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Need... More... Power...
MikeDawg writes "After dealing with the headache of never having enough electrical outlets, not having a cable TV coaxial, not having a telephone hookup in the right places of my apartment, I found this article at CNN. It is nice to see that college dorm rooms are getting filled with outlets to provide students with enough hook-ups with for all their electronics. My question to you (renters/dorm-room dwellers) is does your dorm room or apartment have enough outlets, whether it be electrical, cable, telephone, or anything else you may need? What do you do in a situation like this? Do you load up each socket with a 10+ port power strip (or battery backup as it may be) and pray that you don't knock-out the circuit everytime you start burning a CD?"
I must say that I don't have enough power in my room. There's only one outlet here and I run a PC, (musical) keyboard, guitar effects kit, DSL modem, clock, etc etc. I have a power strip plugged into another power strip. An interesting side effect is that when I turn on my fan, my USB hub reboots.
In my dormroom at uu.se, I have plenty of outlets and the are situated in good places around the room, like a 4 socket outlet on the wall next to the TP.
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However, I live in a trailer in the middle of the desert. (why? great view and it's cheap.) During the summer I can
a) run ac and cook
b) run my computer and ac
c) run my computer and cook
but not all three at the same time. (at least, not without having to take trips out to flip breaker switches).
I only had two double point outlets in my 9' X 12' room, and used two surge protected power strips to run everything (6 and 4 port).
With this, I managed to run a stereo, clock radio, fish tank, desk lights, computer, TV, VCR, powered internal aerial and PlayStation, with sufficient flexibility to be able to run a fan and other various electrical items on the spare ports. This was a pretty standard load for the rooms in the college, although some people had some fairly fancy kit setups (like major tropical fishtanks and home entertainment setups).
Of more interest is that I managed to fit all my gear into the room for three years (all clothes, toiletries, computer, books and books and books, hundreds of CD's, pictures, all notes and textbooks, software boxes, videos, playstation games, beanbag, guitar, music stand, fishtank, foldaway massage table) and still have room for the bed, desk and student chair and at least 80% of the original floor space still free of crap.
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You used to be able to get these, actually. I ran my 6V DC speakers off a jack in a free expansion slot for years... it was just a small PCB that connected to a molex inside the machine and had a transformer plus extra resistors/capacitors on it.
The problem is, I guess, that because so many devices use different voltages, and draw different amounts of power, it might be difficult to provision for every possible device, and you might need a huge PSU. I am not sure whether a normal PSU would be able to supply the PC, my TFT, scanner, PDA cradle and printer without some extra wattage.
Obviously I can't "help" either, but I suppose I can share my home construction story. My father is building a new house, and to deal with the modern day electrical requirements will be ordering an extra 200amp feed from the electrical co, with its own dedicated circuits into the house for the "heavy equipment". Our current house lacks this extra supply, and any time the AC, a vacuum cleaner, or heck, even my monitor turns on, the lights dim (using a vacuum cleaner in my room causes both of my UPSs to switch to battery backup). Just for this, we're also going to run the ceiling lights and fans on a seperate circuit from the outlets. Also high-usage areas (the den) will be fed by more than one circuit (different outlets on different breakers), to handle whatever we throw in there.
Don't forget to put electrical, networking, and cable in cabinets (you'd be surprised how handy that can be - I wish I had done it),
By this I mean, if you build storage cabinets, put outlets and network jacks in them, in case you want to put in a microserver, or a ReplayTV/Tivo. Extra speaker wires are also nice, in case you want to hook speakers to a central MP3 player, connected to that power and network in your cabinet. Power outlets in cabinets are also handy for keeping battery rechargers out of sight.
Last bit of advice, locate power outlets/network jacks at least 1.5 feet above desk height if you want to use them with a desk or bookshelf, so that you can still access power/network even with a full set of books on the shelf.
