Possible to fly to 0% battery?

ihf · Feb 12, 2019

Is it possible (however inadvisable) to fly beyond the 10% battery level? If not, how does anyone get 13min flight times?

Guorium · Feb 12, 2019

windless cond, without prop guards, slow mode and constantly going forward (hover takes more energy). I get 13min if not close to that

Ansia · Feb 12, 2019

Not possible to fly below 10%. To get 13 mins flight time, you need to be in a windless envirorment and take off prop guards.

ihf · Feb 12, 2019

Guorium said:
windless cond, without prop guards, slow mode and constantly going forward (hover takes more energy). I get 13min if not close to that

And that's with the Tello auto landing when the battery reaches about 10%?

Ansia · Feb 12, 2019

Guorium said:
windless cond, without prop guards, slow mode and constantly going forward (hover takes more energy). I get 13min if not close to that

I've gotten 12 minutes and 51 seconds of hovering.

Guorium · Feb 12, 2019

ihf said:
And that's with the Tello auto landing when the battery reaches about 10%?

I don't know what is 10%. I fly stock app and there is no number. I fly til it says battery critically low and it tries to auto land. When it auto land I use sitck up to counter that to get more air time until it says ah feck it I have no juice error 13 and just lands anyway.

Ansia · Feb 12, 2019

Guorium said:
I don't know what is 10%. I fly stock app and there is no number. I fly til it says battery critically low and it tries to auto land. When it auto land I use sitck up to counter that to get more air time until it says ah feck it I have no juice error 13 and just lands anyway.

I wasn't aware you could override the autolanding feature on low power. Definetly something I will try tomorrow.

Sage · Feb 13, 2019

I get about 12:45-12:55 with guards off sport mode in wind up to 14 mph no problem and always land at 7% battery.

volate!lo · Feb 13, 2019

Autolanding kicks in at around 10% remaining battery. It can be cancelled at first but once battery gets critically low around 6-7% Tello just lands by itself.
If you are at 30m altitude at this time Tello may well land at or near 0%.

The exact percentage for each of these actions is not determined, because Tello uses different measures internally. The battery percentage is a value calculated and filtered by Tello for the end user, but internally Tello seems to use more detailed measurements to determine the point where autolanding is required. My bet is it uses the fine voltage level fluctuations in response to motor load for this.

stewe12 · Feb 13, 2019

Just FYI Lithium batteries are sensitive to under and over voltage and you should avoid discharging it under certain voltage. It kills them pretty fast. It can be dangerous also. So if mine is saying it needs to land, I let it land.

And in winter your flight time will be much shorter. Like 1/2 of the usual. I flew outside around 0°C and log in brilliant app of Mr. @volate!lo TelloFPV told me, that batteries lasted only 5 to 6 minutes instead of usual 11 to 13. That is because the chemical reaction in the battery needs ideal conditions to perform their best. So too cold and it won't last, too hot and it could be dangerous (won't happen with Tello, unles you do some extreme stuff).

Guorium · Feb 13, 2019

stewe12 said:
Just FYI Lithium batteries are sensitive to under and over voltage and you should avoid discharging it under certain voltage. It kills them pretty fast. It can be dangerous also. So if mine is saying it needs to land, I let it land.

And in winter your flight time will be much shorter. Like 1/2 of the usual. I flew outside around 0°C and log in brilliant app of Mr. @volate!lo TelloFPV told me, that batteries lasted only 5 to 6 minutes instead of usual 11 to 13. That is because the chemical reaction in the battery needs ideal conditions to perform their best. So too cold and it won't last, too hot and it could be dangerous (won't happen with Tello, unles you do some extreme stuff).

It seems tello is programed to land efore the lipo life hurting low voltage.

Jesusfreak · Feb 16, 2019

Ansia said:
Not possible to fly below 10%. To get 13 mins flight time, you need to be in a windless envirorment and take off prop guards.

It is possible to fly below 10 with TelloFPV.... You activate "Throttle up to cancel auto-land"... I have landed at 2 before when I got carried away and didn't allow enough battery to get back [emoji15]

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

volate!lo · Feb 16, 2019

Tello decides when its time to land. There seems to be two trigger points from my experience.

1) Around 10% battery triggers autolanding but you can cancel this as jesusfreak said
2) Tello seems to calculate a remaining "safe flight" time. Once this is below a certain threshold this triggers an autolanding that can not be cancelled. This can be triggered before or after the 10% have been reached, depending on you battery health, the current power consumption, temperature, lunar eclipse, ...

For example:
You are flying with a battery that says 20%, you fly to 10% and autolanding kicks in, you cancel this and continue until maybe 7% before Tello finally lands.
Or, you put in a weak or depleted battery. It shows 20% at rest. You takeoff, and internal voltage drops very quickly. Tello still reports maybe 16% but decides to initiate autolanding that you cannot cancel.

Ansia · Feb 16, 2019

volate!lo said:
Tello decides when its time to land. There seems to be two trigger points from my experience.

1) Around 10% battery triggers autolanding but you can cancel this as jesusfreak said
2) Tello seems to calculate a remaining "safe flight" time. Once this is below a certain threshold this triggers an autolanding that can not be cancelled. This can be triggered before or after the 10% have been reached, depending on you battery health, the current power consumption, temperature, lunar eclipse, ...

For example:
You are flying with a battery that says 20%, you fly to 10% and autolanding kicks in, you cancel this and continue until maybe 7% before Tello finally lands.
Or, you put in a weak or depleted battery. It shows 20% at rest. You takeoff, and internal voltage drops very quickly. Tello still reports maybe 16% but decides to initiate autolanding that you cannot cancel.

So how can we determine on which stage of a luner eclipse it helps improve the battery % of landing?