Rednroll

Prelude: My wife had a BLU Vivo XL phone where after only owning it for 3 months, the thing stopped charging through the USB connection. She reads online, that this seems to be a common problem with this phone. She decides since she's in a pinch, to go out and purchase a wireless charger to get her by while she works through BLU Manufacture Warranty Hell. Seeing as though I'm the techy one in the family, I ask her....."Are you sure that phone supports Qi wireless charging?" She responds to me, "well I read on a forum where some other guy had the exact same problem with this same phone and that's what he did, was purchase a wireless charger to fix it." I say...OK. So she runs out to Walmart and for $32 purchases a Samsung Wireless Charging base.



She takes it out of the box, plugs it in.....no charging??? Hmmm?? Bad Charger??? Well, let me try my Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, I'm pretty certain that supports Qi charging. Yep....WOW!! Works great. That's pretty awesome, I really like this thing. Well, let me look up the specs on your BLU Vivo XL phone...Wireless Charging capability=NO. Sorry, your new BLU phone doesn't support wireless charging but I really like this charger for my S7. In fact, I'ld like to get 4 of them for everywhere I typically set my phone down at. Bedroom nightstand, Home desk, Work desk, and inside my Jeep. Hmmm?? At $32 each, that's $128....much more than I would like to spend to charge my phone.

I go on ebay and there's a bunch of "Open Box Returns" of these Samsung wireless chargers being sold for $7-$8. Must be a lot of people like my wife buying these and later realizing it doesn't work with their phone. So I buy (4) of them from ebay and tell her to go return this one to Walmart, since I can buy 4 at the price you paid for this one and I'm not in a dire need like yourself.

I always had trouble trying to figure out where to set my phone down in our JKs, since there's really not that much in the way of flat surfaces aside from under the parking brake lever, which sucks. Most of the time I would just set it in the passenger seat, but that doesn't work too well when the wife is riding with me. I find the change pocket in the center console is a good area, nearby the power outlets to try out the charger. It works great, except I don't have a flat surface to set the charger on where the charger is constantly moving around on top of the pocket edges, and my phone in return is falling on the floor every time I make a sharp turn.

It's MOD project Time!!!

Rednroll

I purchased a 1ft long black USB cable for <$2. I decided to power the wireless charger off of the ignition switched power outlet for safety purposes. (ie I don't want to burn my Jeep down using aftermarket products connected to the always on outlet). I ran the cable through the netting to keep things tidy looking.


What I needed to do was create a flat surface where the change pocket was located. I didn't ever use that pocket for change anyways and it was pretty much useless to me but that area was about the perfect size for this Samsung wireless charger and was located directly in front of the power outlets to plug in the wireless charging base.

Here's what I came up with.

Most important tool.....I borrowed some of this from my 5 y/o son, to make a template mold of the shape of the pocket I needed to fill. If you have a better technique, then let me know.


I traced around the Play-doh mold onto a 3/4" thick wooden board. Then used a Jig saw to cut out a piece of wood the size of that pocket. It took me 3 attempts before I got something that worked well.


I sanded the piece of wood down, rounded off the sharp edges and then coated it with black Plasti-dip.


Inserted the Plasti-dipped pedestal into the change pocket. It fit in nice and snug due to the rubber coating of the plasti-dip. No drilling, glue or anything else needed that would leave any permanent damage.


On the back side of the Samsung charger, it has a nice rubber pad to keep it from slipping on smooth surfaces. I didn't want this thing to move, so I taped off the bottom leaving the rubber pad exposed and hit it with a nice thick coat of spray adhesive.

Then stuck the charger onto the pedestal.


Phone wirelessly charging!!!




I now have a flat surface to set my phone down on and it charges my phone as well without having the USB wire mess getting wrapped around my gear shift like it always did and no need to be plugging the usb cable into my phone any longer.

The Samsung charger has a nice non slip rubber ring on top of the charging base. I took quite a few accelerated sharp turns and my phone didn't move, staying in place.

This ended up being a $9 mod for me.
Wireless Charger= $7
1ft USB cable=$2

Perfect!!!

karls10jk

I got pretty excited for a minute because I've got that same base and my Sammy S5 supports the wireless charging as well. The only holdup is there's no change spot with the manual. Back to the drawing board

akpostal

Thats pretty decent. My 14 doesnt have the same type of tray. I went the more expensive route with a Vector Offroad Dock, and Ram mount.

After my S2 started shooting sparks and smoke out of the USB port I only use the wireless charging with my Note 5.

Rednroll

Definitely worth getting an auto just for this mod.

Four Low

Jeeps bring out the Creative Genius in some of us. Using Play Dough for pattern, Priceless !

