A while back I bought a QI charger PCB off eBay for $3.55. I wanted to build a wooden phone dock with built in wireless charging. I still had some wood scraps my neighbor gave me a while back, which is why the project including all materials cost me < $5.

The QI charging PCB:


I used a Dremel and chisels to create a compartment for the PCB. I left about 5mm of wood between the PCB and the phone.

1 hour and lots of wood chips later:

Next I glued the back and the bottom part together. The dowels are used as spacers to position the back cover flush with the surface. I added a screw to one of the spacers to hold the back cover in place. I should have added the spacers before gluing the the main parts because the bottom part prevented me from drilling a hole into one of the bottom spacers to add a screw there as well. The back cover stays in position with one screw just fine though.

Instead of using a plug I soldered a USB cable onto the PCB to minimize the footprint. The PCB with plug wouldn’t have fit into the compartment.

Fixing the PCB with some hot glue:

The final product after applying some Tung Oil Finish. I enabled Android Daydream while charging. For this picture I used the stock Daydream clock but I actually use DashClock Widget with a bunch of extensions to show weather, notifications and calender entries.

With Daydream enabled the charger charges pretty slowly. I takes about 4-5 hours for the phone to recharge. This is fine with me as I keep the phone there over night and while I’m at my desk as well.