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I’m in love with our baby monitor. For the last 21 months of my son’s life, it’s been totally reliable and has given me peace of mind at each nap and bedtime.
So you can imagine my surprise when my husband and I were awoken at 4:30am to the sound of our baby monitor alerting us that the battery was low– when it was still plugged into the charger! In our groggy, still-asleep state, we couldn’t figure out why our charger had stopped working, but once we finally woke up we immediately figured out the problem.
The power cord had frayed, probably from moving the charger back and forth for daily naps, to the point that it almost completely detached itself from the plug. I immediately started “googling” how to replace the charger, but I was surprised by the lack of information available on the Motorola website for ordering a replacement charger. Luckily, an employee at Radio Shack was able to help us out.
In case you’re not as lucky to find a helpful employee, I wanted to share the two items you’ll need to replace the charger for your own Motorola unit:
(You can print off the image above and bring it to your local store.)
- You’ll need an AC-to-DC Power Adapter that has a 6 volt output and 500mA supply. As you can see in the picture above, the adapter we found has a range of voltage output, including 6. It also has a 1A supply, which covers the need for the 500mA supply. (It’s okay if you go over the amount you need, you just can’t go under.)
- You’ll also need the Adapter Tip “A”. This is the tip that fits into the baby monitor– very important! It’s also FREE when you buy that adapter.
Once you have these two items, there are only two more important steps to charging your monitor.
- You need to set the AC-to-DC adapter to the “6 volts” setting, using the slider on the front of the charger.
- You’ll also need to insert the adapter tip using the correct polarity needed for your monitor. Instructions for this are on the box for the charger, but I almost missed it. For the MBP36, the “+” sign needed to face towards the “tip” label on the charger cord, as pictured above.
That’s it! Overall, this fix cost us less than $20 and was available immediately, which is important when you’re used to watching your baby sleep whenever you want. I don’t know how my parents did it with only audio monitors.
I hope this will help any fellow parents who find themselves in the same situation!
Thank you for this!! 🙂
I have been struggling to fix our baby monitor and I came across your blog! I had the exact same thing happen to the exact same monitor. I purchased the cord at Best Buy but quickly chalked it up to not working. I came across your blog and tried what you did! And it worked!!!!!!!!! The polarity and voltage settings fixed it. Thank you SO much!!
After an hour of getting no where with motorola and no customer service to help with baby monitors (only online with a case number), I was losing my mind. Then came across your post. I called radio shack immediately, they had the parts and I had a restored peice of mind! Thank you so much! !
I have this exact same monitor and have always charged it using the port that is the same as cell phone charging ports. My original charger had this type of end, not the round one, like pictured above. Unless mine is a newer version I can’t see how they would switch the charging mechanism. Instead of going through all of these steps, you could just use a phone charger that has the same charging port end. Just about every Android uses this style. The charging port on our monitor went bad all together, so I’m stuck trying to find a new internal port piece or buying a new monitor.
Thank you so much for this! It was exactly what we needed! We were ready to just buy a new monitor but this saved us a ton of money. Our city’s radio shack closed down but I was able to order the adapter and tip online and got it the day after it shipped. Thanks so much again!!
Thank you! This is exactly what’s happened to ours.
Thank you! This was exactly what we needed. I’m so relieved it’s working again.
Does the adaptor plug into the “Av out” slot? Or where the normal charger would plug in?