Homemadeish qi wireless charging for my SR

Ok so I got a new phone that supports qi wireless charging, I always before plugged in my phone and laid it in the little cubby at the front of the center console. So at first I thought I would just source the parts and put the factory charger in, well in looking into it the shelf part was $135 on ebay, if I had money to waste i wouldn't have an SR in the first place so I got a new plan. I found a 3 coil fast charging circuit board on Amazon for $8 and a 12v step down transformer for $16, the plan is to remove console and mount to back side of the cubby so when I lay my phone in it charges automatically. I plan to pull 12v power off the 12v power outlet in the console.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071LFPHSD/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=A3PDILZSEGAE5L&psc=1
Is the qi charger and the transformer is

12v to 5v Converter, DROK Waterproof USB Charging Adapter Voltage Regulator DC DC Buck Converter 12V 24V to 5 V 9V 12V 4.2A Power Supply Transformer Step-Down Module QC 3.0 for Vehicle Phone Charge

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072JC1DQF/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=AFHAE9RJVUMB&psc=1
When I get started on it i will take pics as I go, may video idk guess it depends on if anyone is interested and how well it works.

 

I’m in! Thanks!

 

Sound like a plan!

 

Well I got the usb 12 volt transformer yesterday, but the qi wireless circuit board is coming from China, so be here sometime in march it said. But in looking at the 12 volt transformer it has a built in fuse holder and had a 1 amp fuse in it? Idk if that will be sufficient, I was expecting a 5 amp fuse but 1 amp was surprising, guess we will see how it goes when the circuit board arrives .

 

Well my circuit board arrived today, I don't have time to mess with it this eve, but have been playing around with it, seems to work pretty good, I'm worried about getting it through the shelf and my thin phone case but we will see soon. It has a small led circuit board, about the size of a postage stamp or a little smaller with a red led for not charging and a blue for charging, I am toying with the idea of putting it in where the display is for the auto climate control should be, so I can tell it's working while driving, guess I'll have to pull it all apart and see what's what.

 

I’m patiently waiting bro! Hahahaha whatever you come up to I’ll replicate.. car electronics is not my thing.. d

 

I've been testing the distance on it and hope it will charge through the cubby plastic, I know it has stiffening ribs on the back of the cubby I have to trim down, I'm looking at thurs or Fri b4 I can mess with it I think.

 

Ok so I had time today so I got out and worked on my wireless charger today. I am gonna make this a long one because I took a lot of pictures. So first things first you have to remove the console. Take shift knob off by pulling down on ring under knob to remove boot from it and unscrew knob. Set parking brake. Then start at cup holders, I put panel removal tool in edge and pulled up till clips started coming loose, then open console lid and pop rest of console off. There is a good post here on how to remove this. https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/trim-removal-how-to-solved.470055/ .
So after this was removed, I pulled the carpet out of the armrest console removed the two 10mm bolts and unplugged the 12v outlet and removed armrest console. There are three screws holding front portion of console on and a few clips, remove screws and pull console up from rear and to the back to pop clips on the cubby loose.
The three screws will be here, forgot to take pics before I removed it. Ok from here I took the cubby out, it has ribbed reinforcements that will need to be removed, I took snips and cut them and then used a sharp chisel to remove them all

I needed to remove back under the lip area because the charging coils wouldn't go deep enough.
Once I got it all removed I then put the coils side down towards cubby and plugged it in in the house and tested it for placement with my phone...no pics of this cause my phone was on charger. After I found my placement I hot glued the coils to the back side of the cubby, and put a few dabs of hot glue on the board to the back side of the coils to hold it in place too. so this charger came with a small circuit board with two small leds, red shows power on and blue means its charging. My original idea was to put it behind panel where the digital a.c. controls would be....this was a no go, I guess its painted on front cause I disassembled it and tried scratching it a little and nothing no light got through....so plan B was to use the blank above cubby to drill holes in and mount the board behind so leds will show.
I had to cut and lengthen the wires to this led.
I installed the 12v usb outlet I got under the console, I attached the positive wire to the yellow wire on the 12v outlet in the armrest and the negative wire to the black white wire.
So now put it all back together and plug the charger into the usb outlet with a short micro usb cable. after that I installed the blank back in after I put spade terminals on both sides so I could get the wires through the blank hole. power on no charging red

Charging, blue led is lit...wife not pleased I made her give me her phone to take these pics
I am going to charge up an older cell phone I have and take video of charger functioning. I will post it when I get it. And will keep updated on how well its functioning.

 

NICE. Great job and writeup!!!!

I have the OEM Qi charger and it sucks. I wonder if what you have would be the ticket to fixing it's shortcomings?

Also, plotting how to install in my Mustang...

 

Well my wife's Camry has qi charger factory if mine works out good, I may be swapping hers out.

 

Well got to try my charger out and I'm happy to say it worked like I wanted it to. I was a little confused this morning, with my battery full the light went from red to blue then blue turned off so there was no lights on, I figured since my phone was full it didn't need charged so it kicked off. On my way home from work I laid it in the cubby blue light kicked on and it charged from 75% to 89% in about 45 mins, not great but not bad, and my phone got warm like it always does while wireless charging not hot or anything. I made a short YouTube video of it in action https://youtu.be/iSa6R25jYr8

 

Update on charging, with my new phone and how busy I've been at work I haven't ran battery down far enough to see how quick it charges a low battery, but I've been getting about 1% every 3 mins, which gives me a 15% bump on my 45 min drive home. I am pretty happy so far, even if my phone slides from one side of cubby to other(bout 1.5 inches total) it stays charging.

 

Hi nice post looks like you have a hd case on your phone have you tried charging without case?

 

Yea I have a case and it charges fine with the case and without the case I've tried both, and there seems to be no difference in charging with or without case.

 

I like using the Qi charger but if I was designing my own I would have put it in a more convenient place. Most likely, Toyota's engineers designed it with the philosophy that you shouldn't view the phone while driving, and that makes some sense. But I'm thinking about getting another Qi charger/bracket to mount on my dash multimount within my view and reach.

 

If you look on Amazon they make phone mounts that have the qi charger built in to it. I don't have a link or I would post it. But that would hold it where you can see it and charge it wirelessly at the same time.

 

Decent charge, I’d rather it be faster because my commute isn’t as long. The only thing holding me back from wireless charging is that I plug my phone in for CarPlay.