It has happened to me, and probably, it has happened to you or someone you know.
You take your DJI drone outside, get ready for a super flight after driving far from home, set up the drone, and turn it on… well, it doesn’t turn on.
You try to figure out what’s going on and why your drone doesn’t turn on. That’s rare, but it could happen.
So, here we are, trying to unwrap the mysteries behind our DJI drones and why sometimes they are not working.
DJI Drone does not turn ON (Troubleshooting)
If you ask me why your drone doesn’t turn on, my answer would be there could be a dozen reasons why the drone stopped working and no longer turns on.
But to know, either myself or you, we HAVE TO go through a self-troubleshooting method and figure out what went wrong.
I’m an active member of many drone and FPV communities, from Facebook to Twitter, forums, Reddit, and so on. So, I get to read dozens of drone topics per day.
And not many, but some of them are, in fact, panic topics as someone’s drone won’t turn on.
In this article, I’ll help you troubleshoot and go through all the possible steps to figure out why your DJI drone isn’t turning on and hopefully get you back in the air.
» MORE: How to Turn My Drone On / Off? (and Remote Controller)
1. The battery is in hibernation mode.
The first troubleshooting option is ensuring the battery is not in hibernation mode.
It’s possible that when you buy a new DJI drone battery, it may arrive in hibernation mode (this goes for most, but not all, DJI batteries).
Also, suppose you store the battery for an extended period of time. In that case, it hibernates to avoid discharging to zero percent, which could entirely damage the battery and render it useless.
I panicked once, and the battery simply was in hibernation mode.
Sometimes, with a simple power-on sequence, it should get out of hibernation, but most of the time, it does not.
So to wake up the battery, you will have to put it to charge; once the battery starts receiving current, it should go back to its previous “active” state.
Depending on the drone, you will have to charge it directly through the drone for at least a few hours to take the battery out of hibernation.
Ensure that if you put your battery to charge to take it out of hibernation mode, you don’t touch it for at least a couple of hours.
» MORE: How to Turn DJI Avata On / Off (Goggles, Remote & Motion Controller)
2. The battery is completely ruined.
It was one of the worst scenarios ever, and here comes a personal story.
For one of the drones I have, the DJI FPV, I have (had) three batteries. There was a time when the drone had to sit in long-term storage due to the weather and my living location.
Normally, when you put a drone battery in storage, it will discharge itself down to 50-70% and remain there so the battery cells won’t get damaged.
The next point for the batteries would be to go into hibernation mode.
So, what happened?
One battery went into hibernation successfully, while the other two simply failed to do so.
This resulted in one battery having reduced performance (many warnings and errors when I was flying the drone and it could not fly as long as before) while the other one… was completely dead.
I thought at first it was in hibernation mode as the first battery, which managed to reactivate just fine. But it wasn’t. Nothing revived the battery, and I tried for a week to troubleshoot anything possible to restore the battery.
So, simply put, out of three DJI FPV batteries, two failed to enter hibernation while all of them were stored adequately for the long term, and they auto-discharged beyond the safe voltage level.
Therefore, if you just got your drone out of its winter break and nothing makes your BATTERY turn on, no matter what you do, the chances are that it failed to hibernate and slowly died out.
» MORE: How to Safely Dispose of LiPo Drone Batteries
3. Bad connectors / no battery contact
This may seem like a scene from an old movie where someone cleans the car battery contacts, plugs it back, and the car turns on as normal.
But it can happen.
I have heard of cases before where either foreign objects entered the contacts from the battery or the drone. If this happens, when you plug the battery into your DJI drone, the drone will not receive any power, even though the battery turns on normally.
Some drone batteries, and again I mention the DJI FPV battery, have cables instead to connect. Ensure that the cable is not loose or out of the battery to prevent it from making contact with the drone.
Therefore, as a troubleshooting method in this case, if your battery works just fine and turns on when you plug it into your DJI drone, but the drone does not turn on, this should be the first step to take: check the battery or drone contacts and ensure no foreign objects or any coating has been formed on the contacts.
» MORE: DJI Mini 3 Won’t Turn On (Here’s What to Do)
4. Too cold for the battery to function
Winter is coming! Our passion for flying drones should never die, no matter the season.
However, flying a drone in winter may come with its own challenges.
One of them is that your drone may simply not turn on.
If you’re in an area with freezing temperatures and you try to turn on your drone to fly it, and nothing happens, there’s a chance that your internal battery system or drone decided it’s too cold to fly, and for safety reasons, it should not turn on.
You may overcome this by getting the drone with the battery back into your car or somewhere warm, letting it warm up, and trying again, but without waiting long enough for it to get cold.
However, this would be contraindicated as there’s a reason why DJI stops you from taking off in really cold environments.
» MORE: How to Fly a Drone in the Snow (10 Tips for Safe Flights)
5. Drone overheat/battery too hot
The same thing can happen in an opposite scenario. It’s a hot summer, your drone attracts a lot of heat from the sun and overheats, or you try to fly straight after you charge the battery, giving it no chance to cool down a bit.
For safety reasons and to avoid the drone battery catching fire, the internal safety features will stop the battery or drone from turning on and flying.
When a drone is on, the transmission system and motors produce a surprising amount of heat. That’s why many DJI drones also have an active cooling system inside and a few holes to allow the air to get through when flying.
