And my Anafi fell out of the sky!

Ana789 · Jun 3, 2020

This morning, I went to the Big Biddha to test some automatic flight plans.
I flew one "points" setup twice, which went well, I think!
Report about that later

After, I decided with 50ish% battery, to do one Sphere. Went nice, too.
Still 30+% battery left, did another sphere, just 20m over ground

At around 22% battery, "critical battery" landing kicked in, so I just moved it a bit closer to me.
And in about 5m height, 5m distance: motors stalling, bird turning like a beetle on the back and crashed to the ground.
Nothing broke, just the bird is only starting the fan right now.
Hopefully there is just some loose connection somewhere in it.

But:
It seems not to be the firmware of the bird.
I am still on the last good one from 2019, 1.6.3
It seems to be "just" the battery firmware.
Perhaps the age, condition of them?

That said, in case my bird is easy to fix, I would go for the latest fw for Anafi and battery
In case it is not an easy fix, my anafi times are presumably over!
Since my batteries are kind of malfunctioning, I would need a new extended version.

Better focus on the Mavics, then!
But in case ther is a Anafi 2 coming out, I kind of like the zoom!

The first Sphere:

DeWe · Jun 4, 2020

I'm sorry about the misbehavior of your Anafi.
On other side it good to know, that the problem is not a part of the latest firmware. It doesn't matter if it is the Anafi FW or the battery FW.

On other hand: If the Lipo is near to end, the capacity can goes down rapidly : like in your case. With other models I try to land before, so that during fly the capacity will be over 20%. Uncomfortable with the Anafi we have only the % on the screen visible and not the voltage of every cell

Ana789 · Jun 4, 2020

DeWe said:
I'm sorry about the misbehavior of your Anafi.
On other side it good to know, that the problem is not a part of the latest firmware. It doesn't matter if it is the Anafi FW or the battery FW.

On other hand: If the Lipo is near to end, the capacity can goes down rapidly : like in your case. With other models I try to land before, so that during fly the capacity will be over 20%. Uncomfortable with the Anafi we have only the % on the screen visible and not the voltage of every cell

That is another fun part:
I tested the batteries a couple of days ago, when the critical battery would kick in.
That was on 5% and on 10, I think
Even with 20m height, on the way down, there should be no event, that the bird shuts down midair at 20is % !

Never mind, I will open it up and check, if it is a easy fix.
If not, I had some good times and I need a 249g drone, anyway!

Liger 1956 · Jun 4, 2020

I am sorry to gear of your crash. I hope that you manage to repair it.
As you had been having problems with your batteries self discharging do you think that the faulty battery was the cause of the crash?

vintorez · Jun 4, 2020

Ana789 said:
that the bird shuts down midair at 20is % !

To be sure, you need to calibrate the battery. Just make a test flight at a height of 0.5 meters, until the batteries are completely discharged.
My thoughts, I have not tried it myself

vintorez · Jun 4, 2020

Now checked:
Start - 86%
9% - warning
2% - warning 2 minutes
1% - forced landing
20 minute flight time
Height - 0.8m
Battery new 3-5 flights. I have from 3pcs.

Ana789 · Jun 4, 2020

Liger 1956 said:
I am sorry to gear of your crash. I hope that you manage to repair it.
As you had been having problems with your batteries self discharging do you think that the faulty battery was the cause of the crash?

Yes, but not really b/c of the self discharging, which was at a rate of ~8% in 12h.
Batteries got recharged in the morning. The first battery I flew did "autoland" from higher up @ ~15%. And made it save to the ground

Since there was NOTHING near the Anafi, it was on the way to autoland (@20+% from just 20ism over ground, down to 5m already, when it stalled and turned over:
So I blame the battery or better the battery management (wrong reading of status during flight?), something like that.

I am pretty sure that on the way from 100% down some readings got wrong in the power level.
That what should have been corrected with both updates.
Since still birds on lates fw are falling out of the air, and now even one with latest 2019 configuration, I think that the batteries status (age/wear) is the reason for this behavior.
And for Parrot adressing it with updates.
My guess, at a certain point, the cells are aging different as predicted, Parrot tries to cover that with a new algorythm. Which may or may not work well, right now.
Mine was still on the old setup, which did not work well, today.

