Great job man. Thanks for sharing. 👍

Interesting, thanks for sharing. Saving the vid, in case I wanna try this at some point

What's the difference in flight time with the mod?

it doesn't lock the circuit, when you unsoldered na stock batteries?

Wow this is genius!!

Thank you very much. I hope to see how this battery was made please. What are the materials used, battery types and specifications again. Thanks and good luck always.

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

This is just the stock set of 2500mah batteries from DJI piggy backed onto an existing set.

Does this work with the Dji mini 2?

Wat of i use 7,000mah 7.4 volts it is possible to use in dji mini 2 se.

isn't there a microchip in the battery itself to determine whether or not it's compatible with the drone? and if not, would it be possible to make your own batteries out of 18650's like what you've done.

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, there is a battery management processor (though not from Microchip) sitting on top of the 2 pack of cells. I deliberately did not disconnect the power to it since that would lock the battery unit and make it worthless, instead I merely piggy backed another set of cells onto the existing set as seen here. As far as I can tell, the Battery management processor only keeps track of the voltage supply and the number of times the battery has been charged and will lock up the battery pack if standard Lithium ion voltage parameters are breached.

did you say you have 20 min left at percent? is that before or after the mod?

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

Yes. with the double-battery mod you will typically have a 20 minute flight time still left in the tank after you see "0" for battery level on your smart phone display. My best guess for this is that the battery management system only calculates how much power is left and doesn't actually know, so what it does is it bases it's battery level that is displayed on the mode settings and thrust input, assuming a rough estimate of power consumption. Of course I've messed with this information by piggy backing an extra set of batteries to this drone.

can you mod some motor put into drone for charger battery went drone fly at same time...

Just looking at the configuration I would guess that the weight distribution would be better if you moved the extra batteries forward just a notch; The cell position in the video looks like it burdens the motors in the back. A small piece of tape to the cell ends might also make a surprisingly big difference to the wind resistance.

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

Good idea. I did also install the extra battery pack by separating the cells and hanging each cell on either side of the fuselage but I don't think that it made a big enough difference. Bottom line, I have noticed that the new Mavic mini 2 has gone to Li-Po batteries . . . . . . there must be a good reason.

Considering this mod, but removing the old 18650's and simply replacing them with 2x 20700 or 2x 21700's saddled below, so total additional weight is less than 50g (difference between 18650 and 21700 is only 25g, but double this stock drone 2400mah 18650 capacity) EDIT: For anyone thinking of this, dont disconnect the DJO batteries from the board, it will brick the battery. This always needs to be connected to the drone BMS board and it be 'live' apparently.

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

Yep, I have a handful of bricked Battery management boards because of this too. :(

Excellent mod, good info. I've added your channel, hopefully you'll connect with another Mini drone pilot.

Now it detects the extra weight and won't fly over 10 meters, also the new Mini2 batteries firmware detects what's onboard power wise and will brick itself if you fiddle with it. :'(

@ameliabuns4058

3 жыл бұрын

capitalism! yaaaaaaaaaaay

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

Did you change the payload setting? I think this should have been left alone.

Great job, just one question about the balance wire because I have seen some other videos that have only connected the hot and ground in parallel. Do you know if it will still work without the balance wire for the piggy-back batts, and if so are there any advantages to have it connected/ thanks so much!

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

I guess you could just avoid using the balancing wire, but it probably guarantees a more even charge between the two batteries in the secondary pack. dunno for sure. Also just a little note. Don't let the voltage on the battery management board (the pc board in the battery pack) disconnect, your battery pack will be junk if that happens.

@chaskerr4

3 жыл бұрын

@@rwatson2609 how confident are you that disconnecting the batteries from the BMS will brick the board?

