Snowbound

Unlike last Saturday there was no doubt that riding would impossible today. At 7 am I had to dig through 6 inches of snow before I could let the dog out. Three hours later we had close to a foot and I made my first of pass with the snowblower over the driveway. The storm is going to continue into Sunday so there won't be the possibility of riding this weekend let alone leaving the house.

This did give me some time to finish my latest home office project which I started last weekend. What I built was a charging station for all my electronic. Normally I charge all my "stuff" by just plugging it into a plug strip but it is unorganized and takes up a lot of space.

I already had a 4 port USB charger and plug strip with individual switches for each plug. This made it easier to charge multiple USB devices but it was still a mess of wires.

I looked online to see what was available to buy as well as to see what other people had done. I found some repurposed  shoe boxes and bread boxes that were simple and functional but didn't fit exactly what I wanted so I took the best ideas from what I found and made my own.

I started by mounting the plug strip I already had on a board so it stood upright.

I then built a box around it. The idea was to hide all the plugs and wires in the box and just have the cables sticking out.

I had to build some special plug adapters to connect plugs that won't easily fit into the plug strip because of it now being inside a box. I then started plugging everything in and feeding the cables through the slots above the plug strip.

There is still a mess of wires connected to the plug strip.

However once the top is on the box all you see it the end of the cables.

And when everything is plugged in it is a lot more organized and takes up about half the room it use to.

The main innovation that I made over other charging stations that I have seen is that I added a slot in the back of the station so I can stand up an iPad or other type of tablet. This helps to minimize space and gives me place to store the tablet when I'm not using it. The other part of this charging station that is different than any other one that I have seen is that each plug has its own switch. This means I can turn off the plugs when I am not charging. Although most charging plugs use little to no power when they aren't being used to charge a device I like the fact that I can be sure I'm only powering the plugs when I need to charge something and am not wasting any power when I'm not.

This was actually an easy thing to build. It only took me a few hours to put it together. I probably spent more type designing it then building it but it was a fun diversion that kept me busy inside while I wasn't able to ride.