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Monitoring Battery During Flight

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Jan 22, 2016
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Hi There,

New to flying the I1, and having come from a P2 the amount of added telemetry can be a bit overwhelming at times. I'm not exactly sure what to make of the battery monitors. I've been flying in cold weather (~30F), using prewarmed batteries. I'm frequently seeing that propulsion output is limited to preserve the battery, I get that, but I am also frequently seeing the battery color change from green to amber to red, even at about 70% battery remaining.

Is that normal? It will dip from green, to amber, to red when flying forward at 50-75% throttle, and then return to amber/green if throttle is reduced. It happens on multiple batteries, including a brand new TB48.
 
Hi There,

New to flying the I1, and having come from a P2 the amount of added telemetry can be a bit overwhelming at times. I'm not exactly sure what to make of the battery monitors. I've been flying in cold weather (~30F), using prewarmed batteries. I'm frequently seeing that propulsion output is limited to preserve the battery, I get that, but I am also frequently seeing the battery color change from green to amber to red, even at about 70% battery remaining.

Is that normal? It will dip from green, to amber, to red when flying forward at 50-75% throttle, and then return to amber/green if throttle is reduced. It happens on multiple batteries, including a brand new TB48.
When you pull up the battery info screen in flight take a look at the battery temp. The sweet spot is around 20-40c or around just over 30 degrees.
If your pack is below 20 degrees or worse still below 15 then yes I would expect a voltage drop when giving climb out or asking for power. The packs will say under load in cold environments
You are probably more aware of it because you never had access to this level of information on the P2. :)
 
I'm only seeing a problem with cell 6 on the 02/11/16 4:25pm battery. The rest look to be from pushing it too hard at a point where that battery wasn't quite ready for it yet or where the battery was just too cold. Those temperature drops shown on one of the graphs indicate you proabaly need to look at insulation from the cold. What's with all the flying over houses and stuff? You're going to anoy some folks on your flight path for sure besides being dangerous.
 
Why are the battery faults on that flight more concerning than the others?

Just trying to learn what is normal, and what isn't.
 
It explanes it a bit in healthy drones:

Major Deviations ™
Major deviation is when a cell differs more than 0.07v from the other cells.
Please note that normal batteries can have a few of these.
An abnormal battery will:
A) Have most of the major deviations in one cell
B) There will be multiple major deviations per minute, and more than 10 total
C) The deviations continue longer than 1 minute
If your battery shows all symptoms (example, another) then this is considered a more severe case of an inefficient battery and may impact the battery life.
If your battery has only 1-4 instances on the same cell, don't worry too much about it. If it has 5-10 instances - then continue to track and make sure it does not degrade:

The gist of it is to keep monitoring it. Keep an eye on that battery. Don't run it down in flight beyond say 40% for the next few flights and monitor the levels. If you keep seeing the same errors do a deep discharge on the battery and then charge to 100%. Test again. If still reporting errors I'd try and get that battery replaced under warranty if still covered and I wouldn't fly it.
 

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