WIP: Galaxy Note 2 Car Dock Part 2 (video)

It's been a while but I've been slowly making progress on my Note 2 car dock. In my last update I made a frame to test out the charging out of foam core, but now I've made one out of Lexan.

My last update ended with the modifying of a pen spring mechanism for the moving platform of my holder. I next used the dimensions I noted down in the previous post and cut out 5 pieces of Lexan.

I had to connect the 4 strips of Lexan to make the frame, so I temporarily stuck them together with hot glue, then drilled holes and attached them together with screws making sure that the centre rectangular piece was able to move in and out freely in the frame.

I next had to make an area to attach the pen mechanism from the first post so I used pieces of aluminum and bent them using a bender. I then attached the rectangular Lexan piece to the pen mechanism allowing it to move up and down for the phone.

After making sure that it all fit, I attached the Touchstone charging dock to the Lexan using some epoxy putty. The two metal rods in the picture are to ensure that the plate does not extend or retract at an angle.

When testing the dock, I found that using only one spring was not reliable. Due to the added weight of the Touchstone dock and the phone, the spring would sometimes jam and not be able to extend back out after it has been retracted. To solve this, I added 4 more pen mechanisms (1 on each corner to balance it out) that would help push the Touchstone dock, the Lexan it is attached to, and the phone out. I did modify these 4 pen mechanisms as I did with the original one because the original one only needed a small nudge to full extend when jammed.

To make it look nice, I wanted the dock to look like it was a tablet screen turned off when the phone wasn't in place. What I did was use thin sheets of clear acrylic and spray painted one side of it black. I then attached the painted side of the acrylic to the Lexan so that the clear, unpainted side of the acrylic faces out, giving it a smooth, clean look.

Here is a video of it working.

Now that the dock is done, I attached it to the Navigation bezel from my previous project, plugged in a 12V to USB charger into my car and attached the USB to the Touchstone dock.

While testing it out in the car, I encountered a small problem. At times when I sudden slow or brake, the phone moves forward slightly then back, causing the phone to disconnect and reconnect the charger which could potentially damage the phone's battery.

I am now trying to think up some solutions to this problem. Some solutions that I'm working on are adding a metal place underneath the phone's battery cover and adding magnets to the dock for more hold or using anti-slip sticky mats that were designed to hold phones, keys, and other objects on a car dash without it falling but still allowing you to remove them when you want.