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Dealing w/ Massively Multiplying Power Cables?
Darius Jedburgh asks: "Wireless networking is all very well but network cables make up only a small proportion of the cables in my house. When I come home ,I plug in my GBA Micro, PowerBook, Palm, cellphone and iPod to recharge alongside camera, and other devices. Meanwhile I have power adapters for PCs, routers, access points, cable modems, monitors and external hard drives. Every time I buy a new gadget there's another cable (or two) to install. How do people keep this proliferation under control? Are there any products available to help to organize and ease the distribution of power at home? Does anyone know of novel ideas in power distribution in current development that might make things easier in the future?"
Just a thought, but ... a powerstrip?
I've tried the universal power adapters, I've tried docking stations, I've even tried to replace my multiple gadgets with a does-it-all-pda-camera-phone. Nothing worked too well.
The best solution I've found was to buy a larger desk (I use an old library table) with three powerstrips on the floor under it. To keep the cables from sliding off the desk I have about a dozen little white plastic self-adhesive clips stuck on the back of the desk, each with a cable going thru it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2861987.stm
I bought several of these and hung them off the back of my computer, and now everything hangs in midair. It isn't a complete answer, I still have several dozen power warts hanging there, but at least they are off the floor and it is easier to keep things clean and tidy.
Infuriate left and right
Buy less crap that you don't -really- need.
Dunno if this will help at all, but most new cars today have 3 or 4 cigarette-lighter adapters. I never charge my phone in a house/office anymore, I only charge it in my car during my commutes, and it never runs out of juice. I imagine you could do this with a few things (GBA, palm?)
My blackberry, I charge that off my USB port off my laptop. So no power cord for that. It helps a little knowing I can use any USB port to charge up.
As for everything else, good luck. I still have a mess of cables on my floor, and not planning on doing anything about it.
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
How about the Power Squid? Looks pretty nifty.......
you may have heard of wi-max. It will expand your wireless capability to the max. This will allow power to be transmitted to supporting devices through microwaves inside your house. Initial tests have been successfull, however there seam to be some safety concerns. ;)
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
I have a lot of wall worts, so I found the power squid handy. Picked one up at Fry's for $15.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/77e6/
All those chargers represent "phantom loads", since they draw a little power and warm themselves up just a little, even when there's nothing connected to the output.
Make yourself a charging shelf, somewhere in the house. Near the front door is a fine place, since you'll want to grab the phone and PDA on your way out. Put all the chargers there, on a switched power strip. When you're not home, turn it off.
You can charge the vast majority of devices with 5/6, 9, and 12 VDC. I did it with only two power supplies. I used an old AT power supply for 5/6 and 12 volts, and I built a 5A 9V power supply as well. Then you just solder on whatever connectors your equipment needs. Mine only needs one wall plug since the 9V one draws power from the AT PSU.
There are also a number of USB power adapters (for AC, car, air, or all of the above) out there in case you don't want to charge from your laptop.
I have no affiliation with any of these companies other than using their products.
Anything that can hold wires in neat bunches is a plus. Wire ties are not so convenient, but I love those velcro wire-wraps. Once your cables are neat, it doesn't matter if you have 20 as you can easily tell where they all go.
Unless there's a complete overhaul of the electronics industry forcing everyone to use the same voltage and same connector for devices, there's not much more I can tell you. Just buy a big power strip and put all the wall-worts on it and kick it under a desk where it can happily raise your power bill whether you have a device charging or not.
Oh, I recently saw a wall outlet that lets you twist the plug sideways so you can fit two wall-worts on one outlet. All you have to do is rewire your room...
One or two of these hanging off your wall will do you good http://shop1.outpost.com/product/4215604?site=sr:S EARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
Nintendo (SP/DS/Micro)? Check.
IPod? Check.
PSP? Check.
Palm? Check.
Lots of phones will charge over USB, too (nokia, many motorola, possibly more...)