If this is new constructions, also consider running separate waste lines for toilet vs. washbasin/bath. Certain areas are experimenting with using grey water(ie washbasin water) to flush the toilet in order to conserve drinking water. It wouldn't hurt to have separate lines to have the option of converting in the future if need be.
OK as somebody that can spec eletrical this is plain BS. Those cheap surge strips are not capable of dealing with large spikes due to poor grouding. Whole house units dont protect you from that 2000 watt hair drier (BTW you can not get 2000 watts out of a 15 amp plug per UL you should only draw 80% and thats 12 amps for 1320 watts max same for those vacume cleaners)
Anyway enough ranting for a good home entertainment setup you would want at least one dedicated circut perferably 20 or 30 amps if you can use the 30 amp back 20 amp front recepticals in your building code . A single line surge or UPS unit might also be a good idea (something in the nice back APC RM line but thats over a grand in UPS) especialy for the Tivo and Replay users but also for the big screen TV guys. I say UPS simple because loosing power is hell on any device while it's working and the brownouts are also hell when you remember that modern eletronics are never realy off unless unpluged remotes and all that.
No sir I dont like it.
My last apartment both my roommate and I would lose power (and thus our poor boxen would lose data) every time we used the microwave too high or too long. First solution: battery backups (10 bucks each with Staples rebates, g-d bless).
So no more data loss, but still an annoyance. Then I was stupidly toying with the inside of the light switch for the living room and sparks flew and I blew the circuit. Lucky for us, this led me to discover that there was a 3rd circuit (yes, two circuits was not nearly enough*) for our floor dedicated to a single light bulb that must have been added years after all the other electrical stuff.
So we ran to Home Depot (g-d bless you overpriced bastards) and back and hacked in a 4-port outlet and we were golden ever since.
So the moral of the story: when you don't have enough outlets, make more. As a geek you have a instinctive understanding of electricity.
*The ancient washer and drying in the basement would trip the other circuit if they ran together
I doubt there's been a sudden surge in student usage of toasters, kettles, electric heaters or other appliances drawing a large amount of power. All the electonic devices that have recently become popular are low-voltage - 12V or less. So why is the answer to put in more high-voltage AC outlets, requiring a trained electrician? It would make more sense to run a 12V or 5V power supply within the building, if there were some way to connect devices to it.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I guess I confused the ways of implementing it...
The way the friend wired the stereo wouldn't get you more power in the room; you get double the power to your device, but you also use double the outlets.
But, if you were to go back to the breaker box and rewire your outlets there, you'd get double the voltage at each outlet.. the amperage won't go down (unless you plan on rewiring the wires in the wall and replacing the sockets), so you'll have double the power.
True, countries that use 220v can get away with thinner wires to deliver the same amount of power.
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I had a situation at my school last year where our power kept going off because our circut was overloading and the breaker would go off. We learned how to reset it from the box that was down the hall, but it was really annoying that it kept going off. What was stranger was it never had this problem before, so finally we had the maintence department of the school come up and check it out and I learned a bit about how much power devices consume.
Our room was one of 3 doubles set up on the same circut. We were the only ones around, so we couldn't do much about the other rooms power, but we could look at ours. The circuts cut after 20 amps. When we turned everything on in our room, the circut breaker went off and broke the circut, but we found out that it wasn't our stuff causing me majority of the problem. We had in the room 3 computers, 4 monitors, 2 TV's, 2 Xboxes, 3 lamps, 2 alarm clocks, 2 phones, 2 speaker systems, 1 sperate stereo, a dozen accessories for various computers (printers, scanners... etc). and a few other things that I can't remember.
When we had all of our stuf off, the breaker was still reporting 11 amps being drawn from the other rooms. He went into one and found an illegal (per college rules anyway) space heater in there on with no one around. He turned just that off and we were down to 2 amps being drawn. After turning all of our stuff back on, it went up to 12.
