Hello folks,
I'm a DIYer that likes to fabricate solutions to work and home projects. Unfortunately, electricity is not a strong point for me, and my EE uncle passed away about 11 years ago.......
I have a lot of portable handheld radios with LiOn batteries that travel frequently throughout North America and Europe. I currently store/ship them in small briefcases. The chargers are all 110v un-regulated wall warts, and in the US I just plug them into a power strip (3-4 at a time) until all
12-15 radios are charged, while overseas I plug them into a basic power converter (220v-110v), or use a generic adjustable wall wart. In addition to burning through lots of chargers, the briefcases now contain more hardware for the charging process than the radios themselves.I want to fabricate a charging system that utilizes a single, regulated, universal transformer, then split the output wires to accomodate as many radios (or charger bases) as possible. Although we use different types of radios (with different charging requirements/capacities), I'll set up each system separately so that there's no mixing of the output currents from the transformers.
Now for my problem(s): None of the transformers that I've looked at in my research exactly match any of the input/charging requirements of the radios. I'm not really sure if this is a problem, as I expect that the available power for multiple chargers will need to be increased from the requirements of a single charger. In addition, the transformers also give a Wattage rating, while the wall warts don't mention watts, only Volts and Amps) So, my question is this: if I know the power requirements for 1 charger, how do I calculate the requirements for 2,3,4 or more chargers? How will this affect the batteries when all of the chargers are active simultaneously, or just 1 of the radios is being charged?
The 5 setups that I've currently identified are this: a) 6vdc/500mA b) 6.5vdc/200mA c) 9vdc/100mA d) 9vdc/500mA e) 16vdc/900mA
Any help or guidance is much appreciated. Please reply directly to the group, as this e-mail is fake.
MvS