ANT BMS – Multiple Units Dead in the Same Location - Hacked?

[zerotoeing]

I use the 130A ANT BMS in a product I build and sell. There are around 300 batteries out in the field worldwide. They’ve generally been reliable — I’ve only seen about a 1% failure rate, usually from MOSFET issues, which I put down to the fact they’re being pushed pretty hard.
What’s odd is that in the past three weeks I’ve had three customers, all staying in the same remote area (within about 1 km of each other), whose BMS have all failed in the exact same way.

What happens​

• When the customer goes to charge, the battery won’t turn on.
• No lights on the BMS, no Bluetooth signal, completely dead.
• The charger doesn’t see a load and shuts off.

Things I’ve checked​

• Batteries were balanced and charged before this happened.
• They use the weak current switch to turn on/off.
• No discharge faults beforehand.
• Doesn’t appear to be charger-related (different models involved).
• All passwords (L1–L5) are set and private.
• Tried waking the BMS with charger input, external DC, and even paralleling with another battery — no luck.
• Swapping in a new BMS brings the pack back to life, so the battery wiring is fine.
• I have one failed unit on the bench now — completely dead, no LEDs, no Bluetooth, nothing.
• Another failed BMS has been sent to ANT for analysis.

Why it’s strange​

The fact that three units died in the same way, all in the same location and timeframe, seems more than coincidence. Out of ~300 units globally, having three go down in the same 1 km radius within three weeks feels too specific to be random hardware failure.

My best guess​

I can’t shake the idea that it’s firmware or security-related — maybe something that’s wiped or locked the BMS firmware, leaving the board unresponsive. Hardware faults usually don’t line up this neatly across multiple units.

I’ll see what ANT comes back with after inspecting the returned board. In the meantime, I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has had ANT BMS's go completely dead like this, or if there are known firmware/security issues that might explain it. Is it possible to reflash the firmware on a board using a serial adapter?

 

[BatteryMooch]

Hardware faults usually don’t line up this neatly across multiple units.

It’s a long shot but are there any military installations or research institutions nearby? Or high power commercial radio transmitters or nav/weather radar installations? A marginal design might not like all that “noise” on its power or data lines, causing a permanent lockup or oscillations that fried the unit.

 

[zerotoeing]

It’s a long shot but are there any military installations or research institutions nearby? Or high power commercial radio transmitters or nav/weather radar installations? A marginal design might not like all that “noise” on its power or data lines, causing a permanent lockup or oscillations that fried the unit.

Funny you say that...

There are several VLF radio towers for submarine communication in the location that you drive past. From wikipedia - The frequency is 19.8 kHz. With a transmission power of 1 megawatt, it is claimed to be the most powerful transmission station in the Southern Hemisphere.

If the towers caused a BMS to fail, surely there would be reports of other electronics going haywire as well?

 

[BatteryMooch]

Funny you say that...

There are several VLF radio towers for submarine communication in the location that you drive past. From wikipedia - The frequency is 19.8 kHz. With a transmission power of 1 megawatt, it is claimed to be the most powerful transmission station in the Southern Hemisphere.

If the towers caused a BMS to fail, surely there would be reports of other electronics going haywire as well?

Possibly. But most people would never associate the towers with that misbehaving/failure. They would just curse out the product and maybe buy a new one. If they did suspect the tower they would probably complain or bring it up in their Local Bubble of social media and we’d probably never see it?

Another possibility is that the susceptibility to interference of most commercial electronics is pretty low, knowing they will operate in a “crowded” environment. They need to pass testing for this.

Most of these BMS’ are junk in terms of their emissions and susceptibility (to ESD, RFI, surges, anything) and nothing in them was tested. At most they might tell you, “we used them for months without problems“…which means absolutely nothing.