My current rig has 3 workstations, 3 monitors, 1 pda, 1 cell, 2 ipods all at my desk. Not even endluding NAS, VOIP device, cable modem, firewall/router, switch, wireless access point and the requisite UPS. My soluton for this electronic jungle? (Five) of The ever popular PowerSquid by Power Sentry, (Two) Belkin 10-Outlet Surgemaster Gold, (Two) Cable-Safe's Cable Manager Kit. The combination works well, I'd recommend it.
This, for the laptop/ipod/phone/pda anyway. It can power all three off of one plug, and works in cars/planes. Very handy.
How Jaded Are You?
It is obviously way to hard to say "Dealing WITH massively multiplying power cables?" So many more letters...
Here's an article from '03 about charging multiple devices at once via magnetic induction.
:)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2861987.stm
It's almost '06 now, and I don't know where this has gone since then... which may or may not say something about the technology, the company, the market, and/or my inherent laziness at looking this shit up on google.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -- Voltaire
"I've thought about shortening the cables too, but I'm sure I'd screw it up in some way. So many of the wall warts in my house have about a 1.5 metre cable and end up making a mess on my desk, but I only really need about 20cm."
Just fold up the wire until the remaining length is what you need, then put a rubber band around the folded-up part.
Tag lost or not installed.
MASKING TAPE!
The true geeks tool. I have 2x4plug powerstrips behind my desk, this has my monitor and pc plugged in then many more others.
I have just ran these altogether around the back of my desk, and coming up the side. Then i've banged aload of masking tape over the lot, holding it all perfectly in place. I can't charge everything at the same time, but i never normally need to.
Works for me even if it does look crap!
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
My new phone uses a 5V @ 350 mA charger.
I just bought today some USB cables to splice the home and car chargers to have a female USB plug on the end, which will accept the male USB -> tiny DC plug adapter on the other end. This will allow me to carry a very small USB-->DC adapter with me and charge the phone wherever I can find a USB port (home, work, and travelling laptop, basically).
Just about anything that is low-power and needs 5V or less* could be plugged into a USB port.
* For less than 5V a diode could be used to drop the voltage.
Religion is poison to rationality, and we lose sight of that at our own peril. -- Lurker2288
One possible (though not inexpensive) solution is to use Radio Shack's Adaptaplug products. You will still need one adapted for every discrete voltage you require, and they'll need to be beefy ones, probably. But each transformer has a socket on the end, like this, which you can then split as many times as necessary with a bunch of these or these. Purchase the appropriate tip for each of your devices, connect it to a lead from the appropriate voltage source, and you should be able to drastically reduce your power outlet usage. If you're really clever, use a surplus PC switching power supply as a single voltage source for all your rails (built in 12v and 5v, use voltage regulators to get the rest).
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
surge supressor strip + zip ties/velcro strapping.
keep it clean, and only have cables as long as they need to be.
My inner self is ineffable, so don't eff with me.
...she's the spam queen, loves the stuff, signs up for every freebie she can find via snail mail. One of the gifts she got from some bozo magazine place was a box full of basic black one foot long heavy duty extension cords, sold as a power strip adapter-extender. I got them as a geek gift for B-day. Works great, take your normal power strip, slap these things on, and you can have wall to wall wallwarts lined up all off the same strip, and being flexible you can arrange them to taste, and being very short they don't get in the way or need to be bundled up. Similar to that squid device but more universal,because most likely you already have a power strip. Plug all the jazz in, scoot it behind the monitor, done. If you need to, just color code the weird plug ends that go to your devices to keep them straight. I don't know who sells them, the box is gone, but really, just very short but very decent gauge wire extension cords, I imagine you could find them with a little net searching.
I also bought a label printer (Brother P-Touch, I think) and I labeled every wart so I knew which went with which component. It's important because when you have 14 or so warts under a dark desk, they all kind of look similar.
It's far from perfect. There are still a lot of wads of tied up cables hanging around. It's also tough to pull out just one specific wart. I always need to bring the camera charger on vacation, for example.
