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2016-04-11 - restroom tablet mount project

nature on invention is based on one assumption – things can be improved. and most of the time they can, indeed. :) here's a little story of internet access in my restroom(s) over a time.

early beginnings

back when i was a student, wifi devices were rare and usually expensive… so i just pulled the ethernet cable to the restroom and old laptop did the trick. well… almost – it was not too convenient and by the time it booted… you were most likely “done”. ;)

wifis took over quite fast. then smart phones kicked in. now you have wifi-connected phone and you're good. unless you want a bit bigger screen for more convenient reading…

tablet era

so you buy a tablet. nice, readable screen which means… big device, inconvenient to hold in your hand.

fortunately now 3d printers are more and more common place. so what can we do? :)

naive mount

first approach was a trivial idea – just print 3 hooks, and glue them to the doors, in the right place. it looked like this:

mounts

ok - now we're getting somewhere! :)

mounts in use

while it was just enough for reading, it turned out to be a bad thing during parties. after all they were ~5cm long hooks waiting for ppl to accidentally rip them off, while trying to get in/out of the room. after gluing these twice, i decided to improve.

improved mount

so what was now needed was a sort of hook, that could be hidden, when not used. and so i used joints and mechanical latch to keep it closed.

mount opened mount closed

from that point on there were no critical problems, yet mechanical latch was a bit inconvenient, especially when operated with one hand.

the right mount

fortunately there was a solution to this as well! :) neodymium magnet turned out to be a perfect fit here. after removing a mechanical latch, i've just glued two, small, neodymium magnets to both parts (i.e. a wall mount and a flip).

magnet mount opened magnet mount closed

now everything is opening and closing with one hand, whenever needed, while at the same time it is small, thus does not cause injuries while moving around. :)

open source

the whole project is obviously open-source. you can download OpenSCAD sources of restroom toilet mount project from github. as of writing these words, version 3.0 is there, as described. happy surfing! :)