Battery charger woes?

[Reconnaissance Squadron]

Until recently I was delighted with the 3-at-a-time battery charger accessory which seems to rapidly charge three batteries at once with no problems. But perhaps, maybe, just perhaps, it almost cost me my drone today.

I had just flown a big juicy Flight Plan which involved a loss of signal and flying low in a distant location. I always try to be conservative with such flights duration so that if things take longer than planned the battery has plenty of spare juice. I think this plan was less than 8 minutes duration. When it was finished I noticed that I had lots of battery left so I flew on manually, on a bit of a high after pulling off what I believed was a great flight. I was having so much fun I miscalculated where the drone had got to and I find myself looking at a distance of (I think) 1435 metres and a battery level of 24%. Ah. This is not good, I thought to myself. A successful return is not exactly guaranteed from this position, especially considering that there is a lake between me and the drone. RTH would have taken the drone over the lake and it might not make it. I decided that it was better to fly manually and take it over empty fields so if it ran out of power it would at least land somewhere that I had a chance of rescuing it from. I pushed it to full speed and aimed it around the edge of the lake, dropping altitude as I went. It always makes sense to drop altitude when flying home as it will use less power in descending, it will reduce the total distance (vertical distance needs to be covered as well as horizontal) and if the worst happens it won't have as far to fall. I am very glad that I did. I saw the drone clear the final trees and it was heading my way, it will be with me in less than ten seconds I thought. Then I was lining it up for the most direct route across the last 200 metres or so it just fell out of the sky from tree-top height. The battery level was 15%, with no warning of any kind it seemed to lose power completely and flutter down to the ground whereupon the battery bounced up. I was close enough to hear the thud. I had to climb over a barbed-wire fence precisely the same height as my scrotum to find it. I was fearing that it would be smashed up. It wasn't, apart from the battery disconnecting and some dust on the props there seems to be no damage at all. As they say the bigger they come the harder they fall, the Anafi is so light it can withstand quite a fall.

The Anafi has flown on since. I gave it a short test hover then I decided that the only way to prove it was to give it a proper workout so I loaded up a seven-minute flight plan and it performed faultlessly. I did do a little extra manual flight at the end of it but for some reason I decided to bring it home with about 25% battery left. There's tempting fate and then there's poking it in the eye with a sharp stick.

So I have had TWO instances of the Anafi dropping out of the sky when the battery level was 14 or 15%. The previous one was a couple of days earlier and it was flying less than waist height and landed in some long grass. It was annoying to lose the video recording but I didn't think too much about what had happened. Of course I thought about it when I was looking at that awkward situation of possibly pushing the Anafi as far as the battery could take me, which is why I avoided the lake. I have flown over the lake dozens of times when returning with low power but never with quite as little margin as that. If I had flown directly over the lake I think it probably would have managed to clear it but my nerves would be in shreds and it might have instead fallen on my head.


The map should show why I took the decision that I did. There would be nearly 500 metres of extremely bad places to crash on the most direct route if you add up the water, trees and gardens of people who I could not count on as friendly. The route I did take was almost entirely fields.

I have decided not to use the 3-at-a-time battery charger again because that might be the explanation for the battery problems I have been developing. I think I need to keep a log of battery performance and which charger I have used with which battery. I also need to look into resetting the batteries. Until I have got to the bottom of this I will be landing the Anafi with at least 17% battery left and I will be ensuring that I don't fly too far from home when the levels are getting low.

 

[Landbo]

Until recently I was delighted with the 3-at-a-time battery charger accessory which seems to rapidly charge three batteries at once with no problems. But perhaps, maybe, just perhaps, it almost cost me my drone today.

