How to Make Your Own iPod Dock

When I bought my fifth generation iPod, I wanted to get a dock, but I didn’t really want to spend $40 for a dock that didn’t even match my black iPod. So I made my own dock. It took a couple hours and cost about $10. Unfortunately I didn’t take pictures during the process, but I have a few photos of the finished product to help you make your own.

Heres what you will need:

• A tin or other box that has a lid and is easily cut
• Xacto knife or similar
• iPod Dock Connector (comes with recent iPods)
• iPod USB Cable
• Spray paint of your choice
• Glue Gun
• Rubber band

Step One: Making the Cut
Take a look at your iPod Dock Connector (the little plastic thing that came with your iPod). Your objective is to cut a hole in your tin that is smaller than the lip of the connector, but big enough for the connector to fit into the hole. I measured the connector, and came up with a good sized hole. Remember, you can make the hole bigger, but you can’t make it smaller.

Cutting tin is pretty hard using an Xacto knife - I had to sort of punch out holes in a line to make my cuts. Be very careful with your knife - I gave myself a nasty cut on my finger doing this project. After making the connector cut, you will want to make a cut on the back side of the dock for the cable to enter. This hole must be big enough for a USB plug to fit through.

Step Two: Paint and Glue
Once you have made a perfect hole for your dock connector, it will be fairly easy to glue it in place using a glue gun. Put glue all around the connector on the inside of the box so it will be very secure. Now comes the fun part, painting. I picked a glossy black spraypaint, which, by the way, was the only thing I had to buy for this project. Put your incomplete dock on some newspaper outside and spray it thoroughly. Now that your dock is nice and pretty, you can glue the plug in.

You should wrap a tightly-doubled rubber band around the buttons on the side of the iPod connector. You need to do this so that you can easily pull the iPod out of its dock. Now, slip the USB plug out of the back hole so that the iPod connector side is inside the box. Now plug in the iPod through the box’s lid so you can get an idea of how to glue the plug in. The iPod plug should be fairly parallel to the bottom of the dock connector piece. Once you have found a good position for the plug, glue it in place just like you did with the dock connector. I didn’t glue the plug with the iPod attached so that I had no chance of getting glue on my iPod.

Once you close the lid and plug it in, you should have a full-functional iPod dock built to your specifications!