MAKE A PHONE DOCK & CHARGING PAD

This easy DIY project can help ensure your phone is charged up and close at hand, says Techno Tom Bedworth

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Our camper suffered a mysterious lurgy a little while back, when the front brake calipers became non-floating. This resulted in only one side of the brake discs actually being used. The brakes are good again now, though, with new discs and pads, the calipers stripped down and copper greased up so they float again.

Now, this might seem irrelevant to an article that's supposed to be about making a phone dock, but read on.

Like most of us, we are addicted to our smartphones (Android in our case) - we use them for everything, including solving sudoku puzzles and crosswords, language translation and much more.

Phone-charging options

When the front seats of our camper are in the forward-facing/driving position, my wife (our navigator on the road) has a small shelf alongside her left ear, and atop this is an inductive charging pad. We had discovered that it’s usually the USB connectors on phones that wear out, so using inductive charging became a no-brainer for us.

We wanted our next phones to have builtin inductive charging, hence we followed the kids' advice and bought a couple of Huawei P30s.

Now, going back to the 'van's brakes these bring much more confidence when driving. The motorhome will stop on a sixpence and has loads of power, especially when not towing.

The problem arose when a rather inattentive driver dashed into the safe braking zone just in front of us, before realising that the traffic in the queue had come to a halt.