Hot swap battery

mAd mOrdigan · Jan 23, 2016

I'm out on vacation right now so I'll try when I get to the comfort of my own home. I'm too out of my element to deviate from my routine LOL

Samphoto · Jan 23, 2016

Well I can't speak for "Long term" (I finally got my second battery in Aug when they started shipping) but in the shortish time I've had more than one battery, I have been doing it. Send 3DR a support ticket to see what they say I guess, it has always worked for me.

Del · Jan 23, 2016

Samphoto said:
Well I can't speak for "Long term" (I finally got my second battery in Aug when they started shipping) but in the shortish time I've had more than one battery, I have been doing it. Send 3DR a support ticket to see what they say I guess, it has always worked for me.

Please keep us posted on what 3DR says about this...

Cheers

erikgraham · Jan 23, 2016

Wow. Gonna try this.

does the Solo go thru the whole boot sequence? Does it do pre-arm checks? If NO, then this could be useable for boat launches. Boot up and arm on land. Wait for it to clear the president checks. Leave battery in and Solo powered ON. Jump on boat and take off. Just before takeoff from boat, do a quick battery swap to get a fresh one in. Wishful thinking of course, but wouldn't it be great while we wait for a real "boat mode".

Eric Sheehan · Jan 23, 2016

I don't have the fresh battery turned on when I put it in, but can attest the solo connects to controller and GPS initializes within about 30 seconds. Never read or heard you needed to shut everything off/down to change out the battery.

erikgraham · Jan 23, 2016

Eric Sheehan said:
I don't have the fresh battery turned on when I put it in, but can attest the solo connects to controller and GPS initializes within about 30 seconds. Never read or heard you needed to shut everything off/down to change out the battery.

Well it's pretty awesome then. I'm sure it's rerunning the checks so the boat mode idea of mine is pretty absurd (a guy can dream). Nonetheless I'll be doing this from now on. Thanks.

Eric Sheehan · Jan 23, 2016

To my knowledge it does re-run checks. Early on, (June 2015) I had to level calibrate after every battery change, post RMA (Sept 2015) have not had that problem.

Steve K · Jan 23, 2016

And to think I was scolding myself for doing this on accident...never really clicked but it makes perfect sense.

Mauiwind · Jan 24, 2016

My sense is that you guys that are doing this quick change ARE the testing lab.

So, I'm assuming that the entire process of hot swapping is:

1) Do not turn off the spent battery on the Solo
2) Do not turn of the Gopro (But you have stopped recording via the app)
3) Extract the live, spent batt from Solo
4) Fairly quickly, (like 10 seconds or so) connect the fresh battery to Solo (Testers are noting that it makes no difference as to whether the fresh battery is turned on before, or immediately after installing the fresh batt.
5) GPS acquisition is much fast than from a cold boot, GOpro will record without any issues, and app will recognize fresh battery, thereby quickly allowing "fly' to start motors.

Is that it?

mahalo

Eric Sheehan · Jan 24, 2016

Would say that is accurate. Can't say I consciously abide by #1, but think is best practice to avoid spacing off and allowing a full uncharge.

#4 - never considered I must change the battery in a hurry, but reasonable to assume the task is handled within that amount of time.

Thanks for writing that up, I'm sure it helps a lot of pilots. Get it into the FAQ if it make sense.

Missing the Red Dirt over there...

Del · Jan 24, 2016

I just did the Hot Battery Swap test (Indoors) in Fly:Manual !
I couldint do it outside because the weather is to bad !

It worked for me ...and everything seem to work well with no problems with incorrect gauges display or with the power of the GoPro of any kind or even live feed! I was pretty surprised how well this worked!

I made a little video on how I did the test!
I couldint really test the GPS aspect of this...but after I did the video I let my Solo sit there for a while 10 to 15 Min and it eventually found 8 sats on my coffee table and was ready to fly in Fly:Mode...so I did the battery swap at that moment and got about 7 Sats in about 15 sec..it was pretty fast! I wish I would of recorded that part! Lol

But over all I'm very pleased with my own testing and will find this very convenient in future flying

Thanks @Samphoto for sharing your info and experience with us..

Now what els can we do with the Solo? Lol

Cheers

Marich · Jan 24, 2016

J R said:
Marich,

So, you're pulling the discharged battery out without turning anything off and inserting the new battery after you have powered the new battery on but before you've inserted it in the bird?