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

@@chaskerr4 I've got 3 bricked battery packs because of this. The first time that I did it was an honest naïve mistake so I removed the shellac layer from the battery board to reveal the battery management chip, just to be sure what I was up against. And then on the 2nd attempt I decided to piggy back a secondary set of cells over the existing ones before removing the stock cells and replacing them with 3500 mah Panasonic cells .. . . . I think that I never bothered with the balancing wire when I did this and locked a 2nd battery pack up, lol. The third time that I tried this, one of my soldered connections unsoldered as I mounted the leads to the new cell pack. It's not impossible to do this, but I seem to make these $50 mistakes too often to want to pursue it. The piggy back mod that you see here in this video does not require unsoldering the original cells from the pack, thus making it easy and doable by your average guy with some basic knowledge. On a side note, I did notice that DJI did make the Mini 2 with LiPo cells and I have noticed videos of guys flying modified original Minis with LiPo cells on their Minis for super long range gains, so if you were to look for a better way to gain vast amounts of range, you'd probably best attempt to replace the Li-ion cells with a 7.8 volt LiPo pack that is just a bit larger. The down side would be that it would not fit in the battery bay and you'd need a separate charging method for this module. . . . .not sure how the BMS would do with a chemistry change though. Anyhow, from what I've seen on You tube, the mods towards flying on LiPo usually require doing a direct soldering of the battery to the drone mother board, which really forces you to commit your drone towards this project. LiPo batteries traditionally do not have the same power/pound capabilities as these Li-ion cells do but the way that these cells are used might allow for more power gains from a LiPo pack of similar weight. Let me know what you're thinking of doing.

so, have you tested 3AH battery instead of 2.5 oem battery(cell)?

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

Nope, well I did buy 20 of the 3500mah batteries from Panasonic the ones that were rated for 10amp hours. But at some point I did look at a spec sheet on these batteries and calculated that the effort was not worth the reward. Here's the reasoning in a nutshell, The 3500mah in the Panasonic batteries is really based on a .5 amp hour drain load to a final cut-off of 2.50 volts DC/cell so since this drone uses about 5 amp hours in just hover mode you can see that the demand on the 18650 lithium ion cells will be close to 8 amp hours in S-mode. There are graphs for power drain on these 3500 mah batteries that you can look up and what you will find is that at this level of drain the amount of available power is closer to 2700 mah(? can't quite remember) but the amount of power that you have access to is reduced even more when you consider that Mavic cuts off the battery supply at 3.2 volts DC instead of the tested 2.5 volts DC mentioned, mainly to save life expectancy, so good for them, but now the amount of power that you can pull from this panasonic cell is even reduced farther down closer to 2400mah. The original batteries are of a more robust chemistry that are rated for a much higher draw than my 3500mah Panasonic 18650s that I bought and they tend to really only have about 2200 mah of use under these conditions mentioned. Whew, that's a lot of typing.

Do you have those BMS-es dead? Can I buy from you if you have them? I’ll recover them

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

You can recover them? I really could not figure that one out and thought that they were locked for good.

Do you have a link for the batteries? I would not like to buy those of the mavic mini. I have a mini 2

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

Here is the link for where you can buy the batteries for a drone, but if you have a mini 2 you are actually using a different chemistry in your battery pack than we are in the original Mini. I believe you are using a Lipo battery pack. www.18650batterystore.com/

Hi! Do you still have the "dead" battery boards? If the error was "battery cell error" or "battery data communication failure" then they CAN be salvaged. I am planning to make a video series on my channel how to do it, I am just lacking a "dead" board. Really don´t want to destroy a good battery just for that reason. Let me know if you are interested, and maybe we can get in touch! Cheers!

@thelongranger7574

3 жыл бұрын

No. They can be recovered. Even Non dji error can be removed

Is it possible to disasemble two dji mini 2 batteries and piggyback them, or is the battery sensing different then the mavic mini?

@rwatson2609

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, that is what I basically did. The second set was removed completely from it's case and was mounted to the other battery pack with wire as seen in this video. It's really the simplest way to get more distance or flight time without buying a bigger drone.

@Maxi_Marine

2 жыл бұрын

@@rwatson2609 Thanks.....but will this work on a Mini 2 and still have proper sensing? Maybe by using Mavic Mini batteries in the Mini 2?

@rwatson2609

2 жыл бұрын

@@Maxi_Marine ooops, I didn't notice that you have a Mini 2. I can't really give advice on something that I'm not familiar with Maxi.