I had just flown a big juicy Flight Plan which involved a loss of signal and flying low in a distant location. I always try to be conservative with such flights duration so that if things take longer than planned the battery has plenty of spare juice. I think this plan was less than 8 minutes duration. When it was finished I noticed that I had lots of battery left so I flew on manually, on a bit of a high after pulling off what I believed was a great flight. I was having so much fun I miscalculated where the drone had got to and I find myself looking at a distance of (I think) 1435 metres and a battery level of 24%. Ah. This is not good, I thought to myself. A successful return is not exactly guaranteed from this position, especially considering that there is a lake between me and the drone. RTH would have taken the drone over the lake and it might not make it. I decided that it was better to fly manually and take it over empty fields so if it ran out of power it would at least land somewhere that I had a chance of rescuing it from. I pushed it to full speed and aimed it around the edge of the lake, dropping altitude as I went. It always makes sense to drop altitude when flying home as it will use less power in descending, it will reduce the total distance (vertical distance needs to be covered as well as horizontal) and if the worst happens it won't have as far to fall. I am very glad that I did. I saw the drone clear the final trees and it was heading my way, it will be with me in less than ten seconds I thought. Then I was lining it up for the most direct route across the last 200 metres or so it just fell out of the sky from tree-top height. The battery level was 15%, with no warning of any kind it seemed to lose power completely and flutter down to the ground whereupon the battery bounced up. I was close enough to hear the thud. I had to climb over a barbed-wire fence precisely the same height as my scrotum to find it. I was fearing that it would be smashed up. It wasn't, apart from the battery disconnecting and some dust on the props there seems to be no damage at all. As they say the bigger they come the harder they fall, the Anafi is so light it can withstand quite a fall.

The Anafi has flown on since. I gave it a short test hover then I decided that the only way to prove it was to give it a proper workout so I loaded up a seven-minute flight plan and it performed faultlessly. I did do a little extra manual flight at the end of it but for some reason I decided to bring it home with about 25% battery left. There's tempting fate and then there's poking it in the eye with a sharp stick.

So I have had TWO instances of the Anafi dropping out of the sky when the battery level was 14 or 15%. The previous one was a couple of days earlier and it was flying less than waist height and landed in some long grass. It was annoying to lose the video recording but I didn't think too much about what had happened. Of course I thought about it when I was looking at that awkward situation of possibly pushing the Anafi as far as the battery could take me, which is why I avoided the lake. I have flown over the lake dozens of times when returning with low power but never with quite as little margin as that. If I had flown directly over the lake I think it probably would have managed to clear it but my nerves would be in shreds and it might have instead fallen on my head.
View attachment 2388

The map should show why I took the decision that I did. There would be nearly 500 metres of extremely bad places to crash on the most direct route if you add up the water, trees and gardens of people who I could not count on as friendly. The route I did take was almost entirely fields.

I have decided not to use the 3-at-a-time battery charger again because that might be the explanation for the battery problems I have been developing. I think I need to keep a log of battery performance and which charger I have used with which battery. I also need to look into resetting the batteries. Until I have got to the bottom of this I will be landing the Anafi with at least 17% battery left and I will be ensuring that I don't fly too far from home when the levels are getting low.

Yes it is silly to use the charger you use as it cannot balance the two cells of the battery. Always charge via the USB-C port. Discharge all your batteries by hovering 1/2 to 1 meter over something soft and empty the batteries down to 20%, then re-charge them through the USB-C port again.

A new balanced healthy battery can be discharged down to below 1%. However, it is definitely not good for the battery you do it.

I can read from your story you haven't thought enough about what might happen when you land your Anafi far away from the controller. If you lose the connection to Anafi before you turn off the engines, Anafi will go automatically into RTH mode after 10-15 seconds and rise to the RTH height you have put in and fly the straight way home to you. Then you can only hope there is enough battery to make the trip home or the connection to the controller can be re-established and you can try to land on another place again. The case scenario I tell here has cheated many experienced drone pilots and will definitely cheat many upcoming pilots also.

Fly safely, regards Leif.

 

[Reconnaissance Squadron]

I was not planning to land far from the controller. I was expecting to fly to the point that the Anafi may automatically land because it hasn't got enough power to do anything else, or just fall out of the sky. In that scenario it isn't going to fly up to RTH height because it can't do it. I have been in this situation, the Anafi is down to 5% or so and it autolands, It won't RTH because it can't. Autolanding on ultra-low power levels overrides RTH, I think it is the only fail-safe protocol which overrides RTH. You have minimal control to pick exactly where it crashlands. When it did that with me I aimed the camera down and saw that there wasn't anything worth aiming for or aiming to avoid, just grass, so I watched it land then I went off to find it. I take your point about putting it down somewhere at a distance, it may go down, lose signal then decide it should RTH. But that is only true if it has enough power to try to do that. Landing, deliberately, at a distance is not a good idea with the Anafi as you can't tell it not to try to return to home on loss of signal. With a Mavic there is a way you can hover, change the loss of signal behaviour to land rather than RTH then you can point the camera down and aim for somewhere soft but dry and it won't matter if the signal is lost before it lands as it will follow your orders to continue on to land.

