23 Easy DIY Battery Charger Plans

There are so many different types of batteries, and nowadays we need them to operate a whole range of items, from tv remote controls to cars and motorcycles. However, the problem is, when they run out of charge, we need to recharge them, and chargers can be expensive.

However, for those who don’t mind a bit of circuitry and electronics DIY, there is another way, since it’s quite possible to make one yourself – and for anyone who wants to try, here are 23 great plans for how to make a battery charger you might like to try copying at home.

1. How to Make Battery Charger at Home: 6 Steps (with Pictures) – Instructables

As we read in the intro to this tutorial, li-ion batteries are now ubiquitous, but the problem is that buying a charger for them can be expensive. However, making a DIY charger is a lot easier than you might imagine, and this plan shows you how. The instructions are clear, there’s a list of everything you’ll need and there are some useful photos too – so in short, it has everything you need to build a battery charger of your own.

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2. How to Make a 12 Volt Battery Charger

In this fascinating and useful video, we learn how to make a 12-volt battery charger using a regular laptop charger and a few other pieces of equipment. It’s so interesting how this YouTuber makes everything look easy, and it’s the kind of video that gives you the confidence to do something similar – so why not give it a watch and see if you can copy his idea?

 

3. How to Make a 12v Battery Charger: 5 Steps (with Pictures) – Instructables

If you couldn’t quite follow what was going on in the video above, not to worry – because here’s the same plan in written format. It gives you more of the details you might need if you missed them in the video – and there are also some useful photos to show you what you need to do. So between the video and this written tutorial, this is a plan that just about anybody should be able to recreate at home.

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4. How to Make a 12v Battery Charger with Old SMPS

We love seeing these plans where people cannibalize old electrical items and make cool new things with them – and here, we get to see how this YouTuber makes a 12-volt battery charger from an old SMPS (switched-mode power supply). The first part of the video looks a bit like a bomb disposal scene from a movie, but he obviously knows what he’s doing. And if you’d like to try it, all you need to do is watch his video and copy what he did. Good luck!

 

5. A Guide to Building Battery Chargers – Circuit Basics

For those who want to know a bit more about the science behind battery chargers, this post should be worth a read. It talks about how various types of battery chargers work, and it then goes into detail about how to put some different versions together. It also provides the necessary schematics for the chargers, making this a vital read before you start your project.

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6. Simple NiMH battery charger (with PCB files)

The USB-powered charger we learn to build in this video is designed for NiMH (nickel metal hydride) batteries and NiCad batteries. As the YouTuber writes in the introduction, a high-capacity cell will probably require the best part of a week to charge fully – but it works well, slowly but surely. Give his video a watch and see how he did it.

 

7. DIY Battery Chargers: The Complete Guide

If you’re hoping to make a DIY battery charger but you know little about how they work, a post entitled “DIY Battery Chargers: The Complete Guide” would probably be a good place to start. In this post, you’ll find all the explanations you require to understand the science behind battery chargers, leaving you much better prepared to make a version of your own.

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8. How to Make a 12V Battery Charger at Home – DIY

Although you might not guess it, according to this post, making a battery charger is relatively easy and inexpensive, meaning just about anybody will be able to manage it at home. You’ll find a list of everything you’re going to need, after which the process is explained in a series of easy-to-follow steps. A few of the steps look a bit fiddly, but there’s nothing too hard – so why not see if you’re up to the challenge?

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9. How to Charge Your Car Battery at Home with a Laptop Charger

Here’s an extremely useful hack that some people are likely to find incredibly useful – it’s a plan for recharging your car battery at home using a regular laptop charger. It’s the kind of thing you might not believe is possible if you didn’t see it yourself, but as you can see from the video, it’s a legit technique. Check it out and see if you can get it to work for you too!

 

10. 12V Battery Charger Circuits – Homemade Circuit Projects

This post is a highly detailed discussion of a range of battery charger options, including circuit diagrams and much more. It teaches you how to make several versions of battery chargers, and it goes into the science of how and why they work too. A fascinating read for the more technically minded DIYers out there – and one that will teach you how to make some effective battery chargers of your own.

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11. How to Charge 12V Car Battery with 19V Laptop charger – DIY Car Battery Charger

If you liked the idea of using a laptop charger to charge a car battery, you should like this video too since it teaches you a similar technique. Perhaps when trying something like this, it’s better to compare a couple of plans first before trying it yourself – so watching this second video should give a better perspective on how to complete the job.

 

12. How to Build a Simple 12 Volt Battery Charger – itstillruns.com

One of the problems with lead-acid batteries is that if they are charged too quickly, they can overheat, giving off flammable hydrogen gas. However, in this post you’ll learn about some simple ways to make sure this doesn’t happen, giving you a blueprint for building your own simple homemade 12-volt battery charger.