Do I have this right?

Jerry

Yup!

J R · Jan 24, 2016

Del said:
Now what els can we do with the Solo?

Del,

Thanks for the video! Thank you too Sam for the initial notification!

Jerry

Acroduster · Jan 24, 2016

That is freaking awesome! I'll wait a bit for a reply from 3DR before I officially add it to the FAQ. Del, do you mind if I link to your video?

Del · Jan 24, 2016

Acroduster said:
That is freaking awesome! I'll wait a bit for a reply from 3DR before I officially add it to the FAQ. Del, do you mind if I link to your video?

I don't mine at all Acroduster... I'm actually flattered

lol

Cheers

J R · Feb 2, 2016

Samphoto said:
I don't understand this. I hot swap the batteries all the time.

Sam,

I just had to go back and dig up your post on this thread. I had the opportunity to use your method of "hot-swapping" and it worked flawlessly. I had one battery in the bird and four fully charged batteries stacked up in the house about 30' away. 32-35F outside, clear day with no wind.

Fired up the bird the first time as usual and flew off battery 1. Left the bird, RC and pad on, walked to the table just inside the door and grabbed battery 2. Got back to the bird, turned on battery 2, pulled battery 1 out without powering it down and immediately inserted battery 2. As you stated bird was RTF in about 30 seconds.

Flew through five batteries using this method and it worked flawlessly! Thanks for providing such a useful piece of information!

Jerry

Vashaun Henderson · Feb 11, 2016

My only concern with using this method is the arcing it will cause on the contacts when you do this. Normally with battery connectors on the earlier drones there was no switch so as soon as you plug it in the current would jump and arc a small amount, causing minor wear on the contact and over time would increase resistance and reduce the ability of the electrical system to efficiently supply power to the motors, gimbal, flight controller etc. Anti spark connectors came out and they helped reduce this wear by staging the engagement through a resistor that limited current thus reducing spark. Solo's on off button allow you to fully engage the contact before power is allowed to flow eliminating spark caused wear entirely. Since solos contact are very much a integrated part of the rig I won't be accelerating it's wear by "hot swapping" but as far as effecting the drones flight control or other electronics what you all are doing is really no different than plugging in the XT60 style connector furnishing batteries to drones like the F450 or TBS Discovery Pro. I've owned and flown both and ran Pixhawk while doing it, no harm will come to the rigs electronics, the contacts will see the brute of the abuse on this

erikgraham · Feb 11, 2016

I tried it a couple times. Didn't seem to work. Maybe I wasn't fast enough but the initialization and start up time seemed the same.

Del · Feb 12, 2016

Vashaun Henderson said:
My only concern with using this method is the arcing it will cause on the contacts when you do this. Normally with battery connectors on the earlier drones there was no switch so as soon as you plug it in the current would jump and arc a small amount, causing minor wear on the contact and over time would increase resistance and reduce the ability of the electrical system to efficiently supply power to the motors, gimbal, flight controller etc. Anti spark connectors came out and they helped reduce this wear by staging the engagement through a resistor that limited current thus reducing spark. Solo's on off button allow you to fully engage the contact before power is allowed to flow eliminating spark caused wear entirely. Since solos contact are very much a integrated part of the rig I won't be accelerating it's wear by "hot swapping" but as far as effecting the drones flight control or other electronics what you all are doing is really no different than plugging in the XT60 style connector furnishing batteries to drones like the F450 or TBS Discovery Pro. I've owned and flown both and ran Pixhawk while doing it, no harm will come to the rigs electronics, the contacts will see the brute of the abuse on this

Very interesting...

Adimuzio513 · Feb 12, 2016

erikgraham said:
I tried it a couple times. Didn't seem to work. Maybe I wasn't fast enough but the initialization and start up time seemed the same.

Haven't tried yet, but my startup on a second battery is usually very brief anyway.

Are others seeing a decent gain in time to lock and takeoff using this hot swap?

Thinking about it I do takeoff pretty often in manual unless I'm flying far enough away that there's a chance for a disconnect and rth though. So I may just not notice as much if it's taking a few moments to lock satellites. Since having some early gps issues I fly in manual a lot until I'm up out of harms way out of habit now. I trust me more than my gps now at real low altitude since the hard left veering I had when I got mine.

Thanks for the tip though I'll have to test and see tomorrow.