I suppose if you know you can't make it back and you have to land in a particular place (say this side of a lake) the way to do it is to hover over that safe landing place until the Anafi screams at you that it will autoland if you don't do something, then you continue not to do anything other than cancelling any attempt to RTH so it carries out its threat and lands just where it is.

 

[C. Mudgeon]

I had a strange issue with a battery- thankfully not a crash but definitely unexplained behavior.

I charged up all 3 of my batteries (one at a time via USB-C) as well as the controller in preparation for a flight. Going through the pre-flight, when I turned on the controller, I got a flashing light blue light, then a flashing dark blue alternating with dark red. The controller was “connected” but showed that the battery was at 2%. Not good.

I shut it down, put in a different battery and flew without incident.

When I finished, on a whim, I put the 2% battery back in and synced up. Lo and behold - it was at 87%.

My rationalization was that because the battery had been on the airframe during travel it may not have been seated properly as a result of jostling during transit.

New item on the pre-flight checklist: Reseat battery prior to takeoff.

 

[Vegasrobbi]

Yes it is silly to use the charger you use as it cannot balance the two cells of the battery.

Great I just purchased a 3 at a time charger, I won't use it if it doesn't balance. I was under the impression the balance circuit was internal to the battery?

 

[Reconnaissance Squadron]

Great I just purchased a 3 at a time charger, I won't use it if it doesn't balance. I was under the impression the balance circuit was internal to the battery?

Yes it has such circuitry in the battery but the battery is meant to be charged through the USB C socket whereas this multi-charger charges through the other end, the end that the Anafi draws power from. Does this bypass the balancing circuitry? I don't know, but I suspect now that it might. It seems like they have carefully designed a product to do the job badly. I assumed it would work out alright, and it did for many charges, but now I suspect that I have damaged at least one of my batteries.

To make matters worse it seems that different USB chargers, and perhaps different sockets in the same charger, produce different results. I will be plugging in multiple batteries in different chargers then swapping them around trying to ensure that they top off fully. The 3-at-once charger for my Mavic works great, and charges through the same multi-pin plug and socket as the original one-at-a-time chargers. My Mavic batteries are very healthy, retaining 100 or 99% battery level for several days, and flight endurance is higher than it was months ago. I can't say the same for the Anafi batteries. Flight endurance is not as good, they can drop to 97 or 95% power overnight and now I have encountered the problem of catastrophic shutdowns, probably a voltage drop on one cell. Until I have gathered some more data that shows the issue is cured I will have to limit my flights to shorter distances and retain bigger safety margins.

 

[CraigCam]

I think it’s not your charger but an issue with the power calculations. I have experienced this sudden loss of power when below 15% on batteries that were charged by USB with good wall chargers. I own the multi charger as well. I don’t see any flight time difference between the two methods and I’m sure that the balancing is internal to the battery.

I think battery age is more of a factor as over repeated charging, regardless of balancing, a LiPo battery life gets shorter. I don’t go below 25% any more if I can and definitely get it down below 15’ if I end up there. I cycle across seven batteries but fly often so they are all logging good hours and all wearing down about the same. You don’t own batteries really because they will die and unfortunately buying more is a constant expense with all drones you own as a battery can die in storage as well if not properly discharged. At least these “smart” batteries give you some idea of what they are doing even if it’s only for reference. Your gut to fly down was good piloting and yes the Anafi can take a tumble pretty well.

At least these cost just under $100.0 US as opposed to the cost of the batteries for my Typhoon H plus at $180.00 each and I just had one quit completely with a dead cell and it was properly stored and now is a useless brick. What was supposed to be my best camera is so hardly touched as the Anafi is just better in so many ways. The only time I put that beast up is in high winds.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

 

[Reconnaissance Squadron]

So if this is true everybody who has flown the Anafi hard for several months will get similar results regardless of whatever charging method they use. Please comment on your experience here! I assume as I have five batteries which share the fun/wear/experience/abuse and I have a job there must be people out there with more spare time, fewer cloudy and wet days and fewer batteries who have racked up more flight hours on a single battery than I have.


