How To: Wireless Charging Hack

Some really interesting developments were today posted by one of our community members, Faz, who alerted us to the fact that Jolla’s Vesa Matti tweeted some news of a wireless charging other half:

The hack which has been illustrated by one of the Jolla engineers can be read in full at http://talk.maemo.org.

What you need:
– Double sided glue tape or superglue
– QI receiver pad. I used following in this 1st experiement: http://www.ebay.ie/itm/290994467448 (But any 5V flat QI receiver will do).
– QI transmitter pad. In demo I used that Nokia one, but it really sucks as it is quite picky about the orientation. (I never got it working pad beeing inside the bag, but works when its outside). Most likely any generic QI charger would work.
– Some conductive wire, I just cutted legs off from generic resistors like this http://goo.gl/wvYRI3
– Soldering iron to connect 5V pins to right places. (receiver above has 5V and GND in different order that the pins on device, so I needed to hack a bit). I’ll try to find receiver which orientation is better in the future.
– Small dremel & sharp knife (optional, if you want to shave half millimeter plastic off from back cover. Makes receiver fit better under the cover. Although it does with even without shaving).

Howto:
– Shave off some plastics, and put receiver about over the place where battery is. Test that back cover closes and it looks ok.
– Either use double sided tape (I used that) or glue, and put receiver module in place.
– Put some double sided tape over the small hole where charger pins would connect.
– Solder wires to 5V and GND, and bend them in shape and press them down so they connect to double sided tape, you can also use glue to secure them in place. But good double sided glue tape is enough.

There are also some accompanying images which may help you perform the wireless charging hack if you fancy getting stuck in to some simple DIY electronic mods:

IMG_3961 IMG_3962 IMG_3963 IMG_3964

Future improvements:
– find a better QI transmitter
– QI receiver is only for 650mA, and charger pins support upto 1000mA, so hunting for receiver that supports 1000mA begins.
When I measured voltage with Fluke, it seems to give 4.99V on idle (which is ok), but 4.7-4.8V when charging (which makes it charge it a little slower than it would be at 5.0V), but lets see if 1000mA versions appear on my doorsteps someday.

We’re definitely looking forward to getting the soldering iron out when we finally get our hands on our Jolla – are you going to try this ?

Sail On!

 

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JollaTides

Chief Editor at JollaTides
Here to spread word about Jolla and Sailfish OS.
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