Installing a wireless charger under bedside table.

[KungFuPanda]

I’m getting an new iPhone soon and will be buying a wireless charging pad for it.

I’m into my diy so fancy taking apart my bedside cabinet and installing the charging pad on the underside of the top.

If i use a router and remove enough material under the cabinet top and leave maybe 2/3mm of wood will that be enough for the phone to still charge?

[Brainpox]

Yep, LinusTechTips did a desk build with exactly this recently, albeit through some very cheap chipboard rather than a solid wood tabletop: https://youtu.be/G2VxwFEA8xM?t=451

[otolith]

Dunno, but if you haven’t found one elsewhere there’s a pad here

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/smart-home/cha...

[davek_964]

I wonder how practical it would be. My Android phone has to be fairly carefully placed on it's wireless charger (so the charger is under the middle third of the phone) or it doesn't charge. If I was guessing where the hidden charger pad was, I think I'd get fed up with that pretty quickly.

[eltawater]

Before cutting anything, build a scaffold using something like those thin lego bricks etc to lift your phone varying heights above the charging pad to discover at which point it fails to initiate charging.

I've found my android phones with third party charging pads attached fail to register if there's a gap of more than 3-4mm between phone and charging pad.

The other big gotcha I found was that both the pad and the phone got quite hot during charging (hence the experiment to lift the phone away from the charging pad) so consider whether this may cause any issues for your table material.

Edited by eltawater on Wednesday 6th February 09:13

[anonymous-user]

Or just get 3mm of wood, put it on the charger and see if it works.....

[sjg]

Loads of videos on youtube of people doing this with desk or bedside table projects. Seems that up to 1/8" (just over 3mm) and it'll work fine, but bear in mind if you use a case you may have to go thinner still.

[ZesPak]

Did exactly this, an ikea one that worked great, tested it in the shop with about 0.5cm of a paper manual, seemed to work. Installed it in my bedside table that has a glass cover over it (<1cm), can't get it to work.

So it's very dependent on distance/material, be sure to properly test it before installing! Wouldn't recommend trying anything over 0.5cm.