Hilton

Finally got around to doing a mod i"ve been intending to do for a year on my '87, so I can drive around with the ashtray closed

The PO had an alarm system (or perhaps the P-PO) where the installer hacked holes in the console by the clock.



So my first order of business was to make it worse A 19mm holesaw makes a nasty mess of the vinyl/foam/plastic mix!



But there's method to the madness.. here's what I installed in the space. The ghetto red paint on the inside of one USB port is important - I modified that USB port so that it will charge Android devices with 1amp (they recognise it as an AC charger now). The white port will charge i-devices with 1A too. Both ports will work with regular usb devices at the usual 500ma.

The charger is actually slightly larger than 19mm, but I wanted a tight fit - the hole in the clock edge is 22mm)



Here's the backside of it - I modified the adaptor to give it pigtails, and then made up some little harnesses to intercept the switched power and ground from the cigar lighter socket. I also added some heatshrink to provide strain relief for the ground wire as the only point to solder it to was a weakness.



And lastly, this is one of the USB adaptors I did this with - I bought a few of them a year ago to use in other cars, and planned to do this in my '87 to clean up the irritating holes in the console.



Like most ebay chargers, they're designed to work with iphone/pod/pad so will do 1A for those devices out the box using Apple's irritating differential voltage signalling on the data pins. Android devices just check to see if the data pins are shorted to determine whether its a charger, or a computer.

So the charging mod was just to desolder a couple of surface mount resistors, and then bridge the two pads for the data pins on the one port. I've done this charger mod several times over the last few years, e.g. making a 4-port android AC charging station for family phones in the kitchen.

Lastly - I was amused on installing it in the car to notice that it looks similar in layout to the temperature sensor vent

I'll snap a pic of it in the car tomorrow.

chitown928s4

Nice job I had a similar epiphany with my ashtray charger. Looked ugly when in use and only one device could be use. Heres my solution using similar usb chargers I can now plug upto 4 devices. I also places leds from alarm and put kickdown switch there.

Alan

I like how that USB socket sort of mimics the look of the internal air sensor vent. It was a good way to cleanup the mess you had on that panel.

Overall though I still prefer to have these out of sight - so either off on the passenger side of the console or better yet hidden in the armrest cassette box (for phones/ipod etc).

Alan