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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."
You will feel more comfortable if you don't see all those cables
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 would recommend you design and build your own desk. Nothing beats being able to locate features fit to your own requirements and workspace. Mmmmm cables and oak.
I don't get it - you have all those devices in one room that you're having cable problems?
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 word: scissors. Took care of all my unsightly cable runs.
This guy's the limit!
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
But if you want it to look better velcro would look best
I do not recommend my current method of just having the wires running about, they seem to like getting in knots just sitting there somehow.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
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.
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.
Give up, and embrace the Electric Spaghetti.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
What are you trying to accomplish? If you want neat and pretty, that needs one type of thing. If you are trying to organize the cables behind the computer, that needs another type of thing. If you are only trying to neaten the cables between computers, that needs another. You building a rack-room or want something professional? My only concern was getting in-between device cables off of the floor and above doors. Went to home depot, bought 1.5 inch PVC Pipe mounting clasps (used to hold pipes to walls), and suspended them 8 inches from the ceiling. Then ran the cables through the clasp. To manage power-cables behind desk, I strap-tied the power cables to the desk, leaving other ethernet/keyboard cables which will move around loose. If you want something to impress girls, don't think having neat cables counts. Most women that have seen the cables dangling from my walls are more than a little worried.... Keep meaning to string LED lights along them to make them look less disturbing.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
There is an easy place to get all of the declutter stuff you need. It's called Home Depot.
I agree; my house is cluttered with items I got at Home Depot!
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.
Ive found there is no real solution in a home environment for me. My office is too much of a lab to be able to contain the cable beast, and my desk configuration is in a constant state of flux. Working on others computers, working new components into the A/V rack, dragging old consoles out, all kinds of stuff. I COULD get a nice test bench/desk with cable routing etc., but its expensive and not really 'home-like'. Besides that it took me years to wire it up the way it is now, and EVERY TIME i introduce cable ties into the works, I have to later remove it. I have put a lot of thought into this over time and realized that any solution I came up with would have more drawbacks then I would like. ANy 'design' would be hard pressed to be cost-efficient, neat and flexible. Its a 'choose only two' type situation.
Good-bye
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
Do it the old school way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_lacing
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
and safe (I have small kids) solution.
Well there goes all my ideas!
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.
Quit vacuuming and pretty soon all your cables will be nicely concealed.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
HTH.
Anyone who suggests zipties should be shot, kicked, beaten, stabbed, sodomoized, then forced to install vista over ME on an Acer PC with a cyrix processor.
You can't tell what you're going to do with those cables in a year, or what cable will mysteriously go bad. Velcro straps > pretty much anything else.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Raceways might work in some places but they are a bit expensive. Here's something that works like raceway but is far less expensive. Use plastic rain gutters. The metal ones are likely to damage the cables so stay with plastic. This solution does not look very professional but it works for me.
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.
Avoid protrusions and the bulk and waste of a bag of hundreds of cable wrap zip ties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_lacing
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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 ...
If you have a kid playing with scissors near live power cables, you have a bigger problem than cable management. Like Junior Flambé. Go take a parenting course or something.
Ok my karma is maxed out. When do I become Enlightened?