DTN

I couldn't find a mount for my otterbox. I built a car mount and painted it black. I ended up making it from the belt clip on my otterbox and an old garmin window-mounted GPS. Here's some pictures of the build process.



My first attempt was to try to fiberglass the outside of the otterbox to make a mount....

















This ended up being too much work and I came up with a better idea.







1 remove belt clip portion from otterbox







2. Saw down Otterbox beltclip so that the unit can be slid into place with USB cable



3. slide phone into otterbox case and insert USB.





4. first superglue USB in proper position, then epoxy for extra hard durability







5. saw back part off of old window mounted unit







6. superglue back plate in place







7. epoxy backplate in place







Ok... so now for power... I used a USB port and a regulator... This was an epic failure because pins 2 and 3 on the USB port should have been pulled HIGH to represent this is a charging device. I left them open and the unit appeared to go into USB Powered device mode where my phone was supplying 5V to the charger..... Anyways... this would have worked if I had read up on USB standards first but I ended up going with a 12V adapter stuck into a 12V socket in my ceiling.



Circuit made (should have added a resistor from 5V to the middle two pins)









Covered with non-conductive, flexible glue to keep everything in place and make sure it would not be able to short circuit.







Finally I painted the entire thing black. It looks great now. Everything is wonderful. After 3 days of drying it was able to be used.







The unit separates so the suction cup mount can be adjusted easily.







You can see on the back, it's not too bad once it's painted







This large cutout allows the otterbox cable cover to be opened and just slide right in.



























Now, if I had this to do over again, I would have applied a 619Kohm resistor between pins 4 and 5 on the mini-usb. This would have enabled car mode. Car mode automatically brings up car home. As it is, this is simply a car-charger circuit.



Overall, this project is awesome!. This allows me to have my phone mounted above eye-level which is great for GPS

Stocker

For a second when I saw the title I was thinking I would see

Regit

^^ Hahahaha :biggrin: ... Looks good DTn

CBowley603

That is pretty sick. Just curious though, why not just use a car-charger for power?

DTN

Because I made a charging dock so that there are no messy cables. As it is, I've got 2-3 inches of cable tucked neatly up in the corner where its not noticeable. A charger would have between 1 to 6 feet of cable. This also puts my GPS right where I need it and makes it easy to use it as an extra set of gauges hooked to my cars ECU. A car charger is just a cable. This also allows it to be positioned.

CBowley603

Cool. It is a sweet setup. I think I may try it out. I am going to use the car charger though (because I'm lazy).

187sks

I want to replace my gauge cluster with an android tablet. Haven't figured out exactly how I want to go about it yet though.



I might do something like this in the meantime. Pretty nice execution.