Just 10 minutes battery

[Corrupto]

Today I flew my drone just to take the time that the battery runs out , so I got like 50 feet high and leave it until it landed automatically, about 8 minutes was the first warning of 25% of battery, 2 minutes later return home screen came up with 15% remaining and finally it land with 7% and battery to low to fly message, I don't know why the battery is draining to fast, gopro camera was on but no recording... Any suggestions?

 

[Engine24blue]

I also get about 12 minutes on two of my batteries. They are discharging rapidly even when they sit in the case. I am very disappointed in the performance of the batteries. I am overall disappointed in my entire Solo experience. I don't have any suggestions, but good luck!

 

[Joe Horn]

Today I flew my drone just to take the time that the battery runs out , so I got like 50 feet high and leave it until it landed automatically, about 8 minutes was the first warning of 25% of battery, 2 minutes later return home screen came up with 15% remaining and finally it land with 7% and battery to low to fly message, I don't know why the battery is draining to fast, gopro camera was on but no recording... Any suggestions?

Sorry for the obvious questions, but: (1) How much time elapsed between recharging it and the flight? (2) Have you ever run the battery close to empty, or left if near empty for any significant amount of time? (3) Was it very windy?

 

[Norval]

Battery time is a known issue for all, including the competition. Seems that DJI "Chinese" time runs on a different time that the one we know.
Solo says battery time of 20 minutes, I never EVER get more than 13 minutes. DJI claims 28 minutes, and the best I seen on their forum is an average of 22.
So, either all the battery manufactures are cheating on all of us (including drone manufactures) or we are flying out of their specs.

 

[PdxSteve]

kind of like miles per gallon from the car industry...

 

[Stal]

I had the same problem.; I was seeing decent flying time (15+ minutes) and then with one of the updates my time dropped to 7-9 minutes. Charging the batteries the same day, etc. I don't know if the updates have anything to do with it but certainly was timed for me with a big update.

 

[Vegasrobbi]

Lots of variables with flight time. Wind, altitude, temperature, etc. I read the GP is only supplied a maintenance charge with the current firmware.

Battery maintenance and cycles comes into play also. My new batteries average 14-15 minutes with a fresh charge; my 6 month old batteries average 3-4 minutes less.

Against popular opinion I run my Solo batteries down to 8% every 20 flights like dji, Xiro and others recommend.

I have no empirical evidence this helps but I do seem to get slightly longer and more consistent flight times. I am not advocating you do this.

 

[PdxSteve]

The battery power scale used (0-100%) is for useful battery life, not total battery. Landing at 25% is a misnomer. You can land at 5 or 10% and not damage your battery. You can fly below 0% too, but at that point you will do damage to the cells by running them below a safe voltage for lipos. This is according to Philip Rowse, the lead designer of solo. He routinely lands at 10%. So if you are landing at 25%, you aren't using the full battery and won't get the longer flight times.

The advertised 20 minute flight times were real and not made up (according to Philip). But, they weren't done in "real world" conditions either, ie flying out in the wild with wind, aggressive flying, etc. They could have just hovered it over the ground in a windless room to achieve that. They might not have had the gimbal/gro pro installed when doing those benchmarks, either. Not sure on that part, but it makes a big difference in flight time obviously.

 

[Anthony Horrigan]

Another possible cause is the motors, regular maintenance every 10 hours or so. A few drops of oil, and a blast is air to remove dirt. I always check the tempature of the motors at the end of every flight. A freely spinning motor uses less power.

 

[Jubalr]

The battery power scale used (0-100%) is for useful battery life, not total battery. Landing at 25% is a misnomer. You can land at 5 or 10% and not damage your battery. You can fly below 0% too, but at that point you will do damage to the cells by running them below a safe voltage for lipos. This is according to Philip Rowse, the lead designer of solo. He routinely lands at 10%. So if you are landing at 25%, you aren't using the full battery and won't get the longer flight times.

The advertised 20 minute flight times were real and not made up (according to Philip). But, they weren't done in "real world" conditions either, ie flying out in the wild with wind, aggressive flying, etc. They could have just hovered it over the ground in a windless room to achieve that. They might not have had the gimbal/gro pro installed when doing those benchmarks, either. Not sure on that part, but it makes a big difference in flight time obviously.

That's my understanding as well Steve, regarding the reading be of useful life and not absolute. Regarding the testing of flight times, remember that Solo (or any MR/helicopter) is more efficient in forward flight. It was stated on here somewhere last year, but I believe for solo it was around 14mph was most efficient. I have seen that during missions myself, running an average of 2a less draw during the mission as opposed to a hover. Just like in a helicopter, there is a point of forward speed where the spinning of the props becomes wing-like as they form a disc. This effect is known as 'translational lift'. I remember reading how this was used during Vietnam. Helicopters would often get so overloaded that they could only hover in ground effect and could not gain altitude. They would start moving forward down the runway and when they reached a speed of roughly 25mph, translational lift would kick in and allow them to climb out like an airplane.

So during testing, they could very well have been in a large indoor area or outside with no wind and fly a circle at a constant 14mph and get 20 min on a good battery.

 

[Vegasrobbi]

"The controller monitors the Solo battery during flight and displays alerts when the battery reaches critical levels. At 25% and 15% power remaining, the controller displays a “Return home soon” alert recommending that you end your flight to prevent an automatic landing. If the battery reaches 10%, Solo initiates Return Home to prevent a crash. After landing, turn off Solo immediately; if the battery level reaches 0% at any time, irreversible damage occurs and the battery should be recycled."

