Turn an Old Phone Into a Pixel Tablet-like Device

The pixel tab just recently came out and during it's showcase, the presenters talked about how tablets are used sparsely and lay around untouched and idle for the most part. But I realized that old phones have an even worse fate than our tablets. Whether they become too slow for our daily use or simply are outdated, we tend to keep them in a drawer never to see the light of day again... Well until now.

The idea of having a dock and making a smart-home hub was pretty cool, so that's what we are going to do as well. An old phone can still be very useful, and in this instructable we'll see how we can make a pixel tab-like setup and use it to automate activities using Routines and Google Assistant.

For this project, I will not be including some features of the dock such as the wireless charging since my phone does not support it and the internal speaker to keep the dock size small. But they could make for some pretty cool upgrades later on.

Supplies

To make this you'll need very few supplies:

An old phone/tablet
neodymium magnets
Double sided tape
Access to a 3D printer/ Alternatively Styrofoam
If making out of Styrofoam, these additional supplies will come in handy:
Protractor
Acrylic paint or spray-paint
super glue

Step 1: Design/print the Dock

If you like, you can simply download the files attached to print the stand. Just note they were designed with my galaxy A30 in mind and magnet with 19mm diameter and 2mm thickness.

If you have different size magnets and would like to modify the model then read on to see how to design your own, it's a really quick process to make.

First measure the dimensions of your phone, the width is one we care about the most

Using Tinkercad:

Gif 1:
Create a cylinder and give it a diameter and height about 10mm less than your phone width. If you want a taller stand increase the height
Gif 2:
Tilt the cylinder to 22.5 degrees
Move the cylinder down until the tip of the base that is elevated is touching the ground
Gif 3:
Create a large, hole cube that completely overlaps with the part of the cylinder below the ground.
Select both shapes and combine to cut the bottom of the cylinder
Gif 4:
Create another large hole cube and tilt it to 45 degrees, this will be the viewing angle.
Align the cube so that it intersects the highest point on the cylinder and combine the two shapes to cut a slope on the top of the cylinder
Gif 5:
Create a hole cylinder with diameter and height equal to your magnet.
Tilt the magnet cylinder to 45 degrees and move it to the center of the dock
Combine the two shapes to create a hole

Using Fusion 360:

I hadn't used Fusion360 before but I wanted to give the dock a textured finish and saw a video that showed that it was fairly easy to achieve:

Gif 1:
Create a cylinder and give it a diameter and height about 10mm less than your phone width. If you want a taller stand increase the height
Create a coil and place it on top of the cylinder with the same diameter
Modify the cylinder's properties:
Revolutions: 0.5
Height: -60mm (the height of the cylinder)
Section: square
Section size: 1mm
Gif 2:
Create a mirror and adjust its properties to:
Object type: Faces
Objects: Click on the coil
Mirror plane: Select one of the vertical planes
Gif 3:
Create a Circular pattern and adjust its properties to:
Object Type: Faces
Objects: select both the coil and the mirror
Quantity: 20

You should now have a textured cylinder! The rest of the steps are identical to the tinkercad steps

Gif 4:
Tilt the cylinder to 22.5 degrees
Move the cylinder down until the tip of the base that is elevated is touching the ground
Create a large cube that completely overlaps with the part of the cylinder below the ground.
Select both shapes and combine to cut the bottom of the cylinder
Gif 5:
Create another large hole cube and tilt it to 45 degrees, this will be the viewing angle.
Align the cube so that it intersects the highest point on the cylinder and combine the two shapes to cut a slope on the top of the cylinder
Gif 6:
Create a hole and select the slanted face on the cyliner
Make the diameter and height equal to your magnet.
Set the Drill Point property: Flat

Step 2: (Optional) Using Styrofoam to Design and Make the Dock

If you don't have access to 3D printing you can make the stand out of styrofoam too. You'll just need a fairly tall/thick piece of styrofoam but the steps will be same as with the 3D modelling:

Measure the width of your phone
Cut out a cylinder (or cube if you prefer) with its diameter/width 10mm less than your phone
Cut the base at an angle of about 22.5 degrees
Cut the top at an angle of 45 degress. This will be the viewing angle of the device so feel free to adjust it if you need more or less tilt
Measure your magnet's diameter and cutout a hole for it
Paint the dock and glue the magnet in

Step 3: Add Magnet and Double-sided Tape

The slot of the magnet is very snug and so I didn't need to glue it in but feel free to if you feel it might be necessary or if you built the stand with styrofoam. For the phone, you could either use a magnet or just something magnetic so long as it can support the weight of the phone. I ended up using another magnet and just had to be careful that I placed the polarities correctly (remember opposites attract, same polarities repel each other).

The magnets I used were also thin enough that I could just place the magnet inside the plastic case and that worked well, but if this doesn't work in your case, you can glue the magnet onto a phone case that way you can remove the phone if you ever wanted to use it for something else.

Finally to stop the stand from moving and holding on when you lift up the phone, you can apply some double sided tape to the bottom and place in your desired location.

Step 4: Routines

The heart of the project will be using Routines with google assistant to create custom actions. This can be very handy especially if there are habits/routines you already do/want to start. For example I usually listen to podcasts while I cook and now I can just say, "Hey google, let's get cooking" and the phone will play a podcast and even adjust the volume so can still be heard over the stove/sink.

In this step, I'll show you how you can set a Routine to start playing music softly and then stop after an hour.

So first go to your google app and open the settings

Click Routines
Start a new Routine
Give it a name like sleepyHead
Add a starter, the event that triggers the routine.
To have the routine run on your phone you need to choose the hey google starter and enter a custom command
Then add the actions
in this case we want it to play music so we'll use "Play and control media" but we could also use "Try adding your own"
and adjust the volume so it's not too loud with "Adjust Assistant Volume"
We'll also add a "Delay start" action and set the time you want it to delay
Then the final action will be the "Try adding your own" and we'll enter the command "stop music"

And that's pretty much it. There's a lot of things you could do with this, from having your own workout coach who gives you motivational encouragement every 15 mins, to your dj when you have guests over.

Step 5: Pixel Tab at Home!

Congrats! you have made your very own Pixel Tab at Home. Your old phone can now live on as your custom routine device, but also a dedicated media-player, digital photo frame, or if you have other smart devices, your home hub.

Hope you liked this project!