Ryobi battery chargers feature Light Emitting Diodes (LED), which serve to indicate the status of both your charger and batteries. When your green LED lights illuminated on its charger indicate its effectiveness.
However, when you notice a flashing red light it could indicate there may be something amiss with either your battery or charger and needs attention immediately. Let’s look at possible fixes so your device works again!
Battery is dead
Sometimes a battery becomes so depleted it cannot accept further charges, leading to what is known as entering “sleep mode”. When this occurs, its charger decides not to risk further charging it and begins flashing red and green lights instead of continuing charging the battery.
Solution: Take steps to unplug and allow the battery to cool down before placing back onto its charger until indicator lights turn solid green and red and green lights begin flashing alternately. Remove battery as soon as red-green flashing light begins blinking off charger.
It may take multiple attempts before finding one that works. If it doesn’t, try switching batteries; if this does the trick then your original one likely needs replacing. In addition, make sure your charger itself is functioning well; according to Hunker lithium batteries require specific temperatures in order to charge correctly; extreme temperatures can cause crystallization which makes charging much harder for chargers to detect them.
Battery is not seated properly
If your battery hasn’t been charged in some time (or recently), it may require being “wakened up”. This process should take time; just leave it plugged in until charging completes itself safely.
Charging lithium ion batteries does generate some heat, but should never become unbearably hot to touch. Furthermore, lithium ion batteries require very specific temperatures in order to properly charge; any deviation either high or low could prevent an effective charge process from taking place.
Make sure the battery is securely placed when inserting it into a charger, with its gray button depressed when inserting it. Otherwise, your charger may display a solid green light instead of providing charge to your battery.
Dirt on the terminals of your battery or charger can also be a cause for concern; to address it, use either wire brushes or alcohol wipes to clear away debris from their surface.
Battery is over-discharged
If the charger is flashing red after you reinserted your battery, this could be caused by extreme temperatures – either high or low – that are too extreme or too mild.
Once it has determined that your battery is ready for charging it will switch over to solid green lighting – although this process could take time.
Li-Ion batteries only operate within a certain temperature range, so if they don’t start charging when connected to their chargers when cold, try warming up inside before plugging them back in again. Also try cleaning their terminals to help reach full charge faster. If none of these solutions work, it could be that either your battery or charger are malfunctioning; to test this further head down to any hardware store selling Ryobi products and try charging one of their chargers; if it charges and works without issue then both components should be good; otherwise take your battery down there and try one of their chargers before purchasing another battery as yours may already work or you may require purchasing another.
Battery is faulty
Chargers can sometimes fail to recognize a battery’s internal state of charge accurately, leading it to misread its charge status and display red flashing LEDs without moving to green indicating improper charging temperature; when this occurs, remove and wait for its full charge recovery before reconnecting it.
Sometimes the light will flicker back and forth between red and green – this is known as sleep mode – it often occurs after using a battery until it has become completely depleted, then leaving it sitting idle on a shelf where its power continues to slowly drain away further, eventually reaching zero capacity before its charger enters sleep mode and cannot charge it anymore.
To quickly restore a discharged battery to full charge, perform a mini-charge by inserting it briefly into your charger before its lights begin flashing, repeating this procedure for 30 minutes or until your charger displays solid green lights.