It should really only take about 90 minutes. My guess is that your power adapter going to the charger is bad. The only other suggestion I would have is to use a computerized lipo charger that can display additional info while charging to verify the battery is being charged properly.

Personally, I use a Cellpro Multi4 with the GP/KO adapter for the drone battery. At a 1C charge rate (just a little faster than the stock charger) it takes about 75 minutes to fully charge the battery.

Electronically, the power adapter that goes into the "charger" provides the voltage and amperage regulation necessary to charge the battery. The "charger" is really just a cell-balancer, draining excess voltage from the cells to keep them in balance. If it takes too long to get the green light, I would first suspect the power adapter.

The Cellpro Multi4 I use to charge the battery is a computerized charger that regulates both the voltage and amperage to charge and balance the cells, regardless of the source voltage/amperage. So while it "does" the same thing, it does it differently.

i have this with mine. i have now charged it with a lipo charger at 2amp and its quicker but i have a motor prob at the min now

I have done a test with mine.

1. I took a freshly charged battery (using a better quality lipo charger) that had a voltage of 4.19 for each cell.
2. I flew it around indoors until the battery level reached 1%.
3. I landed and checked the battery cell voltages. Each cell was at 3.3v. Flight time of 10 minutes.

Typically with these lipo's you can safely take them down to 3.0-3.1v (never go below 3.0v). With this data, there was probably another minute or so of flight time. The battery was a bit warm, so I don't know if I would want to push it much more as there does not appear to be proper airflow over the battery to keep it cool. No sense puffing a battery pack for an extra minute of flight time.

It appears that the voltage monitoring may not be calibrated or was designed to keep the batteries from being discharged to low.

Can Parrot tell us how the battery level is actually handled? this may shed some insight on the battery flight time issue many people talk about.

Have reset 2 or three times now. I did notice that based on the battery level monitor, I got more flight time AFTER updating to the most recent firmware version. Before updating, I was only getting 6-7 minutes before the battery level reached 1%.

Greetings all,

I have a solution that will solve your flight time wows. It turns out if you look for the right size of battery with the right capacity, weight, physical size, voltage, and mAh you can get 15-20 min flight times. Remember if the battery is too heavy the aircraft will not fly properly. I offer a battery that has AR.Drone connector already crimped and ready to go with virtually no weight gain. I do this with better quality batteries and lighter battery case. I am not claiming you cannot build one of these batteries for less money but if you are new to the Hobby and want an off the self solution than check out this battery offered on Amazon or directly from my website here (not this battery will charge using the original charger that comes with the AR.Drone):

http://www.bastens.com/ar-drone-1300mah … ttery.html

Now what about those charge times. The reason why it takes so long to charge the original battery is because it can only charge at a 1 C charge rate. This means at the most you can charge the original 1000mAh battery at 1 Amp. The problem is this means it will take even longer to 'balance' the battery during charging. Without going into too much detail the solution is in the battery AND charger.

Using the battery I linked above it can charge at a rate of 2 C, meaning since it is a 1300 mAh battery you can charge it at a 2.6 Amp rate. I offer the solution again on my website and Amazon which is a faster charger. Of course you cannot charge the original battery faster than 1 Amp otherwise you will harm the battery or yourself ... you can only charge my battery at the faster rate. In short you cannot improve the charge time of the original battery but you can get both a better battery and charger for longer flight times and short charge times.  Check out the charger here:

http://www.bastens.com/ar-drone-lipo-ba … e-kit.html

Again the charger kit is a special kit in that it has everything you need, kind of Ready-To-Run (RTR). In addition its a simple charger that kids can understand how to use. I am not claiming this is the cheapest solution rather its a custom solution that I put together that includes everything you need to charge my battery upgrade faster. If the battery doesn't need balancing it can charge in less than 50 min, meanwhile it may take up to 30 min longer if balancing is needed. This means you can charge a higher capacity battery in less time!

I hope this helps you all enjoy your AR.Drone as it should be. I know I enjoy mine much more with the upgraded battery.

Best Regards,
Bastens Customer Service
http://www.bastens.com

I have this exact same issue, drops from 100 straight down to 50% or so, then only 7-9minutes flight. From reading the replies it seems this may be an issue with the drone itself??

Please help all of a sudden all of my 6 batteries will only last about a minute from a full charge has anyone else got this problem cheers

Hi,

I'm having problems with my batteries too.

They only last 3 minutes. A few seconds after take-off the battery low warning appears.

After the drone lands in BATTERY LOW EMERGENCY mode I switch the battery off and back on again (to test it) and the battery shows again 45%. I can then fly for another minute. I've done this several times, which makes me think there is something wrong with the battery management system, hardware or software. It indicates lower battery levels than they really are.

My drone and batteries are less than a year old. I've always used the supplied charger. I'm using the latest software available for the iPad.

I have exactly the same issue as Ruirod and brahmafear since upgrading firmware from V1.7.6 to V1.11.5.  Fully charged batteries last literally seconds before getting a low battery warning shortly after take-off! Also getting a "Control link not available" quite frequently, resulting in loss of control over the AR.drone! 

This happened to me twice today at a public event where I was trying to get aerial video of a concert - the first time, on take-off, the drone instantly took off to the right and crashed into some poor woman's legs 15 metres away. The second time, I got a "Control link not available" immediately after take-off and whilst it hovered, I had to reconnect to the drone wi-fi. When the wi-fi reconnected, the drone flew backwards about 20 metres and hit a parked car before landing on the road! Not a good look!

Its a known bug since the last update, no need to get too distressed as i am sure many more updates are to come which will hopefully fix this problem of the drone miscalculation battery drain. Parrot are well aware of this from all the complaints on this forum and others.