Dock for sound and charging

[raboof]

I’d really like to be able to conveniently put my FP2 in a dock in my car, immediately connecting headphone audio and USB charging.

Now of course this will require some hacking at the fairphone cover side as well, since the USB port and the headphone jack are at opposite sides of the phone - but the encouraging results by @Cherry97 make this sound like a fun challenge ;).

I bet there’s people with more hardware design skills than me around here - how would you design the connection between such a dock and the phone? Any recommendations, ideas, …?

[Cherry97]

I don´t even think you would have to edit the cover How about a construction that pulls in the micro-usb-plug and the jack for the headphone

[Lidwien]

Whilst waiting for a solution you could try an app that making the contents of the screen turn 180°

[Cherry97]

isn`t that possible in the normal settings?

[Lidwien]

As far as I know in Settings, Display, When device is rotated, the screen only turns to left or right landscape, not upside down.

[Stefan]

Maybe you can build a dock that incorporates wireless charging via the QI extension. If your car radio supports bluetooth, you could connect the audio this way.

[raboof]

@Cherry97

I don´t even think you would have to edit the cover How about a construction that pulls in the micro-usb-plug and the jack for the headphone

Hmm you mean something like this:

… with a ‘pack panel’ and a way to make it ‘slide open/shut’ horizontally? Yeah that sounds like it’d work! I should work that out further.

@Stefan

Maybe you can build a dock that incorporates wireless charging via the QI extension.

Hmm maybe I should keep it to 1 hack at a time

@Stefan

If your car radio supports bluetooth, you could connect the audio this way.

Unfortunately my car (2011 Alfa MiTo) only has bluetooth for speech/headset, not for A2DP. Of course I could get a separate bluetooth connector, but at least the cheap ones have pretty terrible audio quality, not sure if that makes sense.

@Lidwien

Whilst waiting for a solution you could try an app that making the contents of the screen turn 180°

I’d like to use it in landscape mode actually, so that’s not a problem

[BertG]

You could use a 90° left/right turned micro-USB plug, so the cable will go down instead of sticking out.
I wonder, how you manage to get the plug for the headphone in, as you still have the phone in an angle, when plugging it in.
The construction might need to be made of two parts with some spring-mechanism in the middle to pull them together and fixing the plugs. Or the plugs are put into place after inserting the phone.
I really would like the see what progress this makes.

[raboof]

@BertG

You could use a 90° left/right turned micro-USB plug, so the cable will go down instead of sticking out.

Good idea!

@BertG

The construction might need to be made of two parts with some spring-mechanism in the middle to pull them together and fixing the plugs. Or the plugs are put into place after inserting the phone.
I really would like the see what progress this makes.

Yes, the idea would be to have it made from 2 ‘sliding’ parts - still figuring out the nicest way to do this (fairly new to 3d printing).

[Stefan]

I’d probably make a dock that only has one part, but I’d lead through both the USB and the aux cable.

The phone would dock into the USB-connector (be careful with the mechanic stress on the bottom module of the FP2) and then you’d plug in the aux cable in the top.

Additionally you could design an upper part of the dock that exclusively contains such a 10cm aux female-to-male extension cable.

[BertG]

But as I understood it, he want’s to make it landscape oriented, so the plugs are left and right rather than top and bottom. So you can’t plug it in at the bottom.

With regard to the stress on the plugs/connections, I really would aim for a design, where the plug is put into place in a straight way and not at an angle.