Uploaded December 2015 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
UPDATE: This was an issue with v1.5 Firmware where the voltage detection was not accurate, so DJI recommend you do not fly with v1.5 firmware, and upgrade all batteries and Phantom3s to 1.6.0040 which has resolved these issues.
Original description:
Phantom 3 came yesterday (Tues 1st Dec 2015) and looks great, so I ran through firmware updates (aircraft, camera, battery, rc transmitter, ipad app setup) last night, battery was still showing 89% remaining, so thought I would grab a quick test flight on my lunchbreak.
Started well, did some photos/video, the camera control and gimbal look great, lightbridge downlink is fantastic compared with analogue FPV gear I've been using previously.
About 3 minutes into flight, battery was still showing 50% remaining 8mins+ flight time, so decided to do a high down shot, and to check it stopped at my high altitude limit.
As I hit that height at 4m exactly into flight (confirmed from logs) I went immediately from 'normal GPS' to red 'critical battery landing now', so was pretty concerning, it took ages to come down fairly slowly, despite me holding left stick down to hurry it up.
Having read around a bit, it seems this is quite common when starting with anything but a fully charged battery, also once the error occurred, I should have cancelled autoland with P-A-F-A-P on flight mode switch, so I then could have landed normally and descended much quicker, which would have been less stressful.
Also best practice is to only do short flights for first few flights on a new battery, I will do that from now on.
I transferred the flight records from iPad to Healthy Drones website which has a load of info about the flight - amazing really, shows the critical battery error occurred exactly 4mins into flight, battery logs show no issues but does confirm Flight started at 66% battery (ipad was showing me 89%?, and landed at 44% - iPad showed 48%), so hopefully this is just something which shouldn't happen if you fully charge battery before flight and do short flights first few cycles !
Still, won't forget my P3 maiden ;)
UPDATE: I fully charged battery and flew next day, and all went much more smoothly, and video looks great !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Ig5...
Third flight also good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQxey...
UPDATE: This was an issue with v1.5 Firmware where the voltage detection was not accurate, so DJI recommend you do not fly with v1.5 firmware, and upgrade all batteries and Phantom3s to 1.6.0040 which has resolved these issues.
Original description:
Phantom 3 came yesterday (Tues 1st Dec 2015) and looks great, so I ran through firmware updates (aircraft, camera, battery, rc transmitter, ipad app setup) last night, battery was still showing 89% remaining, so thought I would grab a quick test flight on my lunchbreak.
Started well, did some photos/video, the camera control and gimbal look great, lightbridge downlink is fantastic compared with analogue FPV gear I've been using previously.
About 3 minutes into flight, battery was still showing 50% remaining 8mins+ flight time, so decided to do a high down shot, and to check it stopped at my high altitude limit.
As I hit that height at 4m exactly into flight (confirmed from logs) I went immediately from 'normal GPS' to red 'critical battery landing now', so was pretty concerning, it took ages to come down fairly slowly, despite me holding left stick down to hurry it up.
Having read around a bit, it seems this is quite common when starting with anything but a fully charged battery, also once the error occurred, I should have cancelled autoland with P-A-F-A-P on flight mode switch, so I then could have landed normally and descended much quicker, which would have been less stressful.
Also best practice is to only do short flights for first few flights on a new battery, I will do that from now on.
I transferred the flight records from iPad to Healthy Drones website which has a load of info about the flight - amazing really, shows the critical battery error occurred exactly 4mins into flight, battery logs show no issues but does confirm Flight started at 66% battery (ipad was showing me 89%?, and landed at 44% - iPad showed 48%), so hopefully this is just something which shouldn't happen if you fully charge battery before flight and do short flights first few cycles !
Still, won't forget my P3 maiden ;)
UPDATE: I fully charged battery and flew next day, and all went much more smoothly, and video looks great !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Ig5...
Third flight also good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQxey...
