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Cable Management To Defeat Clutter?
igny writes "I have just recently cleaned up my home office, reducing the clutter, but I could not come up with a neat solution to my cable problem. I believe my cable usage is even below average for a slashdotter, but still I have three computers with a bunch of ethernet and power cables, two cellphones, video and photo cables, with several proprietary chargers/AC adapters, printer, two NASes with a couple of external drives, phone, audio system, routers/switches, modem ... Everything requires cables of different kinds. I believe that AC adapters still draw some power even with no device hooked to it. So I organized my power cables by usage with several power strips to turn off adapters which I use less frequently. I am asking for advice from experienced slashdotters. How do you cope with your cable problem? Do you use dedicated tables, shelves, armoire for the cables? I am still looking for a neat, efficient, and safe (I have small kids) solution."
I used to deliver to a company in santa cruz county that made a lightweight plastic hose with a slit down the middle to insert all the cables into. So instead of a bunch of different cables you just had one big 'hose' running through your room. It was a more organized look, sorry I can't remember the name of the company but you can probably modify something to do the same thing.
Velcro strips to bundle the cables work quite well (IMHO). The desk furniture I use (ikea) has room between the desk frame and the surface to thread the velcro strips through to hold it close under the desk.
I've used velcro in racks too -- very convenient when you are constantly changing cabling.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
I've always wanted to try the "pegboard under your desk" arrangement. It sounds like a functional solution to keep the clutter under the desk, not on top of it.
http://lifehacker.com/237789/diy-under+desk-gadget-mount
Of course, I'd have to get off my lazy ass to give it a shot so I'm not holding out hope of it happening any time soon...
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Power: Get a big power strip (like for a lab bench, with lots of space between outlets -- NewEgg sells some), and attach it to your desk. This lets you keep the cables under the desk and (with wire ties and possibly duct tape) off the floor.
Ethernet: Same thing; mount your hubs/routers so a wire always has a straight shot without having to go around or through anything, then wrap up excess cable. You'll just have one cable to your wall plate for power and one for networking.
Cables for portable devices are not as easy to solve but cleaning up power and ethernet makes a big difference.
One piece of advice that I give to any sysadmin or tech before opening a new office/datacenter: Estimate the amount of cable ties that you will need -- then triple it. You can never have enough cable ties. Velcro/hook & loop is very nice because it is reusable, and it won't slice up your arms like cut-off zip ties can (some telcos actually explicitly ban zip-ties for this exact reason - many techs have to use wax string).
Otherwise, all of the best cable management that I've encountered tends to be made for rack-mounting. Get some hooks from your local hardware store, and then develop a system to coil, bundle, and otherwise tie off your excess cable. Hang the excess coils/bundles from the hooks under your desk or otherwise out of sight. That should keep your desk looking pretty enough. Also, if you have a lot of excess USB cable for small devices, try a USB hub and buy shorter USB cables.
-Turkey
I believe that AC adapters still draw some power even with no device hooked to it.
yes, they draw some. some devices like televisions can even draw an appreciable amount, like 20 watts.
Your average AC adapter has a transformer to step the voltage down to say 12-18V and then a rectifier to turn it into DC, and probably an inductor after that as a filter to smooth out the left over ripple.
When your AC adapter is plugged in with nothing plugged into the DC side, the transformer will still draw a bit of magnetizing current, but it is fuck all.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer#Equivalent_circuit
I think magnetizing current might be 1% tops, so for your 60W laptop power pack you are talking .6 watts.
Even adding up all your power packs you are talking tens of watts.
at $0.30 a for 1000 watts for an hour, those power packs being plugged in is costing you next to zero.
The mess is one thing, but don't worry about the power.
They occasionally post clutter-busting suggestions over at www.lifehacker.com. The original links from this one no longer seem to work, but I thought it was brilliant:
http://lifehacker.com/237789/diy-under+desk-gadget-mount
Basically, mount a peg board on hinged stand-offs with hasps to lock it in the 'up' position, and then mount all the small peripherals and cabling to the bottom of the desk. May not be completely child proof, depending on the size of your children and the extent of the cable fasteners you use.