Sir can you tell me please what is the Range of your mavic mini.? My Mavic mini givex max range of 150 Meter after that it gets discount

@rwatson2609

2 жыл бұрын

You are probably flying it around the city. I can go for 6 km without any antennae modifications if I am out of the city. The problem that you are having is called rf pollution. Your drone's radio signal is being hampered by a variety of other competing radio signals from things like routers, child monitors, etc. I can only fly a few hundred meters distance in the city too.

How can you charge the 18650 discharged after fly?

@rwatson2609

Жыл бұрын

You just direct plug the drone with the batteries into a normal micro usb outlet.

Is this piggyback unison or parallel? Would be nice to double the mah.

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

I paralleled the two extra batteries so that it essentially doubled the mah of the original Mavic mini's battery pack without raising the stock voltage. It's most likely not possible to put them in series without destroying a large portion of the electronics if that is what you were wondering.

@Zerzuze

3 жыл бұрын

@@rwatson2609 alittle bit of both thanx for reply. Increased mah is ideal. But is interesting if it could run in series for a little pep

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

@@Zerzuze Well, I think that if you could change out the Li-ion batteries for some Li-polimer batteries then you would get that extra pep that you are looking for.

Bonjour super vidéo savez comment trouver des bms pour ces batterie

Using a mini 1 battery to piggyback, will this work in a mini 2 since the mini 2 will accept mini 1 batteries? Thanks in advance.

@abdelmounaimnmyesse5611

3 жыл бұрын

Indeed a good question sir, or can we swap a mini 2 battery with a 18650 Samsung cell?

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

If what you mean is that you have a stock Mavic Mini battery pack that you want to attach to a stock Mavic mini 2 battery pack, I'd be a little careful. They are using different chemistries in the two different battery packs, one is Li-ion and the other is Li-Po. Mixing the two chemistries could be a bad idea since they both have different power curves.

@abdelmounaimnmyesse5611

3 жыл бұрын

Well in this case, we can just use mini battery and double its cells externally and use the pack in mini 2. To avoid ruining the last one's battery.

If you carry extra batteries, you should change the setting in the fly app and turn on "Payload mode", it will help the drone compensate for the extra weight.

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

I tried that and for some reason the reason for not continuing has slipped my mind, . . . . now what was it? I think that it was a restriction related issue? Hmmmmm.

@bashkillszombies

3 жыл бұрын

Payload mode (at least as of 2021) limits you to ten meters high. If you can clear any obstacles near your home at 10 meters, well, you're one in a million. 35 meters barely clears the trees around my house.

@bashkillszombies

3 жыл бұрын

@@rwatson2609 Altitude and performance limitations?

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

@@bashkillszombies Awww yes.

This mod seems to cover the optical flow sensor and the IR sensors...

@Zerzuze

3 жыл бұрын

Operates without sensors just won't know whats below it. The battery can be moved forward with longer wire.....

What the maximum flytimes？

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

I never went for longevity but always flew it at whatever the maximum speed was. But with a normal battery setup that's usually 18 minutes on S mode whereas it's about 35 minutes with this setup....though it will not fly as fast as when the Drone is in stock setup. I'm sure it would stay afloat much longer than that if I just slowed it down...

Can I purchase?

It covers the sensor how do you manage to turn it off. Can you make a video of that mod that you can fly the mavic mini covering the sensor

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

You're right, I never noticed that until now. It didn't seem to matter but now I'm wondering if that was the reason for my drone flying at P mode speeds while in S mode.

@robertformela6599

3 жыл бұрын

Actually the sensor failing still allows take off just that it will drift (if you push the stick forward and let go it will still keep going) that is because the sensor looks at the floor with a camera and makes sure it's in the position it is but if it can't se the floor it can't keep that. This isn't a big problem but it makes landing akward as it initiates landing when it's 1 meter.of the ground according to the sensor that in this case can't see. Hope I helped

@allanbuenaseda

3 жыл бұрын

@@robertformela6599 thanks for the info.

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

@@robertformela6599 That is a big help, thanks for the information Robert.

Yes, but if IT weight more than 249 grams everibody needs to register The drone. Show US if The battery has a chip called bms/pcb for 2s/2 battery în series.

What is the new flight time

@rwatson2609

2 жыл бұрын

So my "stock battery" flight best was 10.9km round trip in about 22 minutes. With this piggy back setup I did 14.1km in about 35 minutes. So I can only guess that if I stayed in C mode that I could probably get some time in the low to mid 40s minute range.

