| Ever since I got my GPS, I've been wanting to find a way to have it mounted when in the car, so I don't have to hold it and try to drive at the same time. Every single commercial one I've seen involves a suction mount attached to the windshield. I absolute hate this idea, as it blocks your view, will leave a difficult to clean mark when removed, and I wouldn't trust it to stay there in winter to begin with. Hence... I decided to build a mount for a place in the car already made to hold stuff... the cup-holder. Here... we have an ordinary plastic travel-mug, which I got for free when buying a pair of shoes... so no great loss here :P | |
| Now... since having the GPS sit perfectly horozontal would be hideously annoying to look at while driving, especially since it's somewhat in front of and beside you... the cup requires some minor adjusting. Mr. Hacksaw has the answer to THAT problem! It's a pretty rough job... but it'll do. I got the angle by sitting in the car as I normally would, held the GPS beside the mug, and once it was at the angle that I best liked, I drew a line on the side of the mug at that same angle. Aaaaand the hacksaw figured out the rest. | |
| Now... since it looks like the mug was chewed apart by rabid squirrels, it needs a little bit of TLC to make it... y'know... not look like crap. It's at times like this when I turn to my good old friend 'sandpaper'. | |
| And you can see the result of said paper of sand. A little bit of sandpaper and a lot of elbow-grease later... and we have it smoothed down and perfectly flat. Excellent... now it's time to create the "lid", so to speak. | |
| So... what to make the lid out of. I scoured around a little bit to try to find some plastic of some sort, and found that I had some plexiglass sheets lying around from a project a little over a year ago. It's also clear, so if I remember to put something in the mug to weigh down the base of it... you'll be able to see it. I'm thinking those coloured, flattened decorative marbles... but we'll see if those are heavy enough. First... the lid. | |
| And so with a little bit more help from Mr. Hacksaw, some side-cutters for smaller adjustments, and sandpaper for the edges, we end up with a fairly oval circle of plastic... soon to be glued to the mug with my old friend psycho-glue. BUT... that will have to wait until I can attach the GPS clip thing, and put some kind of weight in the mug. | |
| After choosing a place for the GPS clip (which had first started it's life as a neck lanyard), I drilled four holes to let me attach things securely. Luckly, being the type of person who makes chainmaille stuff, I had some 16-gauge stainless steel wire around. Twisting it tightly, the clip ended up solid as a rock. As an added bonus, since there was now holes in the lid, any problems related to glue drying, moisture being inside of the cup, or air pressure would be eliminated. | |
| Aaaand also because I'm a chainmaille-freak, I made a little loop under the clip and created a very dense mobius ball around it. Virtually invisible when closed, I will likely be the only one to ever actually see it or know that it's there (besides those reading this, of course). But I'm weird like that sometimes :P | |
| As added weight in the bottom of the mug (as well as to make something to look at through the clear, albeit somewhat scuffed at this point, plastic) I added some spare galvanized steel scales, used for several chainmail items. I was originally going to add coloured decorative marbles, but they weren't heavy enough for my linkings. Hence... the scales should weigh it down nicely, and chainmaille-theme it up a little more to boot. Last thing I need is a top-heavy mug falling out and getting lodged under the brake pedal or something when I go around a turn :P. This should at least make that already significantly unlikely scenario even less likely still. A quick check confirms that the mug is now heavier than the GPS itself. Excellent. It still won't be COMPLETELY bottom-heavy, but at least it won't be top-heavy. Is middle-heavy a valid term? | |
| I decided to take a picture of this stage, as it just looks so wrong on so many different levels. For the purposes of gluing the clear plate onto the mug, I wanted to make sure that they stayed EXACTLY flush with eachother. I first tried just electrical tape, since it can stretch to press the plate onto the mug tightly, but due to the diagonal aspect of the mug, it still slid the plate down about 1mm from being flush. At that point, I took pencils and taped them around the 'problem areas', to make sure that everything was lined up correctly. Once everything dries, everything should be flush. If there's any tape residue left after this, I can easily use adhesive remover (carefully, to avoid dissolving or loosening the glue itself) to clean up the mug/clear plate. | |
| And here we see the finished product, as well as it holding the GPS in place. I have also filed the edges of the clear plate to a rounder edge, pretty much purely for aesthetic reasons. On the bottom as well however, once again due to the diagonal nature of the mug-cut, the clear plate needed to be filed for the width of it to not angle outwards (if that makes any sense). At this point... everything should hold together, and will likely remain in the car in the glove compartment, to be pulled out when needed. At long last, the GPS-mount is complete, and ready for action! | |
| But of course, we must see it in action as well. I've actually discovered that the whole concept works in added benificial ways due to completely unexpected reasons to boot. The fact that the bottom of it leans against the parking-brake lever keeps it from swinging back and forth. As well, thanks to this leaning against the parking-brake lever, the mug can be rotated either way to adjust the angle, without the GPS itself swinging away from me (well, unless you completely swing it around AWAY from you, but that's just idiotic). So now, if the sun is glaring off the plastic protective case, the mug can be rotated slightly to make for a more comfortable view :). And so, the experimental GPS-mount was a complete success. | |