I think this is a nice DIY example as well: http://lifehacker.com/software/workspaces/hack-attack-the-cordless-workspace-sort-of-179911.php
Power running through a wire creates a EM field. Run power and signal cables separïately.
Someone once told me of a car audio installer who kept running the cables in parallel next to each other. He kept wondering why every time he would rev the engine his speakers would make noise.
Cross power and signal cables at right angles and put some distance between them if you're running in parallel.
Besides that I find grouping the cables with electrical tape every couple of feet works well. Electrical tape has no electrical significance I just like using it.
1. http://cableorganizer.com/ This site is good for hours of fun.
2. Velcro cable ties are great.
3. Build your own custom-length Ethernet cables.
4. Label all your cables and transformers. See http://www.brother-usa.com/Ptouch/Ptouch_HandHeld/
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
Put some eyehooks into the back edge of your desk, and hang carabiner clips from them. Run the wires through those. It's even easier to get the wires into and out of than velcro, and holds up well.
I was going to parcel out some mod points in this thread, but I can't let this go unchallenged.
Don't make coils (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wed Jul 22, '09 06:41 PM (#28789059)
Don't make coils out of excess cable. Loops of cable act as an inductance. When you switch on a device which is connected via a long power cable in loops, the extra load from the inductance can be enough to blow the fuse of the circuit.
Electrical load goes up as resistance and/or reactance goes down. Coiling a wire increases inductance. This increases inductive reactance. This delays direct current from reaching maximum and reduces alternating current. In other words, less load, not more.
That doesn't mean that I'm recommending loops in long power cords, just that the loops will not increase current draw.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
For those who do NOT want to build their own desk...
As far as arranging items, I got a bunch of cheap $3.00 stacking paper trays from my local office supply store. I then cut/drilled/dremmeled holes in the back to run cables. I now have four paper trays that hold: NAS box (biggest, on bottom), small KVM switch, 8-port ethernet hub, 4-port MIDI interface, router, audio mixer, and a cable modem. An extra 5th tray on the top even holds paper. It is a pain to get to the cables if you have to re-arrange something, but it makes my desk look a LOT neater.
The plastic can be brittle, so work slowly, and the plastic "dust" can be messy, so mark inside your house, but cut outside.
As for the cables, Velcro ties are your friend. You can put them on and off easily, which is key if you ever need to rearrange things.
As for my synthesizer (keyboard), that has a power cable, two MIDI cables, and two audio cables. For that, I used spiral wrap (available at Radio Shack) to keep the cables bundled (D.I.Y. snake). I cannot imagine having to replace any of those cables any time so, so spiral wrap is perfect. It works with ANY size cable. The only down side is that spiral wrap is a pain to put on, but the results are worth it.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Seriously a good idea. I got a bunch of these http://www.belkin.com/surgeprotection/concealed/
They are great, I have just one box on the floor under my desk, easy to sweep around, doesn't collect dust and looks tidy.
I've replaced 90% of my zip ties, mounting bases, velcro, etc. with Dinosaur Duct.
It's available in shorter seqments from Markertek.
Kirkland Signature
Can you put the cables through the desk, then under the carpet?
Don't put 110V power cables under the carpet. They do emit heat, and if the heat can't escape, it builds up. I know somebody who set their house on fire that way. If the cable gets damaged by walking on it, that exacerbates the problem. And while it isn't dangerous, I don't think I'd want to be walking on my ethernet/USB/parallel/serial cables, either.
No, that's 3 watts. The watt is a unit of power, not energy, and is equivalent to joules/second. Power is energy per unit time. kWh is kind of a strange unit; it seems to only serve to confuse people, when it's really just expressing an amount of energy in Joules (1 kWh = 3,600,000 Joules). It'd probably make more sense to just use megajoules, but because of the insistence on referencing energy usage to hours, you'd have to divide by 3600 instead of an even 1000.
