It landed upside down on many occasions and I didn't realize this would happen (Note, battery terminals cut after I seen this when I returned home):
I've never had a battery rupture, and luckily was careful enough not to get any of the gel on my skin. Anyways, I dropped it in a (BIG) 10 gallon bucket of water to hopefully dilute the stuff and later throw it out. It's not safe to just throw in the garbage, right?
Anyways,
I had an old pair of bluetooth headphones that has a similar battery. It doesn't have any of the technical info on it, like voltage or mAh, but I figure if I can charge it with USB, they both have to be about the same, minus mAh capacity. Voltage readings while connected to the PC are about the same as well, I guess due to the integrated charge/power controller and regulator on board.
I ended up destroying the headset, and doing away with all the unnecessary stuff (speakers, board - saved for later).
Well, here's some pics so you don't have to keep reading
Again, I'm reusing the connector from the original battery, used some solder + heat shrink tube to get it secured, and tape to keep the wires down.
Worked perfect! New battery = 1.3x the weight of the original battery (They feel about the same??)
I ended up adjusting the min / max thrust on the client program to 80, then to 90, and finally 95%
min thrust is at 40%, which does almost nothing anyways.
Size comparison:
Sorry about the rotation, imgur did it.
I ended up attaching some wires OVER the ends of the battery, to keep it from falling off if the nano were to land upside down (and I've done this a hundred times already...)
There are some caveats though, with this.
Maybe I have a bad unit? But everything was tested ok with my multimeter.
Before the battery change, the nano shuts off if the battery gets around 30% or so. It'll just shut off, and I turn it back on, it stays on for 4 seconds and shuts off again.
Maybe it's a fail-safe. But with this new battery, the same thing occurs, maybe even more.
It will also shut off if I hold full thrust for 10~15 seconds even on a full charge. With both batteries.
I do not however charge it for more than 15 minutes at a time so I assume that's my fault.
However, allowing the new battery to charge for more than an hour (usually with the headphones) - gives me a full charge.
I guess the heavier battery puts more stress on the motors. It does fly, but if I release thrust it will just slowly drop down. Giving it full thrust will falling doesn't help, and may kill it.
Sorry I don't have a scale to measure the battery weights.
Maybe what I need is better tips on how to make this fly, with the new battery. Unless this thing is designed to only carry a certain weight. But what are people adding to it anyways?
Are there config tweaks I can change and get better performance? I haven't really looked into it because I don't want to change something and forget what it was later.