battery-charging
I recently bought a compact digital camera and it came with a charger of 5V, 1A output. This is a wall charger and the cable is USB type as in android smartphones. I have another wall charger which is 5V, 2.1A output and this is from my Tablet.
My question is what can happen if I charge my compact camera with the tablet's charger?
Well I have already done it 🙂 and it obviously charges faster than its genuine but can this harm the battery or even worse the camera?
This means I should be able to use my existing USB car charger that outputs 5V/2A and my existing USB charging hub at home, right?
No. The VX-8R series radios require 11-14 V DC (Negative Ground, EXT DC jack) input to charge ("Operating with Charging" pg 166 of the Operating Manual). Take note of the PA-48B charger:
Can I literally just chop off the integrated cord that runs out of the car charger and solder a full-size USB connector to the end and call it good?
No. Not only does your device not support 5V charging, but it is also not a qualified USB device and can neither negotiate power delivery nor respond to different chargers.
If I connect this new USB connector to a battery (such as one used to recharge a dying cell phone) is there any possible problem with this increased output wattage connected to a battery instead of to an actual continuous DC power source?
Since your device **cannot* be charged by 5V from USB, a cheap lithium battery pack for USB phone charging is not appropriate.
However, for continued operation at high power, you could use an external 12V lead-acid battery (car, motorcycle, marine) connected with the correct polarity to a barrel jack to supply external power such that your radio will operate in high-power mode. When using such a battery, be sure to use fuses to reduce the possible damage from the high-current capability of a lead-acid battery.
You need a LiPo battery charger. Connecting the battery directly to the phone charger will if you're lucky do nothing. If you're unlucky it will make your battery do an impression of a Samsung Note 7.
A phone charger is very inaccurately named, all it does is supply a constant 5V. All of the intelligence in how to charge the battery is built into the phone itself.
Best Answer
The "charger" is actually a battery management IC inside the smart phone. Assuming your phone uses a Li-Poly battery, the battery will be rated at a nominal voltage of 3.7v and a fully-charged voltage of 4.2v or thereabouts.
The battery capacity of a LI-Poly battery in a smartphone is rated in mAh, and a typically value might be 1300 mAh. The charge rate is often denoted as C and signifies a charge rate equal to the capacity of a battery in one hour. For a 1300 mAh battery, C = 1300 mA.
The charging current is typically set externally to the charger chip using a couple of resistors. Values of 0.5C (650 mA in this case), 0.8C and 1C are common. A rate of 2C (2600 mA or 2.6A) would be classified as a fast charge.
Sometimes the resistor network can be adjusted by the microcontroller inside the phone, so it can set the charging current to either 100 mA or 500 mA when connected to a regular USB port, or to a higher value (e.g. 1C) when connected to an AC adapter, colloquially known as "wall-warts".
These AC adapters are not chargers, but simply AC to DC converters. The current available for charging will be limited by the output of the converter (i.e. if it supply 1A, the charger chip cannot charge the battery more than 1A), but if you replace a lower current wal-wart with a higher one, then the battery might be charged faster, however the charging current will still be limited by the charger chip -- whichever is lower, the AC adapter capacity or the charger chip setting.