Embedding Wireless Charging Into Your Laptop

Wireless charger in chromebook

Looking for a project to do [Jason Clark] thought it might be fun to integrate a spare wireless Qi charger into his HP Chromebook 14.

He started by cracking open the Qi charger — it’s held together by adhesive and four phillips screws hiding under the feet pads — all in all, not that difficult to do. Once the plastic is off, the circuit and coil are actually quite small making it an ideal choice for hacking into various things. We’ve seen them stuffed into Nook’s, a heart, salvaged for a phone hack…

Anyway, the next step was opening up the Chromebook. The Qi charger requires 5V at 2A to work, which luckily, is the USB 3.0 spec — of which he has two ports in the Chromebook. He identified the 5V supply on the board and soldered in the wires directly —  Let there be power!

While the coil and board are fairly small, there’s not that much space underneath the Chromebook’s skin, so [Jason] lengthened the coil wires and located it separately, just below the keyboard. He closed everything up, crossed his fingers and turned the power on. Success!

It’d be cool to do something similar with an RFID reader — then you could have your laptop locked unless you have your RFID ring with you!

20 thoughts on “Embedding Wireless Charging Into Your Laptop

    1. Agree with this, then again there isn’t really a -good- place anywhere else on a laptop either.. maybe if it had a CD tray that popped out and you could put your phone there. Or if it was one with dead space beside the keyboard.

    2. I dont agree with you. Quite often i leave my phone on this right spot and type over it. It doesn’t bother me at all.. Sometimes i don’t even notice it while doing so.. I guess it is more a view of if it really disturbs you or just a habit to get used to.

  1. I thought USB 3 was only rated for 900mA of current draw, with a maximum rating of 1.5A?

    Besides, embedding a device that uses the full power capability of external ports would mean that he would have to remember not to use the USB 3 ports whilst the phone is charging.

    Perhaps it would have been wiser to create a dedicated power supply…

    1. Many notebooks have charging ports that can deliver 2Amps+. Also each port have independent feed (in all machines I’ve tested) so there shouldn’t be any problem using another port while charging.

  2. In general I am a fan of qi but i dont agree tgat this is a good idea to embed one in a laptop. They generally suffer from heat and with this inside they will do more. Phone and the transceiver itself can get really hot while charging.

    Btw, there are laptops with rfid (ie. Dell latitude).

  3. Hey guys, laptop owner here.
    I tried putting the Qi coil in the back of the LCD first, but it discolored the screen as it got hot. I find that I use the chromebook 80% of the time for netflix or just other media consumption, so setting it on the deck really isn’t inconvenient for my usage. As for power, USB 3 allows up to 5 amps but requires a device not to pull more then 1.5 with data. Beyond 1.5, unless its a charge port, is supposed to disable data transfer. 3.1 ups that to 2 amps. Either way the chromebook has plenty of current to work with.

  4. Have my Sony apart here, with the view of fixing the temperamental USB2 ports.
    Wonder how feasible adding one where the NFC antenna goes is, as its basically a low power version of QI.
    Also a good mod on these: redo thermal paste but use the back casing as a heatsink for the non heatsunk active chips using a thermal pad stack held together with Kapton ™ tape.
    Same with the RAM which gets worryingly hot especially with 12800s

  5. It’s 2019 and this is becoming a thing, Samsung launched on it’s new flagship laptop, and I’m looking everywhere on the internet to see if someone tried to do it on a regular laptop, I’m planning on doing this, but I have questions, so I’m wondering about the heat the pad generates, and the power supply I have a cheap $5 soldering iron cause I don’t have money for a good one, so am I just gonna end up ruining my laptop, also once u solder it to the usb port can you use the usb port while the pad is charging a device, or is the current split, rendering the usb port useless? Thanks

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