Menu
Forums
New posts
Search forums
What's new
New posts
New media
New media comments
New profile posts
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Members
Current visitors
New profile posts
Search profile posts
Log in
Register
Search
Search titles only
By:
Search titles only
By:
New posts
Search forums
Search
Search titles only
By:
Search titles only
By:
Menu
Welcome DJI Spark Pilot!
Jump in and join our free Spark community today!
Sign up
Forums
DJI Spark Forums
Spark Discussions
My spark went down.....into the water.
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Virtual1" data-source="post: 20231" data-attributes="member: 4084"><p>From my decade of experience fixing computers, and laptops specifically, remember this: water + electricity + copper = corrosion. (salt accelerates this process) Corrosion is a film or fluffy mass of conductive material made from the copper and the water. There's no safe chemical way to remove it, it almost always has to be removed <em>mechanically</em>. This is a problem when it's UNDER a chip, as many ICs in densely manufactured products like laptops and drones tend to use BGA chips where there's 16-100+ pads under the chip where you can't get at them to clean them. So your best way to handle getting those three things together is to <strong>stop</strong> the process immediately or as quickly as possible, to prevent the growth of as much corrosion as you can, because fixing it can be difficult or impossible. The more of it you let grow before removing power, the bigger your battle will be.</p><p></p><p>Steps A, B, and C are all the same. Remove power, remove power, and remove power. Seriously, it's that important. Don't be thinking about drying it out, don't waste time pondering rice or dessicants or anything else. Don't sit there and sulk over your waterlooged unit trying to get it to turn on. REMOVE POWER <strong>IMMEDIATELY</strong>. That will stop more corrosion from forming, and you can take your time doing a good job of carefully disassembling and drying things out. With laptops (and cell phones) this is a problem because some laptops have non-removable batteries. Laptops have an additional boobytrap, they tend to have little coin cell bios batteries hidden on them, sometimes under the motherboard or somewhere you can't see. Those count just the same for power and MUST be disconnected. I don't know if your flyer has a backup battery in it or not, but if it does then it needs to get unplugged ASAP, which may involve rapid disassembly and possibly a wire cutters. I've seen powered electronics in water before, and it's just like watching electrolysis - the water is bubbling and foaming and you can almost see the corrosion filaments growing off the exposed copper. If your bird lands in the water, I hope you can swim, because the 10 minutes it takes you to go get a boat <em>will do enormous</em> <em>damage</em>. Dive in and get it out, and have that battery out before you make it back to shore.</p><p></p><p>And FWIW, power management chips and other sensitive electronics can be damaged instantly if water creates a semi-conductive path between the wrong points. All the unplugging and drying out in the world won't fix that, chips and other silicon have been <em>physically damaged</em> and will need to be identified and replaced. There's advice all over the place on how to dry out your gear and lots of different approaches you can make, but you can (somewhat) take your time with that so long as the power's gone.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Virtual1, post: 20231, member: 4084"] From my decade of experience fixing computers, and laptops specifically, remember this: water + electricity + copper = corrosion. (salt accelerates this process) Corrosion is a film or fluffy mass of conductive material made from the copper and the water. There's no safe chemical way to remove it, it almost always has to be removed [I]mechanically[/I]. This is a problem when it's UNDER a chip, as many ICs in densely manufactured products like laptops and drones tend to use BGA chips where there's 16-100+ pads under the chip where you can't get at them to clean them. So your best way to handle getting those three things together is to [B]stop[/B] the process immediately or as quickly as possible, to prevent the growth of as much corrosion as you can, because fixing it can be difficult or impossible. The more of it you let grow before removing power, the bigger your battle will be. Steps A, B, and C are all the same. Remove power, remove power, and remove power. Seriously, it's that important. Don't be thinking about drying it out, don't waste time pondering rice or dessicants or anything else. Don't sit there and sulk over your waterlooged unit trying to get it to turn on. REMOVE POWER [B]IMMEDIATELY[/B]. That will stop more corrosion from forming, and you can take your time doing a good job of carefully disassembling and drying things out. With laptops (and cell phones) this is a problem because some laptops have non-removable batteries. Laptops have an additional boobytrap, they tend to have little coin cell bios batteries hidden on them, sometimes under the motherboard or somewhere you can't see. Those count just the same for power and MUST be disconnected. I don't know if your flyer has a backup battery in it or not, but if it does then it needs to get unplugged ASAP, which may involve rapid disassembly and possibly a wire cutters. I've seen powered electronics in water before, and it's just like watching electrolysis - the water is bubbling and foaming and you can almost see the corrosion filaments growing off the exposed copper. If your bird lands in the water, I hope you can swim, because the 10 minutes it takes you to go get a boat [I]will do enormous[/I] [I]damage[/I]. Dive in and get it out, and have that battery out before you make it back to shore. And FWIW, power management chips and other sensitive electronics can be damaged instantly if water creates a semi-conductive path between the wrong points. All the unplugging and drying out in the world won't fix that, chips and other silicon have been [I]physically damaged[/I] and will need to be identified and replaced. There's advice all over the place on how to dry out your gear and lots of different approaches you can make, but you can (somewhat) take your time with that so long as the power's gone. [/QUOTE]
Verification
Post reply
Forums
DJI Spark Forums
Spark Discussions
My spark went down.....into the water.