Aside: 2 of my batteries (extended version) are just 17 (SN)numbers away from each other
This were the two "2x xx%" in my discharging cycle.

Ana789 · Jun 4, 2020

vintorez said:
To be sure, you need to calibrate the battery. Just make a test flight at a height of 0.5 meters, until the batteries are completely discharged.
My thoughts, I have not tried it myself

I did that a couple of days ago.
There the critical battery autolanding was 2x @ 5%m one time @10%
But just half a meter over ground is not pushing the app, to do that earlier.
Only my guess was, on 10m height it would "suggest" the critical thing some % earlier?

vintorez · Jun 4, 2020

Obviously, the intervention of the operator in the process, "critical landing" or "return home," entrusts the operator with all the consequences.

Ana789 · Jun 4, 2020

I did not interfere with that
I was actually flying very conservative from 30ish% on, got it closer, got it down.
Cause I was thinking about this earlier critical battery landing
What I wasn"t thinking about, that perhaps the fw of the bird and the battery is obviously not knowing the battery, power and abillity to use it.

If I remember that right, I did not even get the
"In 2 minutes" warning, this time

Skydreamer · Jun 4, 2020

Ana789 said:
I did that a couple of days ago.
There the critical battery autolanding was 2x @ 5%m one time @10%
But just half a meter over ground is not pushing the app, to do that earlier.
Only my guess was, on 10m height it would "suggest" the critical thing some % earlier?

After reading your battery updates i wouldn't dare to fly below 50% if i had same batterys...hope it works out for you

Ana789 · Jun 4, 2020

Ok, guys:
Did I miss something, or did Parrot screw it up?
I think that I read somewhere, the bird can be put in pieces with the one torx screwdriver, that is in every propeller box.

I watched (still do) the video, and I am certain that the torx screws for the GPS cover are not just the 2 from the top, but also the 2 from the battery side.
Aside that they did not mention this bolts at all:
They are ONE SIZE SMALLER!
I just try to find my torx set that should be somewhere, but I'm not even sure there is such a small driver in

Ana789 · Jun 4, 2020

Got them!

Ana789 · Jun 4, 2020

Ok, found the difference between the Anafi in the video:

and my Anafi:

They changed it! But not in the video.
Or is there a newer version out?

Ana789 · Jun 4, 2020

bird is back on, just a "vertical camera failure"
but that is for another day

zandoli · Jun 4, 2020

Replace these batteries before flying again.

Gipsz Jakab · Jun 4, 2020

Ana789 said:
That is another fun part:
I tested the batteries a couple of days ago, when the critical battery would kick in.
That was on 5% and on 10, I think
Even with 20m height, on the way down, there should be no event, that the bird shuts down midair at 20is % !

Never mind, I will open it up and check, if it is a easy fix.
If not, I had some good times and I need a 249g drone, anyway!

I have written this several times already, but no one has answered or taken it into account:
The android collects the charge and discharge voltage values from the battery in one file. Many people have had their phone turned off at 15-20% (like when the Anafi engine stops). This can be fixed by deleting the contents of the battery.stat file (Anafi battery reset). But that's not enough !!!! Now the blank statistic needs to be populated with the correct data (voltage values for the correct 0% and 100%.
This is very important! So Anafit needs to be completely drained, reset, and then fully charged (this can even be repeated). You will then store the corresponding 0% voltage value for the aging battery and the corresponding 100% voltage value.
I stress that this is just a theory, but if it can be improved on phones this way, it should work for Anafi as well. I wasn’t able to try it because I don’t have such a problem.

BRC · Jun 4, 2020

I was thinking along the same line as you. I did run my batteries down as far as possible, then did the hard reset, In my case did not help as bird fell at 12%
Batteries were about 9 months old with about 80 cycles on each & I took pretty good care of them
What i had noticed prior to this was battery capacity after charging was somewhat inconsistent-
I'm not an expert on this but made sense to start with a baseline of 0%