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13. My DIY 18650 Battery Charger

In this video, this YouTuber shows us how he made an upgraded version of a previous battery charger he made in another video. We love the way his chargers look so clean and professional – there are no Mad Max-looking cannibalized parts on show here. He also explains everything in a simple, matter-of-fact way that makes it super-easy for anyone watching to copy him.

 

14. How to Build a Mechanically Powered Battery Charger for LED Lighting – Appropedia

This is a design we were immediately drawn to – partly because of the cool-looking photo of a machine that incorporates a bicycle wheel. The plan is for a human-powered battery charger, so you can charge your batteries without plugging them in just through your own strength. It’s a great idea, and it looks like a lot of fun to make too – so we’re sure plenty of people who see it will be keen to have a go themselves.

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15. Never Throw Away 1.5v Batteries – Turn them into Rechargeable Batteries

Apparently, according to this video, it’s possible to make a DIY charger that can charge regular 1.5-volt batteries, so instead of throwing them away, you can simply charge them back up again when they die. It sounds too good to be true, but this YouTuber shows you everything you need to know to do it. He has some impressive skills, but it shouldn’t be impossible to copy, so why not have a go and see how it turns out?

 

16. Basics of Battery Charging Circuit Design – Battery Power Tips

Here’s another article that goes into the theory of batteries and how to charge them, so if you need to learn more about the background of the battery-charging project you want to attempt, it makes for some invaluable reading. It doesn’t actually teach you how to make a charger, but it’s full of useful information, so we thought it was worth including in our list all the same.

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17. DIY Battery Charger from Just Fix It

We’ve seen how to make chargers for car batteries from old laptop chargers, but in this video, we learn how to make a charger for a motorcycle battery from a scavenged, unidentified charger that, as the YouTuber tells us, probably came from an old modem. It’s fascinating to see how old items that would otherwise be destined for the scrap heap can be repurposed like this – and it’s a great thing to learn how to do in case you ever find yourself needing one.

 

18. How to Make a Mobile/Battery Charger

This plan for a mobile or battery charger goes in heavy on the science at the beginning, so if you’re just looking for a step-by-step guide that tells you how to make a charger, this plan might not be for you. However, if you need the specs and the circuit diagrams, you’ll find everything here you could possibly want, showing you exactly how to make an effective DIY battery charging unit.

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19. Simple DIY 18650 Battery Charger – TP4056 Review (Everything Explained)

If you liked the video in #13 and you’re curious about the original project, we’ve found it for you here – so you can see how he made his first, less advanced battery charger. As in the other video, he explains and demonstrates everything clearly, making this seem like a project that even those with minimal circuitry skills should be able to copy.

 

20. Automatic Battery Charger Circuit for 12V & 6V Battery

Although at first glance, it might look a little complicated, this blogger assures us that this battery charger is very simple and can be made with nothing but a few basic electronic components. All the info you need is on the page, and there’s even a video to show you how to do it – so now all that’s left for you to do is try it for yourself.

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21. How to Make a 12-volt Battery Charger with a Laptop Charger

After some of the full-on tutorials complete with mind-boggling diagrams we’ve seen, this simple demonstration video is more than welcome! In it, we get to watch as this talented YouTuber shows us how to make a battery charger from a laptop charger, and it’s almost mesmerizing to watch. It looks so easy, and in only a few minutes the whole thing is finished. We’re so impressed, and we’re even feeling inspired to test this out for ourselves.

 

22. How to Make a Battery Charger

As this blogger writes, he’s always looking for ways to save money – aren’t we all? – and one way that occurred to him was to construct a battery charger that could charge AA and AAA batteries. As he goes on to say, he understands any doubters who think it’s not a viable DIY job, but he insists it’s as good as the “real thing” – and he then goes on to describe exactly how to do it.

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23. 7v Lithium Battery Charger – Very Simple

To finish, here’s a short two-minute video that demonstrates how easy it is to make a DIY 3.7-volt lithium battery charger. You’ll find a list of the components required, and once you’ve prepared them, all you need to do is watch the video to see how to put everything together. Simple, inexpensive and effective – just the way we like our DIY plans!

 

Lots of great ideas for building DIY battery chargers

As we’ve seen, there are so many ways of building homemade battery chargers – and there are so many creative bloggers and YouTubers out there making great content and showing us how it’s done.

We’ve enjoyed collecting these plans for you, so we hope you’ve enjoyed reading and watching them too – and above all, we hope we’ve helped you find the ideas and inspiration you needed for building a DIY battery charger of your own.