will try to do so sometime this week, but im a essential worker, been at since day 1 of the virus, and been around alot of cases, and knock on wood im still safe, as i hope all of you are...........BUT again, i think we are looking at this battery thing the wrong way, YES its expensive to try different ideas, but it looks to me, that this build is made from 2 TB48 batteries that might have had a few bad cells and he took the good cells out and created this masterpiece, so because they are all the same type of cell that DJI uses, it dont affect what the app sees, but in background it will work as advertised , and the price is no different then buying a new TB48 (if you can find) or a tb50 for I2 , we will see, keep the skid side down and be safe

cruzroy · Jun 16, 2020

just more specs for now

TB47: 22.2V, 4500mAh, 99.90 Wh, 6S, 10C
TB48: 22.8V, 5700mAh, 129.96 Wh, 6S, 10C
TB90: 22.2v 9000mah, 204.8 Wh 6S, 20c

cruzroy · Jun 16, 2020

just more specs for now

TB47: 22.2V, 4500mAh, 99.90Wh, 6S, 10C.
TB48: 22.8V, 5700mAh, 129.96Wh, 6S, 10C.

Greg Huntoon said:
FYI - I found an old Vimeo video called "Reset DJI INSPIRE TB47 / TB48"
Reset DJI INSPIRE TB47 / TB48

French translation below -

1. disconnect the battery
2. disassemble the white cover
3. disconnect the molex connector
4. press the button 2 or 3 times
5. wait 5 minutes
6. reconnect the molex connector
7. press the button or put the battery on the charger to see if it works again
8. if it works again, close the white cover, charge the battery and update the battery with the latest firmware

this does nothing

Greg Huntoon · Jun 16, 2020

cruzroy said:
just a note: there are a few guys in HK that make these batteries..."OR DO THEY" they might purchase from one and resale to another, i think i found the gentleman that produces them, because i got a quote for as high as 450 plus 50 shipping, and i do understand that some work is involved to make these items, but i dont believe its worth 500 a unit, that said, the gentleman would like me to test before he give ok to share batteries, not the so called way its built, and i could reverse engineer this thing, but for now i wont, i thought it was a great price for the job, the wait for it was like ARRGGG!!! that was only problem so far, i will post a photo of a label made for battery, if anyone could translate it would be great!View attachment 29013

I've got this so far -

Remember: (Not sure of this bit, something about a balance connector?).

After charging the powerhead and connecting the plug wait a few seconds for the battery cover to light up. One short press and long press and hold the battery cover for a few seconds to power off. Then attach to the machine and power on.

Note: Do not discharge to 0%, otherwise the battery capacity
will return to 5700 mah, 10% is preferred.

Technical Support: 13834504810 WeChat: yanhe826

If you can provide a higher res or slightly brighter or better image I may be able to finish it.

cruzroy · Jun 16, 2020

Greg Huntoon said:
I've got this so far -

Note: Do not discharge to 0%, otherwise the battery capacity
will return to 5700 mah

Technical Support: 13834504810 WeChat: yanhe826

If you can provide a higher res or slightly brighter or better image I may be able to do it.

KOOL i have a docs appointment tonight, but i will try to take a better photo

The Editor · Jun 16, 2020

@cruzroy - can we quite with the stupid large bold font please. You are the only person that posts this way.

Thank you.

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