One space heater was using almost as much power as 2 people's worth of electronics. Moral of the story: don't use space heaters in college dorms 'cause power outages every 30 mins suck.
thinner wire
Also potentially lower risk of fire in various situations.
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- Mobile phone
- DECT phone
- Printer
- Scanner
- Computer speaker set
- USB HUB
- Laptop
- VIA EPIA external power adapter (ok, in design, so leave it out for now)
- MIDI keyboard
- Switch
- ADSL modem
- 54Mbit wireless access point
This is all excluding the normal devices (which I will leave out).Question to you techies out there. Is it not possible to device a standard for these kind of devices? It would be nice to have an (upgradable) 12 V DC adapter in the house. Currently almost none of the adapters take just one outlet. Note that I am on 230V since I live in NL (europe). Not that that matters too much, I expect you are experiencing the same problem.
Our dorm has something like six pairs of recepticles, and we have 11-outlet strips plugged into each and every one to power my many boxen. We're not allowed to use extension cords or piggyback surges strips, so we have to be careful and plan very well...
I also haven't turned on all the machines at once, because I'm fairly sure it would kill the circuit. I used to have half of these machines spread in my basement, and the load they would generate if they all switched on simultaneously, as the drives and fans were spinning up, was enormous; it would trip the breaker every time.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
I think the people who are most guilty of this are the "geeks." I see a lot of this stuff happen all the time, where the computer literate attempts to make a simple concept much more difficult in effort to make themselves look good.
It pisses me off when people choose to explain otherwise simple concepts in very complicated terms. Then, you have to deal with the aftermath, where people are so convinced that computers are a difficult thing.
I was explaining a rackmount chassis to my girlfriend, and she kept saying, "I don't know anything about computers." I kept telling her, "What I'm talking about has virtually nothing to do with computers. I'm talking about a metal box that you screw to a rack. You know what a closet is, and a shoebox, just listen to what I'm saying."
Took me forever to break down the computer==difficult wall, but she finally will actually listen, and understand that it really isn't all that difficult.
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Yea so much for not having enough outlets, try having half the outlets in your dorm not having ground plugs (a random half might I add). Tech service guys distribute those plugs that have a fake ground that you're supposed to hook up with a wire to a real ground (but who does?). Its always nice to have your tv, computer, dvd, ps2, dreamcast, and stero on a strip that doesnt really have a ground. And the fun with our network is, they block all traffic between local machines due to 'security' and 'virus' concerns. Sucks that to play lan games we have to run our own network cables between dorm rooms!
Post Properties are big when I live in Atlanta. I admit, when I was moving the lure of their PostSmart apartments was fairly high.
Basically, their new apartments are built wired to support home networking (wired), surround sound, and multiple phone lines. The outlets, however, were fairly ugly -- huge wall units like you'd see in a business. But there were network drops in every room and plenty of outlets and, most appealing to me, audio wires for surround sound and multiple speakers. I hate wiring for surround sound in the living room every time I change apartments. Here, you just plugged into the wall behind the TV, and then the wires came out the other side of the room and even on the patio.
Ultimately, despite the high geek factor, I didn't go with the properties with this feature. The rent was pretty steep compared to what I could get elsewhere, and wireless was already on the scene so I figured the networking wouldn't be too crucial. I'm also wondering if they opened the electrical system to support such a wired household. Hrm. I haven't heard of any burning down lately, I suppose...
True. I was leaning more towards a point based on susceptibility to damage of cheaper cords; I've never seen a 12ga extension short out from being closed in a door. I have, however, seen cheap extension cords heat up enough soften the insulation. Stick it under a metal table leg and an extension cord with soft insulation doesn't HAVE to heat up to flashpoint to cause a fire. Besides, citing what the gauge of a cheap cord should be doesn't mean much if the conductors are undersized for their stated rating. Optimal conditions are great for electrical theory, but in the field you sometimes can't even trust your wiggy or your multimeter.
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