Festool Bluetooth Adapter - working with old Minis

[Goldserve]

It doesn’t directly communicate with the battery as the festool Bluetooth module for the old CT vacuums is used. It is used to pair to whatever and that is used to tigger the microcontroller.

 

[ntlord]

My guess is I could get the battery working with this. If I had to bet, the battery is constantly sending BT packets when the tool is drawing current.

But unfortunately I would need a battery and tool to test. I don't really plan on buying any festool cordless tools any time soon (I have a ton of M18 and M12 stuff).

As I mentioned earlier, I'm in the DC metro area if anyone wants to let me borrow one with a tool. Alternatively, I could probably work with someone remotely to get it done. It will just take a while.

I'm also considering doing the capacitor thing too, but working it in to my project. I've already bought the components, it just hasn't made it to the top of my list yet.

 

[ntlord]

I would indeed. I use mine a lot with the Shaper Origin. It has to be plugged in, which is "on" since the computer and camera part are not "switched". If you plugged it into the CT it would run constantly. There is no way to make the "spindle" activate the vac itself.

This is the exact reason I did all of this in the first place.  [big grin]. I was getting annoyed at having to constantly bend down and turn off the vaccum.

 

[festal]

Day 3 of using it and it works awesome.  I use to use fastcap version before.  Festool remote is much lighter and smaller and has a rubber band that fits nice around the hose, much better than fastcap

 

[Krzysztof Boksa]

Saw this thread and I felt like.ai need to step in.
I was also into sniffing Festool BT protocol. When I saw thread I though that someone actually cracked pairing, but now I see it works on Advertisment.
So for remote it should be ok. Batteries will be a problem, as those are advertising only for a while, and stop the proces if no receiver in pairing is found after a while. The only way to make batteries work is, first to pair and then react to commends.

So yes, for remote it might work ok,
For batteries it won't

And of course they had to make our life and use security BLE transmission. I think without descent sniffer and massive knowledge about BLE, remote is the best we can get. I gave up after a while and just used festools receiver. Is not much more expensive that remote solo.

But good work any way. Good job.

 

[Francis_Beland]

Saw this thread and I felt like.ai need to step in.
I was also into sniffing Festool BT protocol. When I saw thread I though that someone actually cracked pairing, but now I see it works on Advertisment.
So for remote it should be ok. Batteries will be a problem, as those are advertising only for a while, and stop the proces if no receiver in pairing is found after a while. The only way to make batteries work is, first to pair and then react to commends.

So yes, for remote it might work ok,
For batteries it won't

And of course they had to make our life and use security BLE transmission. I think without descent sniffer and massive knowledge about BLE, remote is the best we can get. I gave up after a while and just used festools receiver. Is not much more expensive that remote solo.

But good work any way. Good job.

I gave up trying to make it work like it works with the BT vac receiver. What I noticed is that when I start the tool (TSC-55 in my case) there is a brief BT signal sent. I see it because the blue LED on the battery is lit for a brief moment and it works with the above code to trigger the socket. However, when the tool stops, the LED is not lit like when I starting it so I believe there is no signal sent but then I don't understand how it works on the Festool vac BT module.

For now, the socket is triggered by the battery when I start the tool. If I want to stop it, I just need to start the tool back for a fraction of a second. Not perfect but good enough.

 

[ntlord]

Saw this thread and I felt like.ai need to step in.
I was also into sniffing Festool BT protocol. When I saw thread I though that someone actually cracked pairing, but now I see it works on Advertisment.
So for remote it should be ok. Batteries will be a problem, as those are advertising only for a while, and stop the proces if no receiver in pairing is found after a while. The only way to make batteries work is, first to pair and then react to commends.

So yes, for remote it might work ok,
For batteries it won't

And of course they had to make our life and use security BLE transmission. I think without descent sniffer and massive knowledge about BLE, remote is the best we can get. I gave up after a while and just used festools receiver. Is not much more expensive that remote solo.

But good work any way. Good job.

Ok. I guess that confirms that. I was hoping it advertised the whole time. Too bad. There may be one other option. My recollection was the receiver had some sort of microprocessor and then a Nordic chip. If that is correct (and I very well may be misremembering), it may be possible to use a logic analyzer to sniff out the key.

Edit: it also looks like it may be possible to obtain the keys if they are using older encryption. I’ll have to look into that. It appears there is a tool called “Crackle” that might work for that. But it looks like we’d have to get lucky for it to work.

 

[Krzysztof Boksa]

I'm affraid that it's newer standard of BLE security.
However what might be possible to use a smartphone and festool's app and use phone as sniffer.

 

[Francis_Beland]

I used the nRF Connect app on my smartphone and I'm able to connect to a battery to snif it but as soon as I connect the battery to the saw, the connection is broken so I'm not able to snif what is sent or received when the saw starts or stops.

 

[ntlord]

So I am correct. There is a PIC processor on the receiver board along with a NRF52. That's a little weird because the NRF52 is an SOC in its own right, so it is sort of redundant to have a second microprocessor. I haven't traced out the communication between the two, but if I had to guess its likely either very basic digital logic or UART or something. It strikes me though, based on this set up, that it would be incredibly unlikely the key is being transmitted among the two processors. It seems more likely that the NRF is simply driving the PIC, likely to actually control the signal that is being generated to the vacuum.