How many cycles can be expected from a P4P battery? It didn't occur to me to keep track of mine until recently. Has anyone here "used up" a P4P battery and if so, how cycles did you get out of it? I was listening to a drone u podcast and he said that he never got more than about 100 cycles from a P4P battery, which seems pretty low, and if that's true I should be budgeting more for replacement batteries.
Battery Life P4P
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Tom Hughes
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100 cycles seems low to me. My most frequently used battery is from my P4, although I use it in my P4P, too. It has 62 charges and Airdata reports it having 96% battery life remaining.
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The DJI Go app will keep that stat for you in the battery interface of the app. That data is stored on board the battery, so other user interfaces, Litchi, Autopilot should (could) also supply cycles in their interfaces as well.
Morris Enyeart
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I bought 4 P4P batteries with my drone 9 months ago. Battery 1 has 207 cycles, Battery 2 has 180 cycles, Battery 3 has 120 cycles and battery 4 has 88 cycles. I plan on replacing each one when it hits 250 cycles. I fly in warm weather and cold weather (25°F). I let the battery go down to about 30% during a flight before I change batteries. Flight time varies with the temperature, cold weather affects more than warm weather In cold weather I keep my batteries warm until I am ready to use them. Flight time ranges from 15 minutes to 22 minutes (again, I am not taking the battery to zero (even though is does not affect battery life on how low I go).
You do have to watch where you buy your batteries. Some 3rd party batteries are cheaper, but you get a cheaper battery.
The number of cycles obtainable depend upon how deep your normal discharge is, as each partial discharge counts proportionately towards a full cycle. Two 50% discharges should be the same as one 100% discharge, potential damage aside (P4P at 0% still reads 3.4V per cell). I regularly take mine down to 10% and lower, and after some 30 cycles each, on 10 P4P batteries, the maximum mAH of each, displayed in GO 4, has declined to between 5600 and 5700, down from the rated 5870. When new, some packs were actually over 6000 mAH. The last new one displayed 6100 mAH. The P4 battery, rated at only 5350 mAH, is also completely interchangeable with the P4P, so even at below 10% discharges, my P4P batteries all have a long way to go, before they would even reach the P4 levels. The biggest impact of the reduction in available mAH is in terms of a corresponding reduction in the maximum minutes of flight time per flight. New, I get up to 25 minutes. Now, I average 23 minutes. LiPo batteries start dying on their date of birth, rather than date first placed into service, so even with minimal cycles, a well maintained battery will stiil have an end of life based upon chronological age. The length of that maximum lifetime is still unknown on P4P batteries, but 5 years would be a good working number. Usually, before the maximum number full cycles has been reached, or the battery itself ages out, the aircraft has either been replaced with a newer model, requiring different batteries, or crashed. Anyone still else have P3P's and P3P batteries gathering dust on the shelf, unable to part with them?
I have a battery that has less than 100 charge cycles, but is giving me low voltage warnings when I fly in strong winds. It says it is healthy, 96% life left. Aridata says all the cells are in acceptable limits. Not sure I want to take a chance and find out if it fails and my drone falls from the sky.
Add the lowest cell voltage to the main screen under the battery settings and keep an eye on it when you get the low voltage warnings. If that value ever, even momentarily, drops below 3.0V under load, the battery will shut off (to protect itself!
), even if in flight, sending everything, including the battery that it is supposed to be protecting, crashing to the ground! Monitoring that lowest cell voltage value will tell you if the warnings are premature. Maybe save that battery for windless days! Hi...i am a new user here. As per my knowledge there is no problem with using the standard P4 batteries in the P4P. The high capacity batteries have a higher mAh rating, allowing you to fly for a longer period of time which is usually only a few minutes.
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Maybe save that battery for windless days!
Or remove it from flight status and use it to preflight the aircraft on site only.
Given the age and number of cycles, that's probably a safer choice. Just find it odd that the message only showed up in windy conditions.
I had a TB47 that went out of tolerance about five months after I picked it up. I still use it to conduct my preflight inspection and leave my flight batteries for just that....flight.
