I got a fancy new phone with fancy Qi wireless charging. Has anyone added a Qi charging coil to their TJ? Where did you put it?
Here is how I did it.
This is the 1.5 to single din adaptor plate with a small pocket below the head unit.
It turns out that the pocket recedes in size towards the back. To make my phone fit all the way in, I split open the pocket and made a wood spacer to square up the opening.
With the spacer in place, the gap is filled with epoxy.
The spacer is wrapped in packing tape and rubbed with a light oil to release it from the epoxy.
Next step is to locate where the phone coils and the charging coils line up with each other. The charging coil is not strong enough to pass through both the thickness of the plastic and my case. To fix that, I used a router and a pattern jig to scrub out a section of the pocket to decrease the overall thickness. I removed a little over a 1/16" leaving that area paper thin.
The charging coil gets glued into the thinned area.
The charging coil has a pair of on/off leds. Red for standby and blue for charge. I drilled a small hole on the top of the pocket to make these visible.
The charging coil is powered by a standard micro-USB cord. At the moment, I have the cord snaked through the dash and plugged into a USB charging port I installed previously. I will be adding a second USB charging port hidden inside the dash in the near future.
Here is the modified adaptor plate installed. My phone fits comfortably snug on the left side and the blue charging light is visible as a glow on the right. Pictured is my old phone without Qi charging, so the indicator light is red for standby.
Here is how I did it.
This is the 1.5 to single din adaptor plate with a small pocket below the head unit.
It turns out that the pocket recedes in size towards the back. To make my phone fit all the way in, I split open the pocket and made a wood spacer to square up the opening.
With the spacer in place, the gap is filled with epoxy.
The spacer is wrapped in packing tape and rubbed with a light oil to release it from the epoxy.
Next step is to locate where the phone coils and the charging coils line up with each other. The charging coil is not strong enough to pass through both the thickness of the plastic and my case. To fix that, I used a router and a pattern jig to scrub out a section of the pocket to decrease the overall thickness. I removed a little over a 1/16" leaving that area paper thin.
The charging coil gets glued into the thinned area.
The charging coil has a pair of on/off leds. Red for standby and blue for charge. I drilled a small hole on the top of the pocket to make these visible.
The charging coil is powered by a standard micro-USB cord. At the moment, I have the cord snaked through the dash and plugged into a USB charging port I installed previously. I will be adding a second USB charging port hidden inside the dash in the near future.
Here is the modified adaptor plate installed. My phone fits comfortably snug on the left side and the blue charging light is visible as a glow on the right. Pictured is my old phone without Qi charging, so the indicator light is red for standby.
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