I have been flying the Anafi fairly heavily since August, but I also have two Mavic Pros as well so not all my flying is done on the Anafi. I am now up to two Anafis and five batteries. I have my batteries colour coded to keep an eye on how I am using them so that I don't keep using one more than the rest, this is like numbering them but for people who have a life rather than a notebook. It was Grey which dropped out of the air at 15%, I can't remember whether it was also this one which fell from waist high earlier in the week. I didn't bother noting which was which that day as I knew I would be flying them all, and I did. I also know that they have all been fully charged again since then and Black and Grey have been flown and recharged (via USB C) so the next time I fly I should use white, pale blue and dark blue before black or grey. They have all been last charged via USB C. The other reason I didn't remember which battery was involved in the crash was that I didn't want to dwell on the fact that it had just recorded an epic flight plan flight and this video would now almost certainly be corrupted. I just needed to swap batteries and fly the same flight plan again without dwelling on the matter and spoiling an otherwise wonderful day's flying.

If you are wondering why I have two each of the same drone it is because I had a series of crashes. I was hell to live with when my drone couldn't fly, which is awkward as I live alone. I now have the reassurance of a spare drone for each model type. It also means I can go out with my son at times and we can both fly a drone with the same capabilities. The other explanation is that I am very bad at eBay. This is not a game that you must always win!

 

[Reconnaissance Squadron]

Thanks, I might follow up that suggestion.

 

[McAl]

I bought this to charge my batteries . I got it on Amazon day for a good price .. Its well build and heavy USB C Wall Charger, Anker Premium 60W 5-Port Desktop Charger with One 30W Power Delivery Port for MacBook Air 2018, iPad Pro 2018, and 4 PowerIQ Ports for iPhone XS/Max/XR/X/8/7, Galaxy S9/S8 and More: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics It's a branded charger and i have never had any problems with the Anker brand ... I rarely use ebay now , due to too many knock offs

I was wondering, how long does it take to charge batteries and controller with that specific charger you linked?

 

[Buck]

Per Parrot:
How long does it take to charge your battery?

The charging time of ANAFI's smart battery depends on the energy source you choose.

• USB Power Delivery (5V, 9V, 12V – 3A): 105 minutes
• Wall socket adapter (5V – 3A):between 150 and 210 minutes (2hrs 30mins to 3hrs 30mins)
• Computer USB port or external battery: about 270 minutes (4hrs 30mins)

So 30W from PD charger = 12V @ 2.5A or slightly more than the 105 minutes claimed.
The remote, (RC) can only be charged via standard 5V USB. Time as in all cases depends on state of charge when charging begins.

Here is a good video about Anafi charging:

 

[Nidge]

I’m not so sure about USB charging being the only method to balance charge the batteries.

After viewing the tear down video quite a few times the cat board at the op/ip of the battery bears more than a striking resemblance to those used in the DJI range of smart batteries and other offerings from other manufacturers such as Autel and Ceewa/HaloDrone. The circuit is wired directly to the primary ip/op of the battery and the clever stuff is done by this circuit board.

In the case of the above examples the charging is controlled by by a ATMEGA1614ab 8bit RISC uP in conjunction with a STM8S00 MCU. It is from this board the connections to the individual cells are made and balance charged.

The three port charger doesn’t actually contain any Smart Charging circuitry, it is more of a three port highly stabilised power supply, with the clever stuff being done by the circuit board directly behind the two pin inputs on the rear of the battery.

The USB connector also connects to this board but it is also responsible for data transfer to and from the SD card as these connections are made via the multi connector between the two power pins of the battery.

Regards

Nidge.

 

[McAl]

I am charging a 50% battery as i type . it took 20 mins before all the leds went out . No idea how long to charge controller as no idea how much it needs . All I can say with that charger , my tablet and phone charge quicker than the chargers supplied with them

Thanks
At the moment my (old but quite good when I bought it) wall charger manages 3h for an Anafi battery, so I was looking for faster alternatives.
But the OP post made me question whether that would be a good idea.

 

[McAl]

If you care to look at the new Thermal Anafi .. It ships with a fast charger like what I use .. I only just found that out a couple of days ago

Parrot ANAFI | Professional Thermal Drones - 4K Camera

Observe the invisible and discover how ANAFI thermal drones revolutionize the daily life of professionals.

www.parrot.com

Thanks, that's a good point!