Welcome Inspire Pilots!
Join our free DJI Inspire community today!
Sign up

Forced landing due to "critically low battery"... At 46%!

Intended to fly about 2 weeks ago so charged my 5 batteries. Didn't happen and 2 weeks went by before an opportunity to fly again. In the meantime some batteries had begin to self discharge. No biggie. I was on the beach with the kids, and put the least charged battery in first, a tb47 with 39 charge cycles. Booted up and it came up around 60% which I figure is enough to reaquaint and dial in the camera.

Fly around close a little bit then do a run down the beach parallel to stretch her legs a bit. Barely into that and I get a "motility" warning which I iregard as because the winds are up around 15-20. Make a uturn to do a run past my girls who are walking along the shoreline and get a RTH warning immediately followed by a notification of a forced landing imminent so I dial the camera 90 deg down, adjust to miss a shrub and put down in the dune. camera shuts off and I walk the 100 yds to where the drone is. cant remember if i turned the battery back on but app is reading 46% so i pick it up, restart the motors, and launch it again. it flys w no other issues besides i think another low battery warning well above the 25% that i have programmed. Land it with about 20-22%. Although i have litchi, i used the dji go app to be a little more "secure." WTH!? i often fly, and could've very easily been over water and wouldve had drowned bird.

Any ideas on the problem? software? After an issue this past july 4th where the software saved the aircraft from a mishap well out over water, giving me supreme confidence in its survivability, that has all been taken away and will now have to be reestablished.

Edit: each cell within .01 voltage.
From your description it sounds like it's possible that the smart battery system was making the determination that a RTH would be a good idea. The logs will have the info necessary to determine if this happened. If you used the DJI Go App version 2.8.3 or older could you post the .txt. If the Go App is version 2.8.4 or newer we'll need to look at the .DAT. Go here to see how to retrieve the .DAT. You'll need to Dropbox (or equivalent) the .DAT.
 
  • Like
Reactions: slim.slamma
From your description it sounds like it's possible that the smart battery system was making the determination that a RTH would be a good idea. The logs will have the info necessary to determine if this happened. If you used the DJI Go App version 2.8.3 or older could you post the .txt. If the Go App is version 2.8.4 or newer we'll need to look at the .DAT. Go here to see how to retrieve the .DAT. You'll need to Dropbox (or equivalent) the .DAT.

I think it made that determination because it couldn't get enough energy from the battery in its "rested" state and doesn't appear to be a software issue. I'll get the batteries sorted out, run each one through a closely monitored cycle and call it a lesson learned.
 
  • Like
Reactions: IrishSights
Frankly I don't fly my bird without aux batteries due to the many dropped from sky reports. This topic has been well documented in this forum and I would recommend flying with them to avoid all such battery issues

After a desire for more "airtime" I found the thread BATTERY MOD INFO and taking forum member Phatzo's que, I modified my bird to accept auxiliary batteries. Being as this was a little family fun, I didn't see the need to charge up the main batteries or charge and connect the auxiliaries. I wouldn't think of connecting auxiliaries anyway unless all were fully charged just for the purpose of matching voltage.
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
22,277
Messages
210,655
Members
34,322
Latest member
Melodee207