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Gadget Storage

Discussion in 'Projects' started by Harry, Feb 24, 2013.

  1. JDM_

    JDM_ New Member

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    Wallet holder box???
    wallet holder.jpg
     
  2. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    Glad you got it to work JDM_! Took me a while to figure out why was wrong when I had the issue. I like the idea of the wallet / spare change holder, I personally wear a ring and watch everyday so those plus my wallet and phone end up on the night table next to eachother. I wonder if a wallet would fit into the 75mm footprint or if we make that bigger? I do like the idea of the dock working with cases, maybe again use a magnet so that you could swap inserts but still have them be secure. I'm anxious to see what Harry draws up. I also had the idea of doing a speaker unit like he mentioned, anyone know of a DIY sort of iPhone speaker so that it could work off of the dock connector?
     
  3. tesseract

    tesseract Moderator
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    I am new also but I like your idea as well I would consider this if we could place together modular boxes via the embedded magnets which I would think is an incredible way to do it you could also leave it with openings and then make permanent snap in covers to hide them. The boxes can be made with generic openings that can hold interchangeable plugs for many different devices and use the magnets them selves to conduct the power to the plugs.

    Again I am new but as far as rounded corners I am using solidworks 2013 still very new but I have made some objects with the rounded corners it is extremely powerful. I am currently learning it but I am constantly in amazement as to its capabilities
     
  4. Harry

    Harry Team ROBO 3D
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    Hey All. I've been really busy, and haven't had time to draw anythign up, give me tonight and i'll post something tomorrow. :)
     
  5. Kevyn Watkins

    Kevyn Watkins New Member

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    I like where you guys are heading with this concept, great community spirit!

    I dont' have/support apple products myself, but keep in mind that charging apple devices is very picky. So I'm guessing you plan to use a 3rd party charger and just encase it in these boxes? If not read up on the electronics in the Minty Boost. Could be cool to have a box with solar panels too, or one with a 5v AC/DC adapter in it that sends power out via the magnets or pogo style connections to other cubes that require power.

    Also thinking a Speaker box with tiny amp and line in/out connections would be cool so you could chain them.

    My own phone is a HTC One XL, so I'd like to make a dock for it that utilises the Pogo pins on it, my wife has an android phone that I could possibly dock via the 3.5mm jack or USB (read disk -> play MP3).

    Small Clock box with an LED display that glows through the box rather than sits in a cutout would be nice.

    A temp/barometer/humidity sensor could be mounted in a box too, possibly feading data to the clock module or with a display of it's own....

    Lots of possibilities with this concept guys.

    I think some standards should be set forward for everyone to work towards. Box size and shape is obviously the first one, and what you are already sorting out, but also power standards, pinout maps and whatever else might cause incompatibility between blocks later.

    I'm away from home at the moment, but I'll definately fire up CAD when I get a chance and draw up some idea's too go with this concept :-D
     
  6. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    Many good points Kevyn. I would think to keep it simplest just using stock cables for a device would be easiest. This way the designing aspect could stay more true to the actual cube along with useful function. Perhaps just a 5 volt line DC line that runs from block to block to power any others.

    The clock box and "weather" station that you mention could probably easily be done by utilizing some arduino. Another thought I had would be to make a dock that could also be a passive amplifier, it would have to be more a solid block not a shell like what I had originally designed.

    Interested to see what you come up with! I agree we need to decide on a size and then we should get everyone interested the files for that base cube and then we can each design off of that. I think Harry got to busy to design yet.
     
  7. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    So I gave up on sketchup and moved onto 123D Design. Was able to do a lot more much faster. So I had some thoughts on this; have a base with walls, the top is open with 4 posts that extend up leaving 10mm of space before the top, use magnets to attach the dock plate. The dock plate is 10mm thick so when it sits ontop of the posts everything is flush. The dock plate stays in place using (4) 2.5x2.5x1mm magnets that can be placed into the pockets left in both the posts as well as the bottom of the dock plate. Use a different phone? Just swap out to a different dock plate. The Iphone dock plate features a spot so that you can press fit in the iphone dock cable. This is for the Iphone 4S. I think that in order to connect between cubes we would have to cut out the holes after 3d printing since overhang would be involved to create a hole in the side of the walls.

    Dimensions; 75mm cubed with 5mm rounded edges. Inside opening is 65x65x60mm, posts are 5mm square, dock plate 65x65x10mm. Dockplate; sits Iphone 4S at a 10 degree angle.

    Screen Shot 2013-03-07 at 10.51.41 PM.png Top view. shows detail of the dock plate and posts where magnets will sit in

    Screen Shot 2013-03-07 at 10.52.12 PM.png Bottom view, shows detail of pockets on bottom of dock plate for magnets
    Screen Shot 2013-03-07 at 10.55.47 PM.png All together, the Iphone 4S sits so that the home button is still accesible while docked

    Screen Shot 2013-03-07 at 10.56.15 PM.png All together, top view showing Iphone dock detail, dock connector will press fit into the opening
     
  8. Harry

    Harry Team ROBO 3D
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    Nice! I'm going to post a few pictures of my work in a moment!
     
    2 people like this.
  9. tesseract

    tesseract Moderator
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    These drawings look good what issue were you having drawing them?
    Are the specs you laid going to be the standard
     
  10. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    Can't wait to see Harry! Jeff- I just found sketchup tricky to use for things like this, it is great for very straight edged architectural drawings but I found modifying an object and moving an object to be really aggravating. If I wanted to move an object vertically it almost never worked right away, with 123D you are presented with 3 different arrows just click and drag to move the object the way you want. I DID have issues with it crashing on me though so save save save. These drawings were done in 123D, the first ones I showed were Sketchup

    As far as dimensions, I can't speak for the community. We haven't decided on anything (something I think we should decide if we want to do or not and if so we should come up with what that size should be) .I just like how these sizes work out for what I am picturing.
     
