Ryobi just isn’t precisely the Cadillac of cordless instruments, however one nonetheless has sure expectations when shopping for a product. For many of us “don’t randomly cease working” is on the listing. Ryobi 18-volt battery packs don’t at all times meet that expectation, however happily for the remainder of us [Badar Jahangir Kayani] took issues into his personal fingers and reverse-engineered the pack to search out all of the frequent faults– and the right way to repair them.
[Badar]’s work was particularly on the Ryobi PBP005 18-volt battery packs. He’s reproduced the schematic for them and given a reasonably complete troubleshooting information on his weblog. The most typical subject (65%) with the big variety of batteries he examined had nothing to do with the cells or the circuit, however was the results of some type of firmware lock.
It isn’t completely clear what precipitated the firmware to lock the batteries in these circumstances. We agree with [Badar] that it’s most likely some form of glitch in a security routine. Regardless, if in case you have certainly one of these batteries that gained’t cost and displays the attribute flash sample (flashing as soon as, then once more 4 occasions when pushing the battery check button), [Badar] has the repair for you. He truly has the written up the repair for just a few flash patterns, however the firmware lockout is the one which wanted essentially the most work.
[Badar] took the time to search out the J-tag pins hidden on the board, and flash the firmware from the NXP micro-controller that runs the present. Having finished that, some snooping and comparability between bricked and dealing batteries discovered a single byte distinction at a selected hex tackle. Writing the byte to zero, and refreshing the firmware leads to batteries nearly as good as new. No less than nearly as good as they had been earlier than the firmware lock-down kicked in, anyway.
He additionally discusses the right way to take care of unbalanced packs, lifeless diodes, and extra. Due to the magic of shopping for a whole lot of lifeless packs on e-Bay, [Badar] was capable of tally up the assorted failure modes; the firmware lockout mentioned above was by far the vast majority of them, at 63%. [Badar]’s work is each complete and spectacular, and his weblog is price trying out even when you don’t use the inexperienced model’s batteries. We’ve additionally embedded his video under when you’d quite watch than learn and/or need to assist out [Badar] get pennies from YouTube monetization. We actually do have to present kudos for offering such write up together with the video.
This isn’t the primary try we’ve seen at tearing into Ryobi batteries. Once they’re working, a budget packs are a wonderful supply of energy for every part from CPap machines to electrical bicycles.
Due to [Badar] for the tip.
