DJI Mavic Air battery recovery (Clear PF) using Arduino

Hey, are you the owner of Mavic Air Drone, and facing issues like the battery LED lights not glowing, battery not charging, battery not working, battery hibernating or battery voltage fluctuations locked the BMS? Here are the steps to rescue it and make it work again.

In this Tutorial, lets learn how the DJI Mavic air intelligent battery works, its BMS chip and its pinout, battery connections and finally how to remove the PF flag and recovering the battery.

Mavic air battery is also called as an intelligent battery as it has a Battery Management System which monitors everything like cell voltages, temperature, battery health and send it to the drone to display them on the remote controller. Not only monitoring but it also performs safety features like charging the Li-Po cells in limits accordingly, and discharging them automatically when not used for long time to increase the life of them. It also monitors the voltage fluctuations if a battery is malfunctioning and creates power failure Flags which makes battery hibernate and not responsive.

Even when you store the battery for more than 3 months without using in between they switch to hibernation mode. This mode makes the battery unresponsive to push buttons and they wont even charge.

Mavic Air Battery Specifications

• Nominal Voltage: 11.55 V,
• Max Charge voltage: 13.2 V,
• Rated Capacity: 2375 mAh, 27.43Wh
• Battery Type: Li-Po 3S(3 cells in series)
• BMS Board: BQ9003

Mavic Air Battery BMS Circuit and Pinout

As you can see from the above image the outer cover of the battery is removed so that the BMS Chip is visible. Its BMS has a lock sensor which checks weither battery is fixed inside the drone or not. It also has a temperature sensor attached between batteries to monitor the heat from the batteries while charging and discharging. This BMS has 10 pins.

Mavic Air Battery Pinout diagram

From the about pin diagram you can see there are 10 pins numbered from right to left. The first 4 right pins are for Ground( GND) and the pins 7,8,9,10 are positive terminals. The between pins 5 and 6 are SDA and SCL respectively. There are the Data pins which can communicate through SMBus and I2C communication protocols.

Also read : best IoT Projects

Required Components:

Product Name	Quantity
Arduino NANO	1	https://amzn.to/3jVNZON	https://amzn.to/3KpUQry
Few Connecting Wires		https://amzn.to/3H2BV4e	https://amzn.to/3J0WVu2

Connecting with Arduino

Now lets connect the battery to Arduino with the help of below circuit diagram.

Here we are using Arduino NANO board, you can even use Arduino UNO as well the pins are same and very simple. Just take 3 jumper wires and connect them. So in this case the A4 from Arduino which is SDA is connected to Pin 5 of battery and A5 from Arduino which is SCL is connected to Pin 6. And finally the GND pin from Arduino is connected to any of the 1,2,3,4 pins.

Arduino Code:

After connecting, its time to upload the code for that you need Arduino IDE.

• Download Arduino IDE: here

• Download exclusive Code : here.
• Password for Zip file: circuitschools

After downloading the code Download Xloader: here

Next upload the code to Arduino board using it. Choose the port and Baud rate to 115200.

After uploading the code open serial monitor in Arduino IDE at a baud rate of 115200. There you see the output as below screenshot.

This is an automatic process connect the battery, upload the code, open the serial monitor with baud rate 115200 and with in 5 seconds your battery will glow.

Charge the battery and it will be ready to use. Fly with caution for first use.

Errors and Troubleshooting:

• Battery not connected ……

If you see this error check the wiring between Arduino and Battery. If still error there might be very low voltage in the 3 Li Po cells in it. To solve this you can charge the cells individually with very low current till they reach at least 3.9v and connect it with Arduino.

• Battery Swollen

If the battery is swollen do not pierce or puncture to remove the air from it. If you do so the battery wont hold the voltage eventually making them to die permanently.

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