Phantom 3 short circuit

iCorp · Jun 6, 2017

Hello everybody greetings from the center of the world Ecuador. This is my first post and any of your help will be very appreciated.
I was trying to make the "Clip" battery modd to my phantom 3 standard and when I connected the two batteries it just burned as soon as they made contact, so I disconnected it immediately but some little burns to the plastic of the batteries and drone were made, now the aircraft won't power up, the battery is powering up normally but after a few seconds it powers off automatically when connected. I think It may be shorted. Can it be fixed without buying a new pcb?? What can I do?
You can see the pics, it seems like there is no damage to the connectors but three is a problem for sure.

Thank you so much for your time.

Latitude 65 Testing · Jun 7, 2017

Judging by the cracks and bends in your bird that don't seem fire related it appears that you were getting your money's worth out of it. That's good, because it looks like it's toast now. Literally.

Push the battery button in and hold for a full five(5) seconds. If it gives you 4 bars that's good; 3 or less means cell failure. If you have a second battery charge it up and see if the bird comes around.

How do you say, "My bird is baked and bricked" in your native tongue?

macoman · Jun 7, 2017

Also, judging by the cracks on the left of the picture. You can see how much he takes care of it.

Robert Smith jr · Jun 7, 2017

I know people here like to do antenna mods, etc. Unless you really know what you are getting into, why not just accept the bird for what it is fly it and have fun? Quoting Alfred E. Nuemann ... "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong".

Just my two cents, not to be taken the wrong way. In my 2 years of flying, there has been plenty of areas to explore without doing any hardware mods (I did add a couple Strobon standalone lights, doesn't really count as a mod). With all of the software apps and camera settings, it has kept me trying new approaches pretty often.

iCorp · Jun 7, 2017

macoman said:
Also, judging by the cracks on the left of the picture. You can see how much he takes care of it.

Well, those cracks were made the day before the pic, i was trying to make a fly away shot, just crashed with a palm tree. Guess i am not ready for fpv

iCorp · Jun 7, 2017

Latitude 65 Testing said:
Judging by the cracks and bends in your bird that don't seem fire related it appears that you were getting your money's worth out of it. That's good, because it looks like it's toast now. Literally.

Push the battery button in and hold for a full five(5) seconds. If it gives you 4 bars that's good; 3 or less means cell failure. If you have a second battery charge it up and see if the bird comes around.

How do you say, "My bird is baked and bricked" in your native tongue?

Thank's for your tip, the battery is four leds on when powered. I f***d up the bird because of the clip I used, it was thinner than the appropriate width so it just burned when conducting.
You can say "Pollito al horno" haha

iCorp · Jun 7, 2017

I´m trying to know if there is something that can be done to revive the bird, everything looks ok to the eye, cables, pcb, etc.. just not powering up (never loose hope)

Latitude 65 Testing · Jun 8, 2017

In order to help we need to know what you have tried. Does the battery still slide into its tray properly? Any response from the bird? If the connectors are still making contact, the battery is OK and you get no response from the bird, well, pollito al horno, amigo. Can you read anything from the USB port in the front? The logs may tell you what devices are not seen, those being burned out. I think that your bird is bricked.

You wanted a new Mavic anyway, right?

With The Birds · Jun 8, 2017

How did you manage to get into this mess? Reverse polarity? Dead short? What sort of packs were you trying to parallel up? most likely issue here was a dead short across the DJI pack- you would need to crack it open to see how much damage the smart board sustained. The AC shouldn't be ok though, unless the external packs were connected with wrong polarity. That won't be worth fixing unless you are very handy with a soldering iron and have some basic test gear.

iCorp · Jun 8, 2017

With The Birds said:
How did you manage to get into this mess? Reverse polarity? Dead short? What sort of packs were you trying to parallel up? most likely issue here was a dead short across the DJI pack- you would need to crack it open to see how much damage the smart board sustained. The AC shouldn't be ok though, unless the external packs were connected with wrong polarity. That won't be worth fixing unless you are very handy with a soldering iron and have some basic test gear.

This is what I was "trying" to do, followed all the instructions but as i mentioned before, the width of the power clip was thinner than the appropriate so...
I´ll post pics as soon as i get back home, I´m traveling this week.
Thanks for your time

iCorp · Jun 8, 2017

Latitude 65 Testing said:
In order to help we need to know what you have tried. Does the battery still slide into its tray properly? Any response from the bird? If the connectors are still making contact, the battery is OK and you get no response from the bird, well, pollito al horno, amigo. Can you read anything from the USB port in the front? The logs may tell you what devices are not seen, those being burned out. I think that your bird is bricked.

