Drone Down

Subject: Micro Drone 2.0 Troubles
From: Me
Date: 1/26/2014 8:25 PM
To: customercare@extremefliers.com

Folks,

Bought the Micro Drone 2.0 via the 2nd StackSocial group buy. I received it on January 21 and have had only a few chances to fly it. Being a complete novice at flying RC things I’ve been trying to get it to hover a few feet off the ground in my spare room. Today I was quite proud to be able to claim around a whole minute flight time before pushing a control the wrong way and crashing into the carpet from 5 feet up.

I was ready to try my first video. The camera has been mounted from the start, but this time I put in the SD card.

I plugged in the battery to charge it up and after an hour the red light was still on, but I hooked it up to the drone anyway. I performed the linking procedure and when I pushed the throttle forward to take off the motors would wind up and then abruptly stop, leaving all four leg lights flashing in sync with no further response from the drone. Turned off the controller, unplugged the battery and waited a minute. Hooked the battery up, turned on the controller and linked to the drone. On throttle up, it did the same thing, shut off with just the four leg lights blinking.

I tried it with removing the SD card and when the throttle reached 35% the drone would quit. I unplugged the camera with the same results. After 4 or 5 attempts the drone would stop at 30% throttle. Thinking it might be the battery was not fully charged, I hooked it up to the charger and left it for 2 hours (the red light never went out.) Before hooking the battery to the drone I tested the output of the charger with my multimeter and it read 5V. I tested the battery and it read 4.5V.

This time when I connected the battery the drone did nothing, I didn’t even get the usual flashing blue and white lights. The linking procedure on the controller seemed fine (it beeped with the up and down throttle movement), but the drone didn’t flinch. I turned off the controller and unplugged the battery. Plugged the battery back in and I can hear a faint buzzing (the gyroscopes spinning maybe?), but no lights and no motors spinning on throttle up.

Is my battery no putting out enough juice? Battery charger bad? Bad CPU? Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Brian