Lots of things beep these days. Washing machines, microwaves, fridge — even drill battery chargers. If you’re on Team Makita, it turns out you can actually change the melody of your charger’s beep, thanks to a project from [Real-Time-Kodi].
The hack is for the Makita DR18RC charger, and the implementation of the hack is kind of amusing. [Real-Time-Kodi] starts by cutting the trace to the buzzer inside the charger. Then, an Arduino is installed inside the charger, hooked up to the buzzer itself and the original line that was controlling it. When it detects the charger trying to activate the buzzer, it uses this as a trigger to play its own melody on the charger instead. The Arduino also monitors the LEDs on the charger in order to determine the current charge state, and play the appropriate jingle for the situation.
It’s an amusing hack, and one that could certainly confuse the heck out of anyone expecting the regular tones out of their Makita charger. It also shows that the simple ways work, too — there was no need to dump any firmware or decompile any code.
Oh my …. Makita means “Truthful – Without lies or deception”. If you spoof the jingle, they will have to change the name :(
Is this legit or is it as made-up as most family name translations
The Kanji – 牧田 – seems to translate to “pasture field” or similar
My favorite thing to do with a dinging and buzzing piezo speaker is to open up the case and tear it off with a pair of pliers. No, microwave, you do not have permission to speak.
Holding down the 1 button for usually around 5 seconds will turn off the beep on many microwaves.
Whoa mind blown I did not know that. I will give it a try on mine.
The Makita charger has several tunes built-in. You guys know that, right?
“Changing melody upon completion of charging
Inserting the battery cartridge into charger brings out last preset brief melody sound of completed charging. 2. Removing and re-inserting it within five seconds after this action makes the melody sound change.”
No. I did not know that. Mostly.
I knew that my two chargers (one acquired second hand) played two different tunes, but never bothered to figure out why that was, or how to select a different tune.
Thanks.
Up,Up,Down,Down,Left,Left,Right,Right..
Everybody knows these…. The rest of them have yet to be figured out and passed on..
Is there a Wiki for these?..
Yes. Press 0118 999 881 999 119 725 … 3 to access your device’s codes.
Oh, crap. It changes melody because you do something non-obvious and easy to do accidentally.
I’ll stick to BOSCH! …..
musical chargers….my arse!
Thanks, that is very useful info to learn! I can confirm it works on my DC18RC charger.
PROTIP: 18V Makita tools are slowly being EOL’d. If you’re just beginning to buy cordless tools it’s better to get 40V XGT ones.
Any source for that? They still are releasing new LXT tools. The XGT line doesn’t seem to be gaining the traction they hoped for, I have no interest in switching any time soon. Doesn’t seem like it would be a good move for them.
Noticed this as well. Was quite annoyed when starting with 18V a year later they announced they would switch to 40V.
A about a year ago, saw a statement that 18V wasn’t going away and they introduced new tools.
I guess nobody threw out their stuff to flock to the new 40V stuff. I suppose for the heavy tools, that use two 18V modules it made sense from a power delivery to POV. Though two 18V is 36V so not that different, but does last longer…
40V “max” = 36V. It even states 36V on the bottom of the batteries.
A Makita 18V LXT 5Ah Battery contains 10 2.5Ah 18650 cells. The Makita “40V” XGT 2.5Ah Battery contains the exact same 10 2.5Ah 18650 cells. Both have 90Wh.
And yes, with over 300 LXT Tools by makita, and even more “compatible” tools on the Market, LXT is here to stay.
An attiny, add some serial eeprom, and you can play audio samples.
change it to the lick