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I1 V2 dropped out of the sky at 11%

Joined
May 13, 2017
Messages
5
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1
Location
Woodstock, GA, USA
Website
www.southernmunitions.com
So my first post here, unfortunately it's a bad one but from what I've seen on the forum you guys are a wealth of information here. I've read a bunch of other posts on the I2 and issues and whatnot, but nothing that matches what happened to me. I was flying around, nothing high speed or high altitude, just doing some basic sunset video to show some local lake buddies. Battery got to my warning level of 35%, started home and got above my takeoff point, battery still at 26% and elevation of 265ft. Was in a straight descent and battery all of a sudden started beeping critical battery at 11%. Within 3 seconds of that warning and an elevation of 55ft, the drone just shut off and dropped to the ground. Needless to say it shattered a number of parts and the X5 camera and gimbal. Parts are whatever, but why would that happen so rapidly? First things first, I've got close to 2000 hours (1967 at this time) on a number of drones and have been flying for the past 6 years with a variety of different models. Fortunately it wasn't my I2 and I've got a parts I1 that I can salvage to get this one back together quickly. My issue is this battery has 8 charges on it, always stored properly, etc. Why would this literally go from 35% to nothing in less than 4 minutes? I could see MAYBE if I was flying back home at full speed but that wasn't the case. Checked the battery after the crash, no dead cells, nothing to indicate a failure of any kind. Any help would be appreciated and I'm just thankful that it didn't drop into the lake which if it had died 50 yards further out I'd be diving to find it right now instead of typing this post!
 
Reason it dropped off so fast is because there was less I the battery than it was saying there was. Rule of thumb for me is to ignore battery percentage left for the most part and just use it as a rough estimate . Watch voltage mostly not the percentage. Deep cycled batteries at every 8 to 10 charges is what I do to ensure the reading of mah left is somewhat close to what it actually is.. Reason it fell from the sky. It hit the 10 percent mark and shut the motors off. The smart battery isn't really that smart. More of an overpriced crappy lipo battery with cheap cells in it.
 
I had the same problem but fell with 15% left . Part of it was my own fault because I was flying with not updated film where and had no video feed somehow something happened during that corruption of it coming back to land and it dropped out of the sky. I believe the battery feedback was incorrect because I was running out of date filmwhere. After I updated everything no more problems and can run it now with a video feed all the way down past 10% but are usually don't risk it . Hope that helps.
 
So my first post here, unfortunately it's a bad one but from what I've seen on the forum you guys are a wealth of information here. I've read a bunch of other posts on the I2 and issues and whatnot, but nothing that matches what happened to me. I was flying around, nothing high speed or high altitude, just doing some basic sunset video to show some local lake buddies. Battery got to my warning level of 35%, started home and got above my takeoff point, battery still at 26% and elevation of 265ft. Was in a straight descent and battery all of a sudden started beeping critical battery at 11%. Within 3 seconds of that warning and an elevation of 55ft, the drone just shut off and dropped to the ground. Needless to say it shattered a number of parts and the X5 camera and gimbal. Parts are whatever, but why would that happen so rapidly? First things first, I've got close to 2000 hours (1967 at this time) on a number of drones and have been flying for the past 6 years with a variety of different models. Fortunately it wasn't my I2 and I've got a parts I1 that I can salvage to get this one back together quickly. My issue is this battery has 8 charges on it, always stored properly, etc. Why would this literally go from 35% to nothing in less than 4 minutes? I could see MAYBE if I was flying back home at full speed but that wasn't the case. Checked the battery after the crash, no dead cells, nothing to indicate a failure of any kind. Any help would be appreciated and I'm just thankful that it didn't drop into the lake which if it had died 50 yards further out I'd be diving to find it right now instead of typing this post!
Yup - pretty much exactly as @Scoobywrx05 said. :)
Get used to flying by voltage (which is absolute) as opposed to a bad estimation of charge by percentage.
If you have a good Google about correlating state of lipo charge to voltage you will see that nobody agrees on a chart/figure that can accurately track percentage to cell voltage.
There are just too many variables involved in things like health of cells, how they have been treated/stored. Internal resistance, capacity left, how low they have been taken in the past.
I map one of my buttons to bring up the battery screen and I will flick into this info usually three or four times in the course of a flight. This way I can keep an eye on individual cell levels to ensure they are tracking together, pack temperature, and it will alert me to any anomaly in the pack voltages before anything nasty happens.
You should aim to be safe back on the ground before around 3.4v per cell under load. This way the cells will rebound to circa 3.7v after rest which is perfect.
 
Another thing I do at take off is full left stick up till I'm 100feet or more off the ground watching the battery screen the whole time. This will give a good idea of which cells in the pack are worse than the other ones plus it'll tell you how good your pack is.
 

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