Ryobi Battery Hack allows CPAP to work silently

When it comes to cordless power tools, color is an important brand selection criterion. There's Milwaukee red, for the rich, DeWalt black and yellow, and Makita has kind of a teal thing. But when you see that painful tint of fluorescent green, you know you have one of the many inexpensive tools and accessories that only Ryobi can offer.

Like many of us, Redditor [Grunthos503] had a few discarded Ryobi tools and managed to tinker with this battery-powered inverter for light-duty applications. Construction began with a broken Ryobi charger, the main feature of which was a fairly large case once stripped of its defunct guts, as well as an existing socket for 18-volt batteries. Added to this was a small Ryobi inverter, which normally plugs into the Ryobi battery and converts 18 VDC to 120 VAC. Unfortunately, the inverter fan is noisy and the battery socket is sketchy. But with a bit of case modification and a generous amount of hot glue, the inverter found a new home inside the charger case, complete with a new, quieter fan and even an XT60 connector for unbranded batteries.

It's a simple hack, but one that [Grunthos503] might really need one day, as it's meant to run a CPAP machine in the event of a power outage - hence the need for a sufficiently quiet fan to sleep. And it's a pretty good hack – we honestly had to look twice to see what's been done here. Maybe it was just the green plastic that was dazzling us. Although we may be being too hard on Ryobi, after all, they are pretty hackable.

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