Home-made sunshade

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Feb 14, 2016
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While I figure out what commercially made sunshade to buy for my P3 and iPad air, I decided to make one. This design should work fine for any "normal-sized" iPad, and could be adapted to other sizes of tablets quite easily.

The results actually work quite well. I used a large corrugated cardboard box, part of a roll of adhesive backed Velcro hook-and-loop fastener, and a box cutter. Here is the final result:
original.jpg


It's made in 2 parts for easy assembly/disassembly. Here is just the base mounted to the remote, with the shade part removed:

original.jpg


Here is the base on it's own:

original.jpg


And here are the cardboard parts, laid flat:

original.jpg


My iPad is the 2nd generation iPad air, and it has a lightning connector. I cut a hole that's only big enough for the lightning connector. For an iPad with the 30 pin connector, or a different tablet, you might need a bigger hole for the USB cable.

I eyeballed the measurements by holding the cardboard against my iPad and against the Phantom remote and marking it with a pencil, then using a square to cut or score the cardboard. The bottom edges of the shade part angle up slightly, which makes the shade angle down when assembled, providing better sun shading.

I scored the folds in the cardboard with the box cutter at a VERY shallow depth, on the outside of each bend. That makes the bend straight and easy. I've thought about putting electrical tape or duct tape on the outside of the folds to reinforce them, but thus far haven't needed to.

The sun-shade is light enough that the back of my iPad pressing it into the holder on the remote is fine to hold the whole thing in place. I've been in strong breezes with it and it hasn't budged. I ran out of black spray-paint or I might have spray-painted the inside and outside of the assembled unit flat black.

If I were to do this again I'd probably use this prototype as a pattern and cut it out of black foam-core instead of plain cardboard, score the folds like I did with this model, and then buy some black duct tape or gaffer's tape and use that on the outside of the folds while they are bent into place to reinforce them. (Scoring cardboard or foam-core weakens it. Without tape the folds will likely tear after repeated assembly/disassembly.)
 
Last edited:
That's great, I did a similar thing to fit my android tab using what we call 'corex' (it's a plastic corrugated version of similar). May I suggest you spray paint the inside with matt black, it makes a BIG difference.

:wink::wink:
 

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