Battery Repair By Reverse Engineering

August 26, 2025 by Tyler August 28 Comments

Ryobi is not exactly the Cadillac of cordless tools, but one still has certain expectations when buying a product. For most of us “don’t randomly stop working” is on the list. Ryobi 18-volt battery packs don’t always meet that expectation, but fortunately for the rest of us [Badar Jahangir Kayani] took matters into his own hands and reverse-engineered the pack to find all the common faults– and how to fix them.

[Badar]’s work was specifically on the Ryobi PBP005 18-volt battery packs. He’s reproduced the schematic for them and given a fairly comprehensive troubleshooting guide on his blog. The most common issue (65%) with the large number of batteries he tested had nothing to do with the cells or the circuit, but was the result of some sort of firmware lock.

It isn’t totally clear what caused the firmware to lock the batteries in these cases. We agree with [Badar] that it is probably some kind of glitch in a safety routine. Regardless, if you have one of these batteries that won’t charge and exhibits the characteristic flash pattern (flashing once, then again four times when pushing the battery test button), [Badar] has the fix for you. He actually has the written up the fix for a few flash patterns, but the firmware lockout is the one that needed the most work.

[Badar] took the time to find the J-tag pins hidden on the board, and flash the firmware from the NXP micro-controller that runs the show. Having done that, some snooping and comparison between bricked and working batteries found a single byte difference at a specific hex address. Writing the byte to zero, and refreshing the firmware results in batteries as good as new. At least as good as they were before the firmware lock-down kicked in, anyway.

He also discusses how to deal with unbalanced packs, dead diodes, and more. Thanks to the magic of buying a lot of dead packs on e-Bay, [Badar] was able to tally up the various failure modes; the firmware lockout discussed above was by far the majority of them, at 65%. [Badar]’s work is both comprehensive and impressive, and his blog is worth checking out even if you don’t use the green brand’s batteries. We’ve also embedded his video below if you’d rather watch than read and/or want to help out [Badar] get pennies from YouTube monetization. We really do have to give kudos for providing such a good write up along with the video.

This isn’t the first attempt we’ve seen at tearing into Ryobi batteries. When they’re working, the cheap packs are an excellent source of power for everything from CPap machines to electric bicycles.

Thanks to [Badar] for the tip.

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Ryobi Battery Pack Gives Up Its Secrets Before Giving Up The Ghost

August 14, 2024 by Dan Maloney 44 Comments

Remember when dead batteries were something you’d just toss in the trash? Those days are long gone, thankfully, and rechargeable battery packs have put powerful cordless tools in the palms of our hands. But when those battery packs go bad, replacing them becomes an expensive proposition. And that’s a great excuse to pop a pack open and see what’s happening inside.

The battery pack in question found its way to [Don]’s bench by blinking some error codes and refusing to charge. Popping it open, he found a surprisingly packed PCB on top of the lithium cells, presumably the battery management system judging by the part numbers on some of the chips. There are a lot of test points along with some tempting headers, including one that gave up some serial data when the battery’s test button was pressed. The data isn’t encrypted, but it is somewhat cryptic, and didn’t give [Don] much help. Moving on to the test points, [Don] was able to measure the voltage of each battery in the series string. He also identified test pads that disable individual cells, at least judging by the serial output, which could be diagnostically interesting. [Don]’s reverse engineering work is now focused on the charge controller chip, which he’s looking at through its I2C port. He seems to have done quite a bit of work capturing output and trying to square it with the chip’s datasheet, but he’s having trouble decoding it.

This would be a great place for the Hackaday community to pitch in so he can perhaps get this battery unbricked. We have to admit feeling a wee bit responsible for this, since [Don] reports that it was our article on reverse engineering a cheap security camera that inspired him to dig into this, so we’d love to get him some help.

Ryobi Battery Hack Keeps CPAP Running Quietly

August 23, 2022 by Dan Maloney 34 Comments

When it comes to cordless power tools, color is an important brand selection criterion. There’s Milwaukee red, for the rich people, the black and yellow of DeWalt, and Makita has a sort of teal thing going on. But when you see that painful shade of fluorescent green, you know you’ve got one of the wide range of bargain tools and accessories that only Ryobi can offer.

Like many of us, Redditor [Grunthos503] had a few junked Ryobi tools lying about, and managed to cobble together this battery-powered inverter for light-duty applications. The build started with a broken Ryobi charger, whose main feature was a fairly large case once relieved of its defunct guts, plus an existing socket for 18-volt battery packs. Added to that was a small Ryobi inverter, which normally plugs into the Ryobi battery pack and converts the 18 VDC to 120 VAC. Sadly, though, the inverter fan is loud, and the battery socket is sketchy. But with a little case modding and a liberal amount of hot glue, the inverter found a new home inside the charger case, with a new, quieter fan and even an XT60 connector for non-brand batteries.

It’s a simple hack, but one that [Grunthos503] may really need someday, as it’s intended to run a CPAP machine in case of a power outage — hence the need for a fan that’s quiet enough to sleep with. And it’s a pretty good hack — we honestly had to look twice to see what was done here. Maybe it was just the green plastic dazzling us. Although maybe we’re too hard on Ryobi — after all, they are pretty hackable.

