SOLO Battery draining rapidly

MRoD · Oct 16, 2016

A weird thing occurred today. I took off as always, everything started up as it should, I had a fully charged battery and took it up around 50ft and started fly to my destination around 20ft and I saw the battery go from 96% to 15% in 1minute. I have never had the battery drain so fast. Has anyone else experienced this? Thinking the charger is not fully charging? Maybe the motors? I hooked the battery up to the charger, only 1 LED was lit. The batteries are about 3months old with 2 to 3 flights every 2 weeks. I was just wondering what everybody's thoughts was on this. Thanks in advance for your help..

SARDG · Oct 16, 2016

MRoD said:
A weird thing occurred today. I took off as always, everything started up as it should, I had a fully charged battery and took it up around 50ft and started fly to my destination around 20ft and I saw the battery go from 96% to 15% in 1minute. I have never had the battery drain so fast. Has anyone else experienced this? Thinking the charger is not fully charging? Maybe the motors? I hooked the battery up to the charger, only 1 LED was lit. The batteries are about 3months old with 2 to 3 flights every 2 weeks. I was just wondering what everybody's thoughts was on this. Thanks in advance for your help..

Have you ever overly-discharged that battery? Does it happen with all your batteries?

pyrate · Oct 16, 2016

or dropped it?

keads · Oct 16, 2016

I had a similar issues today when the battery dropped from 25% to 6% in less than 10 seconds towards the end of my flight. The battery only has about 4 cycles on it.

nomakase · Oct 16, 2016

MRoD said:
A weird thing occurred today. I took off as always, everything started up as it should, I had a fully charged battery and took it up around 50ft and started fly to my destination around 20ft and I saw the battery go from 96% to 15% in 1minute. I have never had the battery drain so fast. Has anyone else experienced this? Thinking the charger is not fully charging? Maybe the motors? I hooked the battery up to the charger, only 1 LED was lit. The batteries are about 3months old with 2 to 3 flights every 2 weeks. I was just wondering what everybody's thoughts was on this. Thanks in advance for your help..

I had the same problem and thought for sure I was going to lose my drone and camera. I managed to land with 1% battery power left. After I landed, I proceeded to put a fully charged battery in and the controller said not enough battery power, critically lower blah, blah. I literally returned to home.

The next day, I tried flying again with a different battery and with 50% power remaining, it went to a CRITICALLY LOW 7% with and something with the word FATAL. I managed to land somehow.

Both times I submitted a report, 3DR said, there was nothing in the logs and then suggested I charge the batteries for hours after the battery lights say it's fully charged. Pretty useless tech support.

At this point, it's a good time to move on to DJI.

Toiletbowl · Oct 17, 2016

nomakase said:
I had the same problem and thought for sure I was going to lose my drone and camera. I managed to land with 1% battery power left. After I landed, I proceeded to put a fully charged battery in and the controller said not enough battery power, critically lower blah, blah. I literally returned to home.

The next day, I tried flying again with a different battery and with 50% power remaining, it went to a CRITICALLY LOW 7% with and something with the word FATAL. I managed to land somehow.

Both times I submitted a report, 3DR said, there was nothing in the logs and then suggested I charge the batteries for hours after the battery lights say it's fully charged. Pretty useless tech support.

At this point, it's a good time to move on to DJI.

lol dji much worst battery suddenly power off during inflight so the craft plump into the face of the earth atleast in solo u have remaining battery percentage and landed safely. i have same issue one of my battery a fully charge and then suddenly drop to 18% solo back to home and landed.

MRoD · Oct 17, 2016

SARDG said:
Have you ever overly-discharged that battery? Does it happen with all your batteries?

No I haven't and it just started...

MRoD · Oct 17, 2016

pyrate said:
or dropped it?

No never dropped it. I'm always supper careful with all my gear.

MRoD · Oct 17, 2016

keads said:
I had a similar issues today when the battery dropped from 25% to 6% in less than 10 seconds towards the end of my flight. The battery only has about 4 cycles on it.

Weird, don't know what it is... A second battery just started doing it as well.

MRoD · Oct 17, 2016

Any suggestions?

SARDG · Oct 17, 2016

MRoD said:
Any suggestions?