Rednroll

Sometimes having younger kids pays off. I kept wondering to myself, "How the heck am I gonna get the exact shape of the inside of that pocket or figure out a way to level it into a flat surface? Thoughts that came up.....Poor hot wax in it? Spend all day trimming a piece of card board? Poor some Plati-dip in it and wait a week for it to dry and harden? Then as I'm there sitting on the couch and watching TV, my kid is on the floor next to me, playing with some play-doh and about to mess up the carpeting with it, and I jump up to stop him.....and the light bulb goes on. Son.....you better give that to dad, so you don't make mom really upset by messing up the carpet. Dad's gonna take this out in the garage where it belongs.

Rednroll

Photobucket images fixed!!

Rednroll

I just finished doing a little upgrade to my wireless phone charger. I decided to move to the next generation Fast/Quick Charger.

There are 3 pieces you need to be able to enable wireless quick charging /.(My current 3 pieces)
1. A phone which supports wireless charging/quick charge (My phone Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, Supports QC v2.0)
2. A Fast/Quick Charging wireless pad. (Samsung Wireless Fast Charger 2018 model, Supports QC v3.0)

3. An Adaptive Car Charger. (Aukey Flush Car Charger Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0, Supports QC v3.0)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KZHKF4I/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1

The last part is the most confusing to figure out. The ones that say they support either Qualcomm Quick charge 2.0 or 3.0 is what you will need for Quick Charging your phone. Standard car chargers will output 5.0Volts and will not be able to enable the quick charge (QC) feature, regardless of the amount of current they can put out. An adaptive charger is able to switch it's output from the standard USB 5 volts, to 9volts and will do so when it detects it is connected to a Quick Charge device. The thing I liked most about the Aukey Qualcomm v3.0 charger, is that it was one of the few QC v3.0 chargers that had a flat panel mount. It's able to come in a flat panel mount due to only having a single USB charging port. I purchased another charger which also supported Qualcomm v3.0 and had 2 charging ports available which was nice, but it was larger in size and stuck out from my outlet about 1 1/2 inches, then add another inch for the cable plugged into it, and I found I was banging my hand into it when shifting my JK into park and it didn't look quite as tidy as well.

The thing to keep in mind with all this is that the 3 needed pieces will always fall back to their combined lowest common denominator charging rate and this includes the Quick Charging version mode as well. For example, with my 3 listed devices above you will see my phone supports up to QC v2.0, my charging pad supports up to QC v3.0, and my adapter supports up to QC v3.0. Since all 3 of my devices do not support QC v3.0, the charging state will fall back to QC v2.0 due to my phone not supporting QC v3.0. When you connect a standard 5V USB car charger which is not adaptive, then the devices will fall back to a standard charging mode. The system will still wirelessly charge but just not up to each individual devices max potential charging rate.

Here is a diagram which shows the available charging modes and their charging rates.


This is the Samsung Wall outlet charger which comes with the charging pad. Notice the important parts are present that I mentioned earlier about it being an Adaptive charger and is therefore able to output 9Volts. I previously purchased an inexpensive wireless charging pad which stated it was capable of fast charging but the pad didn't come with the adaptive charger. When I tried it out, I could not get my phone to charge in fast charging mode. I contacted the seller and they told me I needed a charger capable of outputting 1.2A....which I now know was incorrect information. I needed to purchase a separate Adaptive charger, which was capable of outputting 9Volts.



Here's the Re-install with the new fast charger setup. The black color of the charging base matches better with my interior. I also prefer that the base now sits up, so you can more easily see the screen of the phone. The base allows you to charge your phone in either portrait or landscape directions. However, I'm unable to put the phone in the portrait orientation due to the height of my phone interferes with my lower IP buttons and therefore does not sit flat up against the charging base. If I moved the base forward to eliminate that problem, then I covered my O/D on/off button.




Testing out and confirming the Charging rates:
I purchased this USB multi-meter, where it is able to display the USB charging voltage, current, and can also detect which Fast Charging mode is currently active.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FMQZVW2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s01?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
So it shows the charging voltage has been raised to the 9Volt level, and also shows it is currently in QC v2.0 charging rate mode.


My phone also has a couple screens which will show if it is in Fast charging or standard charging modes.

Here's the top lockout screen.


As well, if you go into SETTINGS>DEVICE MAINTENANCE>BATTERY it will show the charging rate in more detail there as well.

I switched between the Aukey QC v3.0 charger and another standard 5V/2.4A car charger which showed although I had the fast charging pad connected and a phone which supported wireless fast charging, it dropped down to the standard charging rate due to the standard charger not being able to switch to a 9V output voltage.

Standard Charger vs. Adaptive charger wireless charging rate comparison

jedg

The pictures aren't showing dang it!