I've often thought about taking an older power supply and soldering up a replacement set of plugs for each device, doing something like putting 4-pin molex power connectors on the other end, giving me +5VDC or +12VDC for most of the devices, and putting together something else to provide +9VDC for the other oddities. But motivation and the difficulty of finding all those oddball connectors somewhere has dampened that desire somewhat. Plus, I'm concerned that if I'm only trying to draw some tiny amount of standby current (5W or so) that a switching power supply might do something funny, like switch off.
Yes, I hate the current situation too. There ought to be a household standard for low voltage distribution, but if there is nobody's pimping it very hard.
John
.. it is easy to setup and best of all I can steal it from my neighbour.
Do a quick Google search for the term and you will be surprised at the results!
Own less crap!
... by cutting down the environental costs of keeping your unnecessary stuff running, manufacturing it in the first place and disposing of it when you want to upgrade to the next new-fangled gadget.
Disclaimer: I'm sorry if this seems offtopic, but I couldn't help myself.
MMPORC = Massively Multiplying POweR Cables?
Actually that sounds more like <drool>pork</drool> than power cables.
Obligatory: I for one welcome our massive, methane producing, cloven hoof overlords!
p.s. MMPORC also sounds like it could be a l337 game, or at least an awesome all you can eat buffet. If it's less than $13/mo, where do I sign up? Mmmm pork. Oh yeah, and can I get a chinese scriptkiddie to play my character up to porkchop? I don't really want to have to deal with the feet, ears, snout or brains. (This also brings up the question of whether MMPORC would have SPAM protection.)
Two rubber bands, one at either end, or even better, velcro cable ties. I've done the same thing with the CAT-5e that the guys use when the come over for LAN games, since they all sit very close to the switch.
Even better, put it all in a box with a hole in it so the cables can run out and one power cable can run in. Label the end of each cable so you know which is which (presumably he already does this because sometimes it is hard to tell one power pack from the other at a glance). This is using the same principle as a rack in a server room, just a way of encapsulating and compartmentalising the devices and cables.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
check it out. you can see the four output terminals, each of which is a little wire bridge, in front. the chassis is grounded. each bi-phase AC conductor is fused at 2A.
next step is a single regulated supply for travel (5VDC only in this case) so i have to bring only a single wall-wart on trips.
I do, but I'd rather have a short cable than a solenoid on my desk.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
When I come home, I plug in my GBA Micro, PowerBook, Palm, cellphone and iPod to recharge alongside camera, and other devices.
That's a lot of stuff to haul around, isn't it? I finally ditched my Palm (after using them for seven years) and sync'd my Address Book and iCal to my iPod. That was the easy part: most of what I entered into my Palm was something someone else was asking me to do. Solution? "Hmmm. Maybe. Send me an email with these details and I'll prioritize that with my other tasks." Presto: fewer To Do items and fewer reasons to write them down, so I don't miss data input directly into my iPod.
Meanwhile I have power adapters for PCs, routers, access points, cable modems, monitors and external hard drives. Every time I buy a new gadget there's another cable (or two) to install.
This is going to sound like a personal attack, and perhaps it is, but isn't the solution simple: buy less stuff? Hell, I know someone who was an officer in an armored calvary group that was in Iraq. He waged war and didn't have all that stuff - despite having enough fire power to reduce the nearest CompUSA into a pile of rubble with less computing power than my old Commodore 64. This guy communicated with rear officers, helicopters, armored vehicles, and individual soldiers and he didn't have that much stuff.
The quickest way to fewer wires and power cables is to have fewer of them?
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
I have two 14-plug power strips and about a foot gap between the back of my desk and my wall. I just let the poor little cables roam freely back there in their native environment. I also have a couple cabnits on each side of my desk to keep them contained. Loose wires love to get into open food in the kitchen. Sometimes I need to tie them up with a special tool called a zip-tie when they get a little wild. Just them of them as miniture, really long horses and coral them.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Too bad noone has succeeded in making wireless electricty. Several people have tried though. http://www.mind-course.com/wireless.html
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
To solve the wall-wart issue, there's always the Power Strip Liberator. I always ask for these for xmas, and I always seem to run out near the end of the year.
