Gadget Storage

Wallet holder box???

 

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?

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

Top view. shows detail of the dock plate and posts where magnets will sit in

Bottom view, shows detail of pockets on bottom of dock plate for magnets
All together, the Iphone 4S sits so that the home button is still accesible while docked

All together, top view showing Iphone dock detail, dock connector will press fit into the opening

 

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.

 

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!

 

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?

 

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

 

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?