Bitcraze Forums

I successfully built my new crazyflie (original) the other day and it was working fine, apart from my lack of ability to fly it.

After flying it yesterday, I plugged it into the USB cable on the computer to charge it, as I had done previously. The LEDs came on as expected and I left it there to charge. A while later I noticed that the LEDs were no longer lit (An observation, I am not sure if this is normal or not).

I then disconnected it from the USB cable and went to switch it on. Nothing happened.
I then plugged the USB cable back in to see if the problem might be battery related. Nothing happened.
I then unplugged, replugged the USB, again nothing happened.
I did a dmesg in a console to see what was being logged regarding the USB connection. Not a single thing was logged, as if it was not even plugged in.
I plugged the USB cable into another device to make sure that nothing was wrong with the USB connection. It worked fine.

I did a quick google to see if there was any information on damage due to overcharging of the crazyflie. The hits that I found seemed to indicate that it has overcharge protection, so that should not be a problem.

I am at a loss at this stage, not knowing if there is something that I can do to analyse/fix it.

Is this a common problem with the crazyflie?
Is there something that I can do to attempt to analyse the problem?
Or does it sound terminal and is this the end of my very short crazyflie journey?

I had expected that I would destroy the device while flying it (or crashing it). I did not expect to destroy it while it was sitting on the desk.

Any help would be appreciated.

The LiPo battery has a cut-off circuit so overcharge on the battery is unlikely.

It's not normal for the LEDs to go out during charging. I have two Crazyflie 1.0s and I've never seen this behavior. I've never left mine to charge more than a half hour or so though...

I'm afraid I'm not much help other than my observations that what you saw doesn't sound "normal" to me. Maybe someone around here more versed in the hardware side of the system can suggest some tests?

Thanks for the info Chad. That is good to know.

I think I found the problem.

I was looking at it this morning and noticed that one of the solder joints looked rather big and crusty. It was underneeth the battery so I took the battery off and had a closer look. There also was some other corrosion around the same area. A close inspection of the battery showed that it looked like it had leaked a bit.
I scratched the crusty stuff off the board, disconnected the battery and plugged the USB connector in. The board instantly came to life.

To test my theory further, I re-connected the battery, but did not stick it to the board. I then connected the USB and let it charge for a few minutes. It appears that when the battery charges and heats up, it leaks a little liquid. It must have been this liquid which dripped onto the board and shorted it out.

So, hopefully, a new battery will fix the problem (as long as the board is not too badly damaged from the battery liquid).

Thanks for your help.

The new battery has finally arrived and it all works fine now.

It appears that the problem was just a faulty battery which leaked onto the circuit causing it to fail until it was all cleaned up.