You never said what app you are using. We frequently need to know all the HW, SW FW, OS, device minutiae to properly troubleshoot.

PdxSteve · Oct 17, 2016

I would open it up and look at the wires coming off the topmost connector to the battery in the tray. That's the data line. Some people have had them come loose which would report incorrect data.

I don't think the app matters in this case. This is reported by the firmware and any app would behave the same way.

SARDG · Oct 17, 2016

PdxSteve said:
I would open it up and look at the wires coming off the topmost connector to the battery in the tray. That's the data line. Some people have had them come loose which would report incorrect data.

I don't think the app matters in this case. This is reported by the firmware and any app would behave the same way.

In this case, I don't think it's the app either, but Solex may 'report' differently if "Account for distance in battery warnings" is checked.

MRoD · Nov 22, 2016

MRoD said:
A weird thing occurred today. I took off as always, everything started up as it should, I had a fully charged battery and took it up around 50ft and started fly to my destination around 20ft and I saw the battery go from 96% to 15% in 1minute. I have never had the battery drain so fast. Has anyone else experienced this? Thinking the charger is not fully charging? Maybe the motors? I hooked the battery up to the charger, only 1 LED was lit. The batteries are about 3months old with 2 to 3 flights every 2 weeks. I was just wondering what everybody's thoughts was on this. Thanks in advance for your help..

3DR got back to me after giving them the flight logs.
Said that the problem was with the battery: dying cells
Tech support was very helpful. They emailed and called...
Sending me a replacement at no cost. That RULES!

AussiePilot · Oct 27, 2017

I'm 99% sure it's not the batteries. Well, at least not with my case. I just had this happen to me with 4 batteries. Each one drained in 1 minute - after I've been flying the Solo since its release. I'm thinking it's something inside the Solo not reporting correct battery voltage or something, as PdxSteve said.

The variable that has changed for me was that 2 days ago I was in Brisbane with warm weather (30 degrees C). This morning I'm in Wellington, NZ with 6 degrees C. Before starting up any battery, the Solo wanted a level calibration. After the second battery I did a compass calibration, which didn't help. Final two batteries died in 1 minute each.

But the perplexing thing is, I've just started charging the first battery, and it's taking the usual charge time, which indicates the battery is in fact depleted. Very strange.

skyhax · Oct 29, 2017

This has happened to me two times with 2 different batteries. Most recent 2 days ago on a cliff, almost lost everything. Both times I had the gimbal on with gopro 4 black. The black (firmware 5.0) charges from the Solo and I feel this is where the glitch might be. Dozens of hours flying 3 solos without a gimbal and gopro black, never had it happen.

AussiePilot · Oct 30, 2017

So weird. So it happened on the same session with both of your batteries?

I charged my four batteries the same day, which was a weird process. They started charging with one light flashing... apparently very low voltage. Then after a couple of lights had become solid - suddenly it stopped charging and was 100% full. Each battery took around 20 minutes.

Crazy. Flew again the next day and all 4 batteries went for the usual 15ish minutes. I didn't do anything else except for charge the batteries.

hobo solo · Jan 26, 2018

OK. I'm having this issue with all my original batteries. They initiate low battery warning and solo starts RTL within 1-2 mins of launch. If I cancel RTL and fly watching the voltage I get my usual 12-15 mins landing with aprrox 13.8V to 14V left on the pack. I suspect bad cells in all 4 cases but I'm not experiencing any massive voltage drop off except the initial one which trigger the RTL. Is there anyway of looking at the individual cells on a stock solo? I might also add, I had this happen to me on a couple of batteries on 3dr X8 and was able to recover them using a lipo charger but as all the wizardry is contained in the batteries themselves I'm not sure this is possible. Calibration of batteries had not helped. I've tried several times. Any ideas? Cheers.
PS In UK so replacement is very expensive.

AussiePilot · Jan 26, 2018

hobo solo said:
Calibration of batteries had not helped. I've tried several times. Any ideas? Cheers.

I had the same symptoms as you. Did this and it fixed it. Hopefully it works for you.

AussiePilot · Jan 26, 2018

Just to clarify, when the battery is in an "off" state, I held the power button on as I plugged in the charger. I think I held it in for a quite a few seconds after plugging in but not sure what the correct timing is.