Tello having very wierd issues

[NINJAPILOT_148]

Hi,

It's been more than 6 months since I flew my tello. I suddenly had the mood to fly it again today. I remember, I flew the drone and I had about 16% left in the battery and I just shut it off ad stored it.

Today, I attached a suitable charger to it, but it won't show the blue indicators. I tried various methods to make it charge, like pressing power button, attaching the charger and putting in the battery. It showed a green light, then a red light and shut off. I tried without the charger and it started up but showed red light blinking slowly. I connected to its wifi, it showed a full empty battery but there was no video feed.

I just want to make it charge so that I can fly it but I don't know if its charging or not. I also noticed that after and hour of charging, the drone got a little warm.

WHAT SHOULD I DO?

 

[quaddamage]

Lithium cells get damaged if overdischarged. The general idea is for end consumer to buy a new battery is the old one was depleted to below 3V. When battery gets below this voltage, it starts to deteriorate. When the voltage drops to about 0.5V, at least 20% of the battery capacity is lost forever. Also, the electrolyte eats up electrodes and deposits part of the metal in various places, making the battery heat up more during use, possibly leading to fire.

If the voltage is 2V-3V, the deterioration has just started and the damage isn't that noticeable. But manufacturers block such batteries anyway, just to get you to buy a new one.

The Tello battery doesn't have BMS IC which would enter into Permanent Failure mode, but has a simple mechanism to cut off power if the cells are below the minimal safe voltage.

I'd drill a small, sub-milimeter holes in the back of the battery, and tap directly to the terminals via needles. The terminals location is visible on the board photo on O-Gs wiki.

 

[volate!lo]

I would Just get a new battery. They are consumables and the Tello ones are cheap enough compared to Mini and others

 

[Bobcat]

Hi,

It's been more than 6 months since I flew my tello. I suddenly had the mood to fly it again today. I remember, I flew the drone and I had about 16% left in the battery and I just shut it off ad stored it.

Today, I attached a suitable charger to it, but it won't show the blue indicators. I tried various methods to make it charge, like pressing power button, attaching the charger and putting in the battery. It showed a green light, then a red light and shut off. I tried without the charger and it started up but showed red light blinking slowly. I connected to its wifi, it showed a full empty battery but there was no video feed.

I just want to make it charge so that I can fly it but I don't know if its charging or not. I also noticed that after and hour of charging, the drone got a little warm.

WHAT SHOULD I DO?

I almost had the same problem rather recently. I could not come up with an explanation as to why ths was happening since previous flights were generally OK and uneventfull ...
Then I came across a message in this forum which gave a good lead :
IF after you install a good battery (from a friend's Tello or brand new but charged with the help of a 3X batteries external charger for example) the Tello still behaves like a brick then you probably have installed a recent "glitched" official Tello application.
Apparently, RYZE won't admit it but they released an app which for some reason looses the firmware version and shows a discharged battery which prevents updating anything on the Tello or merely starting it for battery charge purpose.

IF THAT SEEMS to be what your Tello is bugged with, look further in the HELP section here on how to replace your "current glitched version" of the app with an older one which would allow you to re-install firmware and get the thing going.

Many people have experienced the same frustrating incident.