Hidden Wireless Charging in my Desk

Nick Momrik1 Comment

After getting a set of AirPods this year I thought it would be nice to have wireless charging at my desk. I like using the touch pad on my MacBook pro, so this mouse pad drawer doesn’t get used and I got the idea to embed a charger in it.

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I bought a cheap $10 wireless charger.

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It won’t charge very quick, but it doesn’t have to when I’m sitting there working most of the day. I figured it would be a fun project and the worst that could happen is I fail and I’m out $10. I opened up the case and there wasn’t much to it.

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Then there was only one small screw to remove and the electronics were free.

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I forgot to take any other pictures until I had put everything back together. After pulling up the top of the mouse pad, there was some foam underneath. I traced the electronics and USB cable to make a cut out in the foam. Then I used a chisel to carve out the particle board until there was a deep enough recess. I drilled a few holes for wires and the LED. I had cut the LED off of the circuit board so I could route it to the front of the drawer. I soldered on some wires to connect the LED back to the board, hot glued everything in place, and then used super glue to put the mouse pad top back on. Overall it was an ugly hack job. Over to the right is a picture of the holes and wiring underneath.

Check out this short video of the charging in action.

BTW, the mouse pad drawer has two identical halves, so if I ever decide to use a mouse again (it’s been at least 5 years since I had one), I’m good to go.

The Alfred Emoji Pack

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In the past I tried an Alfred workflow for inserting emoji, which was pretty terrible. When I upgraded my computers to Alfred 4 this weekend, I went on a hunt for a real solution and found The Alfred Emoji Pack, which is great because it uses the built-in snippets feature. After you launch Alfred, type your shortcut for Snippets (s in my case), a colon, and some text. It’ll show you suggestions and when you pick one it will be pasted in to whatever app you’re using at the time.

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Where it really becomes powerful is when you turn on Automatically expand snippets by keyword in Alfred.

Odyssey Red Ball Putter

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Over a decade ago I had one of the first Odyssey 2-Ball putters and for the last eight years I’ve been putting with an Odyssey White Ice D.A.R.T. Yesterday I picked up this Odyssey Red Ball putter and drove straight to a golf course where I broke 80 for the first time this year.

The Red Ball will help me align everything properly and consistently each time I address a putt. With good speed it will translate to more made putts and lower scores.

I really like how an oversized putter grip gives me more feel. I’d been using a Super Stroke Slim 3.0 since 2015, a Winn Jumbo Lite before that, and I just got done installing a Super Stroke Traxion Tour 3.0 grip on this new putter.

Saturday Workouts

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I’m dealing with a calf strain as well as babying my back after a couple of tweaks, so I’m exercising in the garage more than normal. I don’t usually put workouts on this site, but what I came up with today was fun, so I thought I’d share.

The first workout was a pyramid of single arm dumbbell shoulder presses. Start at 5# and do 5 reps on each arm. Add 5# each set, continuing to do 5 reps per arm. Repeat all the way up to 50#. Do a second set with the 50# dumbbell for each arm and then decrease by 5# each set back down to 5#. It ends up being 20 sets for 100 total reps on each arm.

The second workout I did was:

20-15-10-5

  • Burpees
  • Dumbbell Box Step Overs (24″, 35# DBs)

Give these a try and let me know what you think.