Tytera MD-380 charger

[Bill Mayhew]

I talked to Rick at lunch today, and Rick mentioned the MD-380 charger seems slow.  The charger that came with my '380 usually seems to be able to fill up the battery within a few hours.

The wall wart is rated 12 Volts at 0.75 Amp.  That would be 9 Watts max.  The MD-380 battery is rated 2 amp-hour at 7.4 volts.  That is about 15 watt-hour.  The wall wart should conceivably be able to fill the battery within two hours or so, given the Watts available versus watt-hour capacity needed.

I have attached a photo of the charger guts below.  The charger does not look particularly smart.  The two active components are an MC34603 buck/boost regulator and LM358 dual op-amp.  I don't think there are enough smarts there for a super intelligent charge rate control.  There might be a couple of break points in the curve at best  Note there is an inductor on the back of the PCB not seen in the photo.

Of course, there may be additional smarts in the battery itself.

Only the two outside contacts on the charger dock connect to the battery.  The center contact has no wire connected.  Knowing China, Inc.'s love of de-contenting when possible, I am surprised the dummy contact is there on the charger dock.