UV-5R radio mount and wiring diagrams (Page 1 of 2)

This is awesome but I took a less engineery approach. I blindfastened a 12v battery adapter to the dash and just slide the radio down to engage the factory groove and lock button. Adapter plugs into cigarette lighter.

We recently switched our in-car radio to the Baofeng, and I bought the battery eliminator to go with it.  Because I hate unnecessary plugs, I cut off the cigarette lighter plug and direct wired it like I did for the battery eliminator on our old Motorola radio.  For some reason it works intermittently, not sure why.  I think I might just use the battery because not having a working radio sucks.

For the mount, I built a box out sheet metal, welded it to the tunnel, and cut sections of packing foam the radio slides into so it doesn't rattle around.

I've seen a lot of the metal box with foam mounts, and I know they work well. But when you have CAD and a 3D printer, why not make something better? I wanted to be able to see the radio screen, and maybe have access to the buttons while in the car, which this allows for.

Figured it was worth sharing for anyone else who has a printer.

No, no, no.  I wasn't trying to slight your idea or design in any way.  I love it!  FWIW, I built my "box" about 10 years ago, using what I had at the time.  I use CAD daily, but in civil engineering, we don't have a need for 3D stuff like Solidworks or Inventor, so I never learned that.   If I had a 3D printer, I'd probably make all kinds of stuff for the race car!

In fact I was recently doing some research on having a 3D printed bracket made that attaches to the back of the radio via the belt clip screws.  I need a bracket that will:

a) keep the external mic/speaker jack wiring in place
b) keep the PTT button from being pressed.

Think you can modify you bracket to accomplish those in addition to your design?  If so I'll be glad to pay you to make me a couple.

I will fully admit I am not an electrical, so my schematic is mostly based on what I found online and then what actually worked. Let me check when I get home though, it's possible I dyslexia'd my way to reversing the speaker and mic. I know for a fact that the harness I built is built that way, but maybe I have the speaker and mic reversed on my helmet portion, which would explain why it works anyway. If so I'll correct and edit the first post. Checking a few resources online I'd bet that's what i did, just link the speakers and mic backwards to the plug.

I assume you have something like this plug that connects your radio to your car harness?

That's what I need to keep plugged in on the side.  You could make the the space on the bracket a little too large and I could shim the difference.  As long as the PTT button can't be pressed (via blocking it with the bracket) that would be a big help as well.

If you can make it work, keeping the belt clip would be nice. If so, would I'd need to figure out the screw size/thread pitch to be able source longer screws to account for the thickness of the bracket?

Thanks man!

I do not use any resistors or capacitors for a Kenwood/Baofeng car harness.

The need for the resistors and capacitor depends on the headset that you are using.

The tip of the 3.5mm jack provides a 5VDC bias for the microphone. The capacitor is there to block that DC voltage from reaching the microphone input of the radio, while allowing the AC signal (your voice) to pass. I know that our Kenwood radios have a blocking capacitor built-in to their internal circuitry, but not sure about the Beofengs. Having another one in series can't hurt.

Electret microphones are made from a permanently charged ferromagnetic material, so they don't require the external bias voltage to be provided by the radio. Condenser microphones DO require the external bias voltage, with a series resistor to limit the current as appropriate for the specific microphone used. If the Midland headset you are using has an electret microphone (likely) and you are applying a bias voltage to it, that might be the cause of the problems that you had.

On the speaker side, the resistor is likely needed because there is a mis-match between the impedance of the speakers in the headset versus what the radio is expecting to see.

FYI, I found the best (cheapest) way to interface the car harness to the radio was to buy one of these, and just remove the microphone assembly. The wires are reasonably heavy gauge:

https://www.amazon.com/BAOFENG-Speaker- … peaker+mic

No disrespect intended - some of my best friends are mechanical engineers!! Like you, I'm just trying to share my knowledge with the group.

I do like your radio bracket, and have been thinking of building something similar. Will you be at NH? I would love to pick your brain on the 3-D printer topic. Perhaps a trade for a gin-and-tonic could be arranged.

We got a UV-5R kit from Rugged. We already had a couple of NASCAR style helmet harnesses so we went with a NASCAR set up when we got them so we would not need to buy extras.  NONE of the working NASCAR helmet harnesses that we used in the past would work with the UV-5Rs, only the helmet harnesses we got in the kit from Rugged would work.  After talking with them about it they stated that they "might have re-wired" their NASCAR harnesses to work with the 5R radios.  Ended up buying a couple extra from them.  Everything we got from them works fine but I would like to know what they do to make them work.

Bill