HTH.
I found that mounting everything above my desk works best. I have my desk set in a corner with my power strips and ethernet switch mounted on the wall just above the top of my desk. Plugging/unplugging everything is easy, and they are mostly hidden by the PCs, monitors, and printer. I use different ways of organizing the cables themselves, depending on how often I might need to modify things. I use a foot or two of split loom to channel all the cables except power away from the back of each PC. That way, when I swap out a PC, all the cables are close at hand for hooking up the next one. Longer cables are looped up and either velcroed or twist-tied to the needed length. I have a few milk crates filled with spare cables, each wound and stored in a large zip-lock bag and labeled. No, I wasn't always this anal about organizing things. I just got really sick of it one day and needed to do something about it.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
And... since we're talking about low-frequency AC here, with two conductors (and a ground, but that's not important), and with each of these conductors having exactly equal and opposite current flowing through them:
The inductance cancels itself out.
Therefore, all you have is the usual resistive heating that happens in any wire with current flow, which isn't generally a problem for stuff folks are likely to find in their home office even with the cord all bunched up somehow.
Kid-proof tablet..
While I was learning electronics from my father, he went through a major learning experience. He built a project for his employer with neat bundles of wires tied every few inches, and neatly done so it looked very nice. Of course the system didn't work. The fact the wires were bundled in such close proximity caused crosstalk between wires. In order to fix the system, he cut the cable ties and ruffled the wires into a chaotic rats nest of wires. The system came right up and worked perfectly. As a Virgo, I like neat, and what I just described is distasteful, but this is a true story. For what it's worth.
Don't make coils (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wed Jul 22, '09 06:41 PM (#28789059)
Don't make coils out of excess cable. Loops of cable act as an inductance. When you switch on a device which is connected via a long power cable in loops, the extra load from the inductance can be enough to blow the fuse of the circuit.
Electrical load goes up as resistance and/or reactance goes down. Coiling a wire increases inductance. This increases inductive reactance. This delays direct current from reaching maximum and reduces alternating current. In other words, less load, not more.
That doesn't mean that I'm recommending loops in long power cords, just that the loops will not increase current draw.
Ok I just HAVE to challenge this.
IF(AND ONLY IF!) you are talking MILES of cable and THOUSANDS of loops it will be significant at 60hz, otherwise forget it!
Do the arithmetic: a single turn loop has about 0.1ohm impedance at 100khz!
At 60hz that will be about 0.00001 ohms!!!
The rest is Ohm's law ...
Rodrigovr is actually right, to a point. You do want to hide everything that you can. I have been racking eq and doing wiring work for 20+ years... Use cable ties, not velcro, or wraps or anything like that, just plain old cable ties. I know, if you have to replace something or move something you have to cut all those ties... YEP thats right. Big deal. Just tie it all up again and do a better job each time you have to do it. You want to keep power separate from everything else.
And thats a great idea to be able to turn off stuff you don't use all the time with diff power strips, I do that myself.
You may want to use a mounting head cable tie and screw stuff you your actual desk. This is the kind of tie http://www.cabletiesplus.com/Products/5-Mounted-Head-Cable-Ties-(40-lb)-(Natural)__CP-5-40MH-N.aspx and you can use very small screws.
BUT if you don't want harm your desk at all. Just leave it hang and lay on the floor and make it look at nice as you can. Don't use tape, or sticky strips, or sticky cable mounts, because NONE OF THEM WORK. About two days after you anchor something it will come off, trust me... Basic rule of thumb for cable work, if it seems like its going to be way too much work and a big pain in the ass, then your doing it right and it will look great in the end. And just remember I have done this with 20+ devices in a 72u rack (over 6 feet of eq...) and you could NOT see any power cable when I was done and all the network, KVM etc... were ladder wrapped and the rest of the ties were about 1ft apart... Took 2 days to do one rack, but it looked great when it was finished.
Duke
FreeBSD: Nothing runs like a daemon with a pitch fork.