Done with aftermarket battery

Rjeffw · Oct 20, 2016

Hear lots of good things about these batteries. Well just now, my drone dropped about of the sky. Litchi keep saying it wanted to land. So I was on the way back. Well Litchi had 8 min left on the display, when it dropped. When I got to the battery, it had one on the dial. I think this is the battery that had the bad cell, cell 4. Litchi displayed several times there was a bad cell, but this time it never did, guess I found it. Good news, it does seem to fly, bad news is the camera is gone, and the shell is cracked. I wish I could get the seller to pay for it, but that wont happen.

RickB · Oct 20, 2016

Sorry to hear that.

How old was the battery?

Did you know it was an aftermarket battery when you purchased it?

Ebay?

Could you explain further please? I'm interested.

RJ_Make · Oct 20, 2016

Rjeffw said:
Hear lots of good things about these batteries. Well just now, my drone dropped about of the sky. Litchi keep saying it wanted to land. So I was on the way back. Well Litchi had 8 min left on the display, when it dropped. When I got to the battery, it had one on the dial. I think this is the battery that had the bad cell, cell 4. Litchi displayed several times there was a bad cell, but this time it never did, guess I found it. Good news, it does seem to fly, bad news is the camera is gone, and the shell is cracked. I wish I could get the seller to pay for it, but that wont happen.

That stinks.. Out of curiosity, why would you use a battery with a sketchy cell?

alokbhargava · Oct 20, 2016

We should take all warnings seriously, you never know which one could be fatal for your drone.

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Rjeffw · Oct 20, 2016

As far at the bad cell, I was not sure which battery it was. Like a dummy, I did not put the battery to the side, so I was flying to try and get Litchi to give the message again. Previously it did it fairly quickly. Needless to say I am going to return 4 batteries and get two Litchi in their place.

Neon Euc · Oct 20, 2016

Wow so sorry to hear that. Any chance that when it fell the app would tell you if it was battery one or two (healthy drones will say) then you can work out which one it is

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With The Birds · Oct 20, 2016

Your gonna have a procession of posters explaining your a fool to fly with a non DJI battery. Fact is they are all subject to failure, DJI OEM included. For all we know the knock off pack that brought you unstuck may contain cells made by Chicony Power Technology Co, DJI's supplier in Taiwan. May not also.

The trick is to keep a close eye on battery performance. The bad cell warning was your opportunity to have a close look at this pack and take it out of service if necessary.

RC Madman · Oct 20, 2016

With the Birds is right. You should have heeded that warning and sidelined that battery. All lipos can fail.

Carltonart · Oct 20, 2016

If you are looking to save money on batteries, you are much better off getting a used DJI OEM battery on eBay, I just purchased one that only had 4 cycles for $79 that's still a pretty big saving for a practically new battery. I have also seen some some fair deals here in the classified section.

Rjeffw · Oct 21, 2016

I know I should had headed the warning, my issue was I could not remember which one it was, and I was trying to find it. Last time I used it, Sunday, Litchi gave me the warning, no such luck this time.

Carltonart, I will check ebay out, thanks.

As far as battery life, I have had them two weeks.

With The Birds · Oct 21, 2016

Upload the flight record to Healthy Drones. Would be interesting to see what was going on with that battery.

Neon Euc · Oct 21, 2016

You can also turn on the drone, launch the DJI GO app and then click on the battery icon on the phone screen. This should give you more info too on the battery but you fly the drone

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Mark The Droner · Oct 22, 2016

When you're new to the hobby, you're gonna make some mistakes and a few of them will be critical.

IMO, the problem is not necessarily the fact that it was aftermarket, although that might have been contributing. The biggest problem was that you knew it had a bad cell and you flew anyway.

Sorry for your loss.

jsposito · Apr 30, 2017

alokbhargava said:
We should take all warnings seriously, you never know which one could be fatal for your drone.

Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots

Reviving this thread i guess but apart from manually checking cells pre flight does the GO app warn about that particular bad cell? I know I can display voltage, but that's it.

Thanks

jsposito · Apr 30, 2017

With The Birds said:
Your gonna have a procession of posters explaining your a fool to fly with a non DJI battery. Fact is they are all subject to failure, DJI OEM included. For all we know the knock off pack that brought you unstuck may contain cells made by Chicony Power Technology Co, DJI's supplier in Taiwan. May not also.

The trick is to keep a close eye on battery performance. The bad cell warning was your opportunity to have a close look at this pack and take it out of service if necessary.

Does DJI replace their oem batter if in warranty if a cell goes bad?