You wanted a new Mavic anyway, right?

I´ll keep you updated as soon as i get back home. I hope i can fix this by replacing the mainboard in the worse case.

iCorp · Jun 8, 2017

With The Birds said:
How did you manage to get into this mess? Reverse polarity? Dead short? What sort of packs were you trying to parallel up? most likely issue here was a dead short across the DJI pack- you would need to crack it open to see how much damage the smart board sustained. The AC shouldn't be ok though, unless the external packs were connected with wrong polarity. That won't be worth fixing unless you are very handy with a soldering iron and have some basic test gear.

I forgot to mention, i was using one Turnigy Graphene Professional 5200mAh 4S 15C LiPoly Pack w/ XT60

Pharm · Jun 8, 2017

Where did you get the instructions on how to do this? Is it possible you put the batteries in series instead of in parallel?

10X · Jun 8, 2017

First thing I would do is power up the battery outside of the aircraft & check the voltage output of the battery with a VOM. This will tell you if the battery is working. If that's ok then move on to the battery connections on the aircraft. If the battery is good & making connection to your phantom then the problem is internal to the aircraft. Good luck.

iCorp · Jun 11, 2017

Pharm said:
Where did you get the instructions on how to do this? Is it possible you put the batteries in series instead of in parallel?

Well it seemed not complicated (in theory), just make the power clip and attach the secondary battery making sure it was the same type (4S). I'm pretty sure it was because of the conductor, was thinner than appropriated so it burned immediately. I know the cause what I'm looking for is a possible solution. I've learned this lesson [emoji29]

iCorp · Jun 22, 2017

10X said:
First thing I would do is power up the battery outside of the aircraft & check the voltage output of the battery with a VOM. This will tell you if the battery is working. If that's ok then move on to the battery connections on the aircraft. If the battery is good & making connection to your phantom then the problem is internal to the aircraft. Good luck.

Hello, i've tested the battery outside the bird and it's showwing 16.89V with the multimeter, i've tried with another battery from another phantom 3 and it is the same, when connected it powers off automatically after 4 o 5 seconds (now i'm sure the battery is not the problem).
I've taken apart the shell and everything looks "normal" (see attached pics). I am trying to determine if it is only the pcb which need to be replaced or the motors as well, ¿how can i be sure? because i'm buying them from there (USA) and wanna get all i need in one buy (don´t wanna wait two more months with an adittional purchase in case something is missing). Thank you for your reply.

quaddamage · Jun 22, 2017

Ha, funny pictures you got there.

It would seem you connected two batteries in series and then shorted them. That resulted in very high current, and connecting reversed polarity voltage to the main board.

The current could have damaged the battery cells. Do a test flight or two before believing again in any of the batteries involved.

Reversed polarity voltage could damage capacitors and buck converters on the main board. If you look at the chips very closely, you will probably notice damage on them. Motors and end transistors of ESCs (the 6 chips at each corner) are most likely ok; but the ESC drivers may be damaged (as they contain buck converter as well). Chips which use voltage from buck converters (like flight controller) are likely OK as well.

iCorp · Jun 22, 2017

quaddamage said:
Ha, funny pictures you got there.

It would seem you connected two batteries in series and then shorted them. That resulted in very high current, and connecting reversed polarity voltage to the main board.

The current could have damaged the battery cells. Do a test flight or two before believing again in any of the batteries involved.

Reversed polarity voltage could damage capacitors and buck converters on the main board. If you look at the chips very closely, you will probably notice damage on them. Motors and end transistors of ESCs (the 6 chips at each corner) are most likely ok; but the ESC drivers may be damaged (as they contain buck converter as well). Chips which use voltage from buck converters (like flight controller) are likely OK as well.

Thank you for your reply, first of all, i didn't mean to appear in the pic

. So.... in other words i need to replace only the main board ??

quaddamage · Jun 22, 2017

iCorp said:
Thank you for your reply, first of all, i didn't mean to appear in the pic . So.... in other words i need to replace only the main board ??

Yes, that's probably all.
I think gimbal receives voltage which is regulated on the main board (or ESC center board, using proper names), so it shouldn't be damaged.
Compass and GPS voltage is definitely regulated on the ESC center board. And motors were behind MOS transistors which can handle much higher reverse voltage.