Thanks to [Risu no Kairu] for the tip on this one.

A Ryobi belt sander with remote control car parts

Boring Belt Sander Is RC Racer In Disguise

February 28, 2022 by Chris Wilkinson 12 Comments

As a child, [David Windestal] already knew that a belt sander was the perfect motor for a banging radio-controlled car. Many years later, the realization of that dream is everything he could have hoped for.

The core of this project is a battery-powered belt sander by a well known manufacturer of gnarly yellow power tools. With an eye for using bespoke 3D printed parts, the conversion appeared straightforward – slap on (or snap on) a pre-loved steering mechanism, add a servo for controlling the sander’s trigger, and that’s pretty much job done. Naturally the intention was to use sandpaper as tread, which is acceptable for outdoor use but not exactly ideal for indoors. A thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) tread was designed and printed for playtime on the living room floor, where sandpaper may be frowned upon.

The finished product is a mean looking toy with plenty of power. What we really like most about this hack is the commitment to the aesthetics. It’s seriously impressive to see a belt sander so convincingly transformed into a three-wheeler radio-controlled car. The final iteration is also completely reversible, meaning that your belt sander can keep on sanding two by fours on the job site. All the printed parts snap snug into place and are mostly indistinguishable from the stock sander.

Speaking of reversible, there were just a couple of issues with the initial design, if you catch our drift. We won’t spoil what happens, but make sure to watch the video after the break for the full story.

If this hack has whet your appetite for more quirky tool hacks, make sure to check out our coverage of the angle grinder turned slimline belt sander. Or if you can’t get enough of RC, then check out this remote controlled car with active suspension.

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Ryobi Power Packs As Ebike Batteries

June 7, 2021 by Jenny List 42 Comments

By now, the process of creating custom lithium-ion battery packs is well-known enough to be within the reach of most makers. But it’s not a path without hazard, and mistakes with battery protection and management can be costly. Happily for those who are apprehensive on the battery front there’s a solution courtesy of a group of engineering students from the University of Pittsburgh. Their project was to convert a pedal bicycle to electric assisted power, and in doing so they didn’t make their own pack but instead used off-the-shelf 40V Ryobi power tool packs.

The bike conversion is relatively conventional with the crank replaced by a crank and motor assembly, and a pair of the Ryobi packs in 3D-printed holders on the frame. The value in this is in its reminder that these packs have evolved to the point at which they make a viable alternative to a much more expensive bike-specific pack, and that their inclusion of all the balancing and protection circuitry make them also a much safer option than building your own pack. The benefits of this are immense as they bring a good-quality conversion within reach of many more bicycle owners, with all parts being only a simple online order away. Take a look at the video below the break for more details.

Those Ryobi cells certainly seem to have carved themselves a niche in our community!

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Mobile Power From Cordless Tool Batteries

June 12, 2020 by Tom Nardi 26 Comments

For years, [Michael Davis] has been using a large lead-acid battery to power the electronic components of his custom Dobsonian telescope; but that doesn’t mean he particularly enjoyed it. The battery was heavy, and you always had to be mindful of the wires connecting it to the scope. Looking to improve on the situation somewhat, he decided to build an adapter for Ryobi cordless tool batteries.

[Michael] had already seen similar 3D printed adapters, but decided to make his the traditional way. Well, sort of. He used a CNC router to cut out the distinctive shape required to accept the 18 V lithium-ion battery pack, but the rest was assembled from hardware store parts.

Bent mending plates with nuts and bolts were used to create adjustable contacts, and a spring added to the top ensures that there’s always a bit of tension in the system so it makes a good electrical contact. This setup makes for a very robust connector, and as [Michael] points out, the bolts make a convenient place to attach your wires.

With the logistics of physically connecting to the Ryobi batteries sorted out, the next step was turning that into useful power for the telescope. A stable 12 V is produced by way of a compact DC-DC converter, and a toggle switch and fuse connect it to a pair of automotive-style power sockets. Everything is held inside of a wooden box that’s far smaller and lighter than the lead-acid monster it replaced, meaning it can get mounted directly to the telescope rather than laying on the ground.

If you want to build a similar adapter, the 3D printing route will potentially save you some time and effort. But we have to admit that the heavy-duty connection [Michael] has rigged up here looks quite stout. If you’ve got an application where the battery could be knocked around or vibrated lose, this may be the way to go.

Hackaday Podcast 056: Cat Of 9 Heads, Robot Squats, PhD In ESP32, And Did You Hear About Sonos?

February 28, 2020 by Mike Szczys No comments

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys gab on great hacks of the past week. Did you hear that there’s a new rev of the Pi 4 out there? We just heard… but apparently it’s release into the wild was months ago. Fans of the ESP8266 are going to love this tool that flashes and configures the board, especially for Sonoff devices. Bitluni’s Supercon talk was published this week and it’s a great roadmap of all the things you should try to do with an ESP32. Plus we take on the Sonos IoT speaker debacle and the wacky suspension system James Bruton’s been building into his humanoid robot.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (60 MB or so.)