Charging a Baofeng UV-3R+ … w/o an adapter

Charging a Baofeng UV-3R+ … w/o an adapter

Another thank you to KK6MRI 🙂 for this Baofeng UV-3R. It’s really small so it fits nicely in a pocket without making you look like you have a boombox in your pocket … people still know what a boombox is? 😛 The only issue with the Baofeng UV-3R+ I received was that there wasn’t an adapter to charge it. At first, I didn’t think it would be a problem since I thought I could use the charger from my other Baofeng. Unfortunately, it turns out they are not the same animal 🙁 So, I thought I could search for one online, but it turns out it isn’t that easy. I think this particular model is a little long in the tooth so it’s just hard to find. Then I stumbled across this website where the person described how to make a USB LiPo charger … it was one of those, duh, that makes sense moments 🙂

I ordered an Adafruit USB LiPo charging device. They and a few other vendors sell it with a nice enclosure around the end, but like usual, I wanted to see what was inside 🙂

I didn’t have time to make something nicely laser cut like in the article … I was just in a hurry wanting to charge the Baofeng 😛 In the article, they use a nut and screw to hold the ends of the wire to the cut piece of acrylic … I used the end of a plastic spoon 😛 All I had to do was to make sure they are aligned to the contacts on the back of the radio. You can see a little “+” and “-” on the contacts.

… and now I have a full charged handheld 😀 If I get a chance to draw up and laser cut a piece, I’ll add it to this page.