Yep, USB provides +5V. However, a device isn't supposed to use it for any period of time without having enumerated with the USB host, which will either grant or deny the device's current request.
If the device is granted its requested current, then it's clear to pull up to that amount of current from the bus while it remains attached until the bus is suspended or the host restarts or whatever. If it's denied, then the device has the option of trying to negotiate a lower current or it can bugger off.
But who cares about the USB spec anyway?
If a universal power system were widely adopted, all of these bricks could go away. The device makers would have every incentive to not include a brick with each device (cost, weight, package size, etc.)
The almighty buck is an economic incentive only for the brickmakers -- they want to sell lots of power bricks. But they only sell wholesale to the device makers. They don't sell to the consumers, the device makers do. The device makers have it in their economic interest to offer the lowest price, not to sell a brick. If they could save two dollars by not buying bricks, they could drop their prices by one dollar and still pocket one dollar for themselves.
There is already a standard out there: USB PlusPower for cash registers. They've incorporated USB backward compatible piggybacked high-current +5VDC, +12VDC and +24VDC connectors. Several years ago some large retail chain stores refused to accept a half-dozen power bricks under each cash register, and demanded of IBM that they develop a way to power the many peripherals each cash register needs (scanners, printers, mag stripe readers, PIN pads, cash drawers, scales, etc.) NCR and Fujitsu added their support for a standard, and USB PlusPower was the result. All the large-player peripheral makers support it now, too. (Here's a sales document for a USB PlusPower hub for your PC that explains the standard.
From the document: "The USB PlusPower design provides the following voltage and current
Consumers need to do the same thing, but as of yet have never organized and demanded such a thing. It's considerably tougher to do at a consumer level. Consumers have never organized very well. And there are very few cash register manufacturers in comparison to all the motherboard and system builders out there. There are very few "large customers" that can use their buying power to influence the industry.
John
Sprint has standardized the power connectors for every phone they cell, independent of manufacturer. I, for one, am glad to see an end to the "you-must-buy-our-overpriced-accessory" extortion.
We need to standardize the selection of voltages to increments of 1.5 volts (the nominal voltage of a standard battery), then you would have "only" 16 different voltages to deal with between 1.5 and 24V. Then you standardize to ONLY use DC voltage (no low-voltage AC power supplies), then you standardize the power plugs to a single, unique connector for each voltage.
This leaves us with 16 different power connectors, which seems like a lot, but is far less than the countless proprietary connectors that are out there. If we further standardized to about 6 different voltages (say: 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24 volts) then it would be manageable. It would be great to have ONE power supply on my desk that would work with my cell phone, pager, Palm, headset, toothbrush, shaver, router, switch, camera, etc.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
This is not my idea, I saw it somewhere online (or was it in the magazine ReadyMade?), but it was pretty clever.
Someone took a good sized flower pot and ran a dollar store extension cord into it. Inside, they connected each of their AC-DC chargers. They cut a fairly opaque piece of lexan to the shape of the inside of the flowerpot. They drilled holes for each of the power supply plugs and ran them out 6 inches or so. Then, the gear you have to charge can all lay inside the pot on its lid, and be plugged in quickly. I thought it might be cool to get one of those $5 LED night lights that cycles through different colors and put it inside the pot too to light the lid..
What's so terrible about cables anyway. The last time this was discussed on here, someone suggested mounting your powerstrips on the ceiling, so that the wires hang down to meet your work surface. That seems clever to me.. much reduced tangling, and you get the cyberpunk look on a budget..
Remember Tesla?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The answer is simple - PoE (Power Over Ethernet). Just give everything a cat5 connection - they've done it with electric shavers just for kicks. Yes, you have to Cat5 everything - but who cares as in a few years you'll have to connect everything in your house to the internet anyways.
(but it beats have wallwarts everywhere)
snowulf.com
You won. I've just ordered a 7 port powered hub and I may even have found a USB power connector for my phone. I didn't really expect a useful answer from ask.alashdot.org but it seems my expectations were set too low!