Hi! Has anyone else had a MoVI Pro battery expand when charging and break open its case? I have 6 batteries and all have been fine till a couple of weeks ago when under charge I heard a loud noise and eventually discovered the culprit! one battery had broken open its plastic case.... I have left this battery alone since its recent growth but it has not returned to its normal size! I am assuming that this is terminal but am not sure what I could have done to prevent it...the batteries have had light use since purchase and come from the first wave of MoVi Pro's back in late 2016...
David: It sounds like the batteries, which are lithium polymer chemistry, have "puffed up." See eg, http://learningrc.com/puffed-lipos/ You might want to open up a support ticket as this is the first I've heard of the MoVI Pro batteries doing this. At what state of charge have you stored the batteries in between using them? Cheers Andy Forensic Software & sUAV / Drone Analyst : Photographer : Videographer : Pilot (Portland, Oregon, USA): Trees=2, Ground=1, Props=11. The Ground Is The Limit™ ---------- Forensic Drone Analyst : Forensic sUAV Analyst : Forensic Unmanned Aircraft Analyst : Forensic Drone Expert
Hi Andy! To be honest I did not pay much attention to the state of charge of the batteries as I thought that they were different beasts to the M10/M15 LiPo batteries (i.e intelligent!)...I do tend to use them and then leave them until I have another shoot and that can be sometimes a few weeks or more...so far out of the 6 batteries this is the only one to suffer such a fate...I did not open a support ticket as I thought that is is too old to be of any interest...I can send it back if you want to test it or examine it.. Cheers David
David: I'm not actually at Freefly -- just a volunteer -- so opening up the ticket will connect you with the tech support gurus and they can make a judgement call whether the battery is of interest to them. Cheers Andy Forensic Software & sUAV / Drone Analyst : Photographer : Videographer : Pilot (Portland, Oregon, USA): Trees=2, Ground=1, Props=11. The Ground Is The Limit™ ---------- Forensic Drone Analyst : Forensic sUAV Analyst : Forensic Unmanned Aircraft Analyst : Forensic Drone Expert
I have found that the Freefly batteries for the MoVI are pretty dependable if you take very good care of them. Put them in the storage mode after every job. I built a discharging unit with an alarm. Charge them fully before the start of every job. Unfortunately the smart part of the battery is built in so you cannot use sophisticated Lipo chargers to balance the cells keep the batteries healthy. The next time I need batteries I’m probably going to purchase the Ignite TB50 adaptor kit and switch to a higher capacity battery that can be externally balanced.