  11. tesseract

    tesseract Moderator
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    What if we had a base say 10mm thick that we could lay a solid core wire in say 90 degree around the corner that would be pressed into slots in the base wall. The wall would also have a slot we could insert a plug into to connect to that wire and extend out to be plugged into another base to transfer power to that cube. The base could also simply press into the 4 walls of the cube via pins. The plugs could allow you to branch the cube into any of the four directions to extend the unit. For safety we could build so that the male part of the plug could only be put in place while the base was separated and locked into place via aslot and pin. Once put together it would slide into an open slot in another base and power would be transferred. The base could be set to have different connection mainly USB style. This would allow most devices to be powered since they usually can be powered that way. Not sure about adrino power requirements.
     
  12. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    Hmm I am not sure I am following Jeff. Are you saying that the base would extend as you add onto it? So instead of it being lets say 75x75 if you had a second cube it becomes 75x150? With my design I was thinking that by just adding a connector to the sides of the cube you could simply pass power requirements through each cube, with out having any "fancy" electronics this way all you would need to do is take off the dock plate, unplug your USB cable and plugin your new one. Arduino can be powered via 5 volt USB. I'm a little confused by your description see if you can draw it up!
     
  13. tesseract

    tesseract Moderator
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    Here is a quick sketch that should cover I am working on a solidworks drawing but not done yet.
    basically you have cube walls a powerplate and base totalling 75mm in height all sandwiched together.
    The base has slots that connect the wiring plate to outside which via a flat plug that is locked in place between powerplate and base which then can be inserted into an open slot on another complete device daisy-chaining them together. so you could have one be for iphone another for your ipod another for a light etc. Each could be modularized for different purpose based on the internal of the cube. the powerplate could contain a female usb connection so the cube workings whatever they may be can run off that power. They would all press together via pins extending from the base going through the powerplate locking any plugs needed in place and then into the cube walls.

    Hopfully this makes more sense.

    P.S. The original power source for the base unit could also be brought in via the powerplate piece making the rest very modular.

    Just noticed the powerplate wiring reverses orientation for the top and right sides of course that would be corrected so the plug orientation would be the same on all four sides
     

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  14. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    Interesting, would the pin be modular as well so that you can simply pull it out of the cube and have no pins protruding? This would also only carry power, no data (or secondary information such as audio for an Iphone/Ipod). So you would need to find a wire that you could embed into the cube (or in a channel like you said) that could wire up to these pins... I don't dislike the idea just wondering if it is over engineering it.

    Other's thoughts?
     
  15. tesseract

    tesseract Moderator
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    The original thought was to only do it for power but I think an edge connector setup could work. The original idea was to simply make cutouts where a single wire could be pressed into place having connection points at the faces of the base.

    The pins actually protrude from the base the cube wall would have the holes. The base could be attached to the cube walls without the power plate and it would simply be 10mm shorter or a filler plate could be used as well that contained no plugs/outlets or power

    The interesting thing about the edge connector is that we could have a prebuilt harness built that simply lays in a hollowed out power plate with the plug/outlet be fixed in place the remaining wires could be loose in the hollowed out power plate section would just need to know what generic wiring scheme to wire it up for. Most bang for the buck.
     
  16. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    How would power go from cube to cube, via the "base power plate?"
     
  17. tesseract

    tesseract Moderator
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    Something like this
    The holes would be placed on the pins only at the points when power IS going to be transferred.User could open base and add plate to allow transfer to the new cube that way female section goes into an open male slot the alignment arch at the top align with pins on the male side and allow for correct alignment if go this detailed in wiring. Unused slots do not have any open areas that can cause shock just like a wall socket.



    By the way how did you embed your photos I can only attach them
     

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  18. Michael DiFilippo

    Michael DiFilippo Active Member

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    Hmm very interesting Jeff. Sounds like your solution would be best and work just a question of it its actually doable. I dable in electronics just some hobby stuff here and there so I certainly am no expert. I embedded them by choosing"upload a file" and then picked "thumbnail" as the embed type instead of full image it then inserted them and i was able to space them out and type by them.

    Do we like the size? does 75 cubed provide enough space for most phones and other things we would want this to work with?
     
  19. tesseract

    tesseract Moderator
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    bottom.jpg powerplate.jpg top.jpg top1.jpg
    I was actually thinking 100 myself that just under 4" that would hold anything
    you may want. Here are some images I put together in solidworks still learning so I don't know how to do alot yet.
     
  20. tesseract

    tesseract Moderator
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    A few things I thought of I watched a video of someone who had done an interlocking pieces and he wanted a extremely tight fight so he reduced the OD of the item being inserted when being attached by .1m and it was a very tight fit . Another thing I changed the magnets in the post and lid to be 2.5mm cubes that had a single face exposed so for each corner the lid and cube wall posts would each have one and they would make contact and hold the lid in place if we chose a tolerance of more then .01mm difference.
    These images are also pre discussion on more than just power but it should give you an idea of what I was thinking about the power plate is actually upside down in the images and the cutouts are one the base.
    After the discussion I would move the cutouts to the powerplate and on the power plate I would pins in the corners and then two more equally spaced form the midpoint of the edge and I would simply make the power plate hollow so wiring could simply be placed in it. this image shows the power leads and the areas where they would be pressed into.
    Source power could also come in at the level of the power plate via USB and then distributed.
     

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