Higher capacity of 18650 battery the deone can fly longer.

Have you tried the 3500 mha yet

@rwatson2609

Жыл бұрын

I probably should have, but according to some literature I had found on the web the Panasonic 3500mah batteries did not have much more power in them than the original 2500mah batteries that came with the drone itself. This is due to the power drain characteristics of that specific battery under these loads. On another note, probably Lithium Polymer batteries would be a better choice but I don't think that the charging system or the battery management system, which is part of the battery itself, would easily allow for proper charging of the other chemistry so I didn't pursue that. It also meant that making an easy quick and dirty long range drone would be too complicated for most of my audience since "bricking" the battery pack is so easy to do when trying to swap out battery chemistries.

I was just looking at this for a cheaper alternitive. I don't have the drone but 50$ is nuts for a battery.... and imagine replacing all 3 if only you ouldjust take out the actual cells

But this way it will block the sensors

Ни черта не понимаю английский язык, подскажите кто-нибудь итог, сколько минут летает так.

mavic 2 mini looks cool drown it goes way more then mini 1`

Next you will be adding sma antenna connectors

Couldn't you just find better batteries than what it's running?

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, you could but here are the standards that govern that search. The batteries that you chose should put out a total of no more than 8.5vdc(I'm guessing here, it could be more). If you want them to fit into the battery compartment then there is one more limitation, else weight is the only other issue since those little motors can only lift so much weight. I roughly added an extra 90 grams and I don't think that you'd get off the ground if you added 180 gams.

you are covering the sensors

You gain more just by removing the case. A few grams lighter but the same power. Adding 90 grams is going to destroy the motors much faster. Remember, the weight is hanging on the motor shafts. You are effectively putting 30% more load on tiny little shafts and bearings (continuous load). They will run much hotter, Find a way to lighten the drone or build a racer

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

Good point. I had thought of doing as you said and just stripping the case off in order to gain speed and range. Still probably a real good idea would be to run LiPo batteries as well since their power range is more suited to the demands of this drone.

Too much weight didn’t fly it…larger battery capacity would be better

Can you show me what parts I need and how to do this? You're in bc😀

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

Yep, BC. It's really only doable by a guy that owns a soldering iron and some wire strippers and solder. If you own that you are off to the races.

@dandee28

3 жыл бұрын

@@rwatson2609 i got all that with experience haha. any tips how to start? parts

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

lol, 28 guage wire is what I used but you could get away with thinner probably. Anyhow figuring out how the jacket comes off of the battery pack was not hard by just using an exacto knife to slit it from top to bottom on both sides, but make sure that you don't cut the other wires just under the plastic jacket. No heat gun used, just pry the top cap off slowly since it is glued down with something that isn't really strong. You will see two large solder pads for the main battery terminals that you will solder to. There is also a wire that is attached to the junction of the batteries, this is typically called a balancing wire and does not need to be very thick, i probably uses a wire from an old usb cord because it was what i had at the time. that's it, take it out and fly fly fly. I can go to the edge of the battery limit when i'm flying 10-15 km from the nearest household and another drone pilot is not nearby . . . . and there is nothing visually in between me and the drone.

@dandee28

3 жыл бұрын

@@rwatson2609 thanks dudeee I'll try to get the parts and try it this week lol. You can fly up to 15 kms?? Wth that's so far

@dandee28

3 жыл бұрын

@@rwatson2609 how does it sit attached in the drone after? And how do you recharge the batteries

And we make more bateries cheaper whithout breacking The law. Y have 80 bateries type 18650, and an original batery cost arround 20 euro în my country. The Best idea îs to make our own bateries cheaper, whithout breacking The low.

@w.e.s.

2 жыл бұрын

WuT?

You need to be registered now you're overweight

@rwatson2609

2 жыл бұрын

I am happy with my weight right now, but yea a diet sure wouldn't hurt me either.

Ты можешь перевести на русский?

BVLOS ist verboten!

Just buy a bigger drone....

@rwatson2609

3 жыл бұрын

Could, but then where would the fun be in that :)