DIY Power For My Boat From Tool Batteries

Ah, the good old Beef Weenie. Wait. No. That isn’t right. This is the second half of building a box that lets me use my DeWalt 20 Volt power tool batteries to power the 12 Volt system on my boat. Probably the most important part of this project is the battery protection module which kills the circuit if voltage gets too low to keep my power tool batteries from dying. If you are going to try this yourself don’t skip that step.

We had some success with this iteration of the Beef Weenie. I can use the DeWalt batteries to charge a phone or anything else on USB, but wasn’t getting juice to the boat. I am thinking the power box (sorry, beef weenie) is fine and the problem is with the 12 volt panel in the boat. GOOD NEWS, is that I have a ton of work ahead trying to get my boat ready for the summer and a lake slip, so there will be a change to get this think completely ready to go.