Thursday, July 28, 2011

How To: Make a Homemade USB Mobile Phone (Nokia) Charger

You may find it useful to charge your phone at the go, and it can be bothersome to bring a charger with you at alle times. There is however very easy to bring a simple, small USB-charger. They can be bought for a buck at eBay, but it is also very easy to make one yourself!

I made a Nokia charger since i use that phone brand. It can be done with other brands too.

The first thing you should check, before attempting to build this, is the Voltage and Amperage that your phone charges at. You can read it on the wall-charger. My nokia charger sended 5V DC, and 350ma, but I found out that there were Nokia chargers that gave up to 800ma. Since the USB-port provides a
Voltage of 5V, DC and an Amperage of max 500ma, this suited my phone.



Now, to make the USB-charger You will need:

- a USB cable with a male end
- a wall charger (you will only need the tip or "head" that connects to the phone)








 I got my USB-cable from an old webcamera that was broken, and I cut of the USB-cable from it. I stripped out the 4 wires, and cleared out the red and black, which carries the power.
 















The charger head i got from a spare Nokia charger i had lying around. I cut of the cable, seperated and cleared the two wires inside.















The next thing I did was to clear the wires apart from eachother, and then I connected, (or twisted) the red wire from the USB-cable, to the red wire on the head-cable, and did the same with the black ones.   

NOTE: MAKE SURE THAT THESE TWO WIRES, (Red-Red) and (Black-Black) REMAIN SEPERATE AND PREVENT THEM FROM TOUCHING EACHOTHER, AS THIS CAN LEAD TO A SHORT CURCUIT.




In order to prevent the wires from touching eachother, I seperated the red and black wire with electrical-tape, and then I sealed it all up with some more tape.
I connected it to the PC, and my phone started charging.


I made my cable very long, but you don't have to. Choose a lenght that suites you. 

Enjoy!