So I would like to fly below 10% battery level. Without using MP to configure battery failsafe can this be done? Can Solo's behavior with low battery level be predicted? I ask because my P3 continues to surprise me. When on Follow Me missions I have had my P3 RTH at 40% battery level since it does the math and predicts how much battery is required to return home. I prefer RTH over a forced landing because I am usually in rough terrain.

My Solo RTH's at 10% and what's concerning is on the older batteries it goes from 25% to 10% pretty quick so I get it on the ground ASAP to avoid RTH. I don't mind using MP to configure FS if that will work but I would rather not.

 

[Jubalr]

"The controller monitors the Solo battery during flight and displays alerts when the battery reaches critical levels. At 25% and 15% power remaining, the controller displays a “Return home soon” alert recommending that you end your flight to prevent an automatic landing. If the battery reaches 10%, Solo initiates Return Home to prevent a crash. After landing, turn off Solo immediately; if the battery level reaches 0% at any time, irreversible damage occurs and the battery should be recycled."

So I would like to fly below 10% battery level. Without using MP to configure battery failsafe can this be done? Can Solo's behavior with low battery level be predicted? I ask because my P3 continues to surprise me. When on Follow Me missions I have had my P3 RTH at 40% battery level since it does the math and predicts how much battery is required to return home. I prefer RTH over a forced landing because I am usually in rough terrain.

My Solo RTH's at 10% and what's concerning is on the older batteries it goes from 25% to 10% pretty quick so I get it on the ground ASAP to avoid RTH. I don't mind using MP to configure FS if that will work but I would rather not.

On my builds with PH and APM, FS was always based on voltage, not remaining mAh. You can still set that in the parameters from what I can see. Generally 3.2v per cell is the critical low and I have always tried to stay above 3.5, so on the Solo that would be 14v. You would need to disable the FS_BATT_MAH as detailed below.
Here is where they lay it out..

FS_BATT_ENABLE: Battery Failsafe Enable
Controls whether failsafe will be invoked when battery voltage or current runs low

Values
Value Meaning
0 Disabled
1 Land
2 RTL

FS_BATT_VOLTAGE: Failsafe battery voltage
Battery voltage to trigger failsafe. Set to 0 to disable battery voltage failsafe. If the battery voltage drops below this voltage then the copter will RTL

Increment Units
0.1 Volts

FS_BATT_MAH: Failsafe battery milliAmpHours
Battery capacity remaining to trigger failsafe. Set to 0 to disable battery remaining failsafe. If the battery remaining drops below this level then the copter will RTL

Increment Units
50 mAh

This of course is if the Solo arm of the code does not override these settings. Would be easy to test though..

EDIT: I just checked the Solo's current settings on these. Respectively they are 2, 520 & 14. The 520 of course being 10% of the 5200mAh Solo battery. Changing the 520 to 0 would disable the "remaining" FS and you would then rely on the 14v. That should be a good setting and the 14v is of course under load. So that should leave plenty to get a reasonable distance home.
Just my opinion. YMMV...

 

[PdxSteve]

Just be careful - the last 15% goes by damn quick compared to the first 15%. You should be within your landing area at that point.

 

[Jubalr]

Just be careful - the last 15% goes by damn quick compared to the first 15%. You should be within your landing area at that point.

Yes, that's one of the reasons I want to try to the 'traditional' voltage readout, instead of the math needed to estimate remaining %. I'll hover it at 14v and time it down to 13.5 to see how it goes (literally).

 

[KrisTheAJ]

Today I flew my drone just to take the time that the battery runs out , so I got like 50 feet high and leave it until it landed automatically, about 8 minutes was the first warning of 25% of battery, 2 minutes later return home screen came up with 15% remaining and finally it land with 7% and battery to low to fly message, I don't know why the battery is draining to fast, gopro camera was on but no recording... Any suggestions?

Hi mate, try to make sure you charge your battery's just before you fly to get the most out of them. If you charge them and don't use them for a few days you will have a shorter battery life. Don't know why this is but it is. I top my batteries up just prior to flying and I get a much longer flight time. Cold weather also depletes then quickly also.

 

[Drone_Dude]

Yes, that's one of the reasons I want to try to the 'traditional' voltage readout, instead of the math needed to estimate remaining %. I'll hover it at 14v and time it down to 13.5 to see how it goes (literally).

Have you managed to test the 14v vs mAH vs Hovertime?

 

[Maddog]

Today I flew my drone just to take the time that the battery runs out , so I got like 50 feet high and leave it until it landed automatically, about 8 minutes was the first warning of 25% of battery, 2 minutes later return home screen came up with 15% remaining and finally it land with 7% and battery to low to fly message, I don't know why the battery is draining to fast, gopro camera was on but no recording... Any suggestions?

It sounds like you just allowed Solo to hover until it landed itself. If so, that is why the battery drained so fast. Hovering uses more power than forward flight.

That is not an accurate method to see how much flight time the battery is providing.

 

[Anthony Horrigan]

Maddog is correct, in the hover I'm only getting 12 -14 minutes (weather conditions also play a factor), but I'm getting 17 - 19 minutes with forward flight.