Wireless Charging for the Pixel Tablet

I bought a Pixel tablet for my stereo system, mostly to select music to play from Tidal and Lyrion Music Server. When I bought it I decided not to buy the charging dock because I didn't need the speaker and I figured the battery would last a while for my light use. Big mistake. The battery in the tablet only lasts a couple days on a charge, even with power saving turned on, and it seems like every time I pick it up to use it, it needs to be charged. No one, including the Pixel store, seems to have the charging docks in stock (trade war anyone?), and used ones go for far too much money on ebay. I'm waiting for Google to email me when the charging docks are available again, but in the meantime, I had to do something about keeping it charged.

I have a 10W Qi wireless charging pad that is sitting unused. I thought that if the tablet has wireless charging built-in, I could just use that charging pad. Nope- no wireless charging (Really! Was it designed in 2005?). So then I looked for a wireless charging receiver that I could stick to the back of the tablet. Yes, readily available and cheap!

The wireless charging receiver I used plugs into the USB C port on the tablet with a flex ribbon cable so the pad can be stuck to the back of the tablet using one small piece of industrial double stick tape.

Here's the back of the tablet with the wireless charging receiver attached. I know it isn't pretty, but it beats having to plug in a cable every time I need to charge it.

Wireless charging transmitter top side. It's about 96mm in diameter and about 6.2mm thick.

Wireless charging transmitter bottom side.

The design process started with measuring and creating a CAD model of the tablet. Then I added a model of the charging pad, and finally, a model of the wireless charging receiver. From there the design was pretty easy- position the charging transmitter and receiver on the back of the tablet model, then make a tilted cradle to hold it all in place. I also made a hole for the cable that powers the wireless charging pad. 

CAD render of the tablet sitting on the charging stand.

CAD render of the charging stand with the wireless charging transmitter in place. The Transmitter is positioned so that when the tablet is placed on the stand, the wireless charging receiver will be in perfect alignment with the transmitter. The chamfered notch to the left of the transmitter makes room for the cable that connects the receiver to the USB C port on the edge of the tablet.

I printed on UMMD using PETG filament in 0.25 mm layers with 15% triangular infill using a 1 mm line width (1mm nozzle). It used about 450g of filament. I added some rubber feet to keep it from sliding around on the furniture.

Note: When the wireless receiver arrived I tested it on the tablet and it worked fine for 10-20 minutes that it sat on the charging pad. As soon as I finished printing this stand I tried using it with the tablet. The transmitter LED lit up blue, indicating it was talking to the receiver, but it would not charge the tablet. It seems the wireless receiver failed, so I returned it to Amazon for replacement. The replacement  came in a few days and worked fine.

Tablet charging on wireless charging stand. Oops! Sorry about the photo of the disgusting suspected pedophiles!

You can DL the CAD model of the charging stand here, but you may have to modify it to fit your wireless charging pad and receiver. 

When Google notifies me that the charging dock is available, I may buy one and move this one from the living room to the bedroom so I can use the tablet as an alarm clock. Or I may just save the money and print another one of these for the bedroom.