The air currents cool down the drone when you’re in the air. But if the air is so hot, like the blazing heat of lava from a volcanic eruption or flying in the desert, a DJI drone surpasses its limits to fly.
If your drone decided not to turn it on, your future self may thank you because you could just have saved it.
Therefore, if this is a factor, don’t panic; try again when the temperatures drop a bit and see if this is solved.
Another reason is that if you fly in a hot environment and you place your battery to charge straight away, this may go into a safe mode to avoid failure due to high temperatures.
So, if your battery fails to charge or turn on after you charge it, in this case, ensure you leave it for at least 20-30 minutes to cool down before trying again.
» MORE: Flying a Drone in Hot Weather (Things You Should Know)
6. Your DJI drone or battery could be water-damaged.
Have you recently flown your DJI drone in the rain or had a tiny little crash where it became a submarine? I know because I did. And it’s a panic we have to go through.
But the expected result after the drone gets water damage is that it won’t work. And you should not even try to turn it on straight away.
Here’s what you should do:
- If you have crashed your DJI drone into fresh water, the chances are that your drone will be fine after it dries out.
- If you have crashed your DJI drone into salty water (in the sea), there’s a high chance that your drone will get permanently damaged.
- But flying in light rain is probably not enough to damage a drone entirely.
So, the first step would be to remove the battery directly from the drone.
Newer drones have more intelligent batteries with safety features that will temporarily cut the circuit to the drone if they sense water conductivity, and this is to avoid short-circuiting your drone.
Your drone and drone battery should be left to dry out for at least a couple of days in a warm and dry environment.
If you crash your DJI drone into salty water, you will have to do a quick distilled water flush to remove the salt because, at this point, it can’t do worse, but otherwise, the sodium chloride will form a layer on the drone circuits, rendering it useless.
7. You’re not switching your DJI drone on correctly.
Wait; before we continue troubleshooting all the possible or less possible reasons why your DJI drone does not turn on – let me just quickly ask this: are you sure you are turning your DJI drone on correctly?
At times, I daydream, and many of us don’t even realize we aren’t following the right sequence of turning on a drone. Or maybe a beginner struggles to turn on by failing to follow the sequence.
Most DJI drones follow the same turn-on and turn-off method: short pressing once will show the battery charge and then long-press until you see the LEDs lighting up in sequence from one to four, and then it turns on.
If you’re confident you have done it correctly, let’s move on.
» MORE: DJI Mavic 3 Pro – How to Turn ON/OFF (Step-by-Step Guide & Video)
8. Your DJI drone could have been damaged in a crash.
Sadly, crashes happen. I’ve crashed drones before, and many of us have. It’s a risk we have to take every time we take off our DJI drone.
But after a minor crash either in a tree or grass, well… the drone looks good, maybe with a scratch – so why shouldn’t it fly?
Remember that during a crash, even a minor one, the drone’s impact could have a kinetic force enough to either disconnect a connector inside or even damage the flight controller.
» MORE: Drone Crash: How to Contact DJI Customer Support
9. Your drone flight controller or another part could be entirely ruined.
There doesn’t have to be a crash or misuse of the drone to have the surprise for the drone flight controller or other parts rendered unusable or damaged.
Electronics are extremely volatile and have a lifetime duration. Sometimes, they fall behind, and even newer drones may come at the risk of any component simply failing.
This should be only the ultimate conclusion after you have exhausted every single option in figuring out what’s wrong with the drone.
In this case, if you still have the drone under warranty with DJI, send it back, and they’ll solve it for you (hopefully for free).
In FPV (with FPV drones), it is so common that the ESC or Flight Controller will simply burn out without a reason, sometimes even when trying to power on the drone.
Simply remember that the amps going through a drone flight controller are many times higher than most electronics we have around.
» MORE: How Often Do Drones Crash or Fly Away?
DJI Drone does not turn OFF
In the rare circumstances where the opposite happens, your DJI drone does not turn off after a flight; here are the troubleshooting steps.
1. Your DJI drone could be doing self-diagnosis
For some reason, DJI drones may, at times, do self-diagnosis, which could happen even after you have landed your drone or before you’re about to turn it off.
So, to avoid interrupting this or even potentially causing damage to your DJI drone, if you try to turn it off, the battery “turns off,” but the drone still remains on.
What we recommend is to leave it for a while to complete its diagnosis. If this is the reason, of course.
» MORE: How to Turn Off Your DJI Drone? (A Complete List)
2. Faulty battery/firmware
If the same thing happens as above – you’ve tried to turn off your DJI drone, but it appears this often happens and may not be a self-diagnosis, then we can guess it’s all about the battery, which could be faulty, or the drone firmware could be corrupted.
In this case, you can’t do much other than pull out the battery from your drone while it’s powered on. However, this is dangerous as it may permanently damage your drone. But that’s a small chance, though.
Note: If your DJI drone does not turn off for any reason, the best approach is to NEVER leave the battery attached to the drone when not in use.
» MORE: DJI Battery Firmware – All You Need to Know
Conclusion
We may have just scratched the surface of why your DJI drone will not turn on or off. There could be so many more reasons, unheard of, with such low chances to happen, you rather have a higher chance to win the lottery.
But things happen.
And the best way to deal with it is to troubleshoot it and try to cross out each step. Only after we have exhausted all our options should we contact DJI customer support for their assistance.
» MORE: DJI App Not Working? (Ultimate Troubleshooting Guide)
