Dewalt Cellphone

Cell phones are among the many broken electronics that I have acquired over the years. This particular Galaxy S8 had a shattered screen, and was severely overheating. I removed the back glass to extract the battery, and confirmed that the phone itself wasn't the cause of overheating. This tuned out to be the case, and I applied a thin coating of epoxy to the screen to prevent future cracking.

It was time to decide what to do with this phone now that functionality was stable. I decided to learn how to power it with a 12V Dewalt drill battery. Thanks to this buck convertor I ordered, the process was a breeze.

I trimmed the BMS from the battery and soldered wires to the remaining terminals. This was then adapted to the buck converter, and then the converter to the batter. The 3D printed mount with spade connectors is a pretty slick solution honestly.

With all the soldering work done, the buck converter was set to 3.85V, the rated stock battery voltage. The phone turns one! Admittedly there is a strange sequence to follow to power it on reliably. Which involves holding the power button down when the buck converter is turned on. Additionally, I cannot provide the phone with charge from USB, or it will shut itself down. I am not sure why this happens quite yet, but may be something to fix in the future if I end up building a robot off of this phone.

It would be very beneficial to charge a robot with a slow trickle charge through the phone though.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse