This is
a quick and easy how-to piece, but it can dramatically clean up the
space around your computer while making it much easier to "grab and go"
with all your essentials.
I'm sure you know the problem. You probably have a pretty
decent
collection of portable gadgets: iPod, PDA, digital camera,
camcorder, cellular phone... and perhaps a few of the more esoteric
things like ham radio, GPS, and weather station. Every one of
these items has some support requirements, ranging from a
charging cable to a USB-connected dock that lets it interface with your
computer while topping off its battery. For most folks, this
translates into a big mess of
cables and clutter in the general vicinity of the machine, and I bet
you've fished around a few times for the right unlabeled connector to
shove into the inscrutable socket on some seldom-used widget.
Packing it all up to go is an even bigger problem, and it's easy to
forget a dusty charger when you're heading out the door in
a hurry.
All that was certainly the case here, and since I'm trying to get ready
to move to a boat I am particularly interested in "modularizing" my
systems as much as possible. On my last cross-country trip, I
stuffed a huge tangle of cables and spare batteries into a bag and
spent considerable time sorting it out at the other end (finding many
things
that I didn't need while missing one that I did).
The solution, it turns out, is a simple one-evening project.
Assembling the Docking Pack
Basically, this is just a packaging job; because the exact
identity of individual components is subject to change as new toys
arrive in your life, it doesn't make much sense to build custom power
supplies or ultra-optimized devices stripped of their original
plastics... or to cut and splice cables to length (rendering them less
saleable when you are finished with them). The intent here is
simple expediency, and it is thus not even remotely weight-optimized.
In my application, I wanted support for the contents of my
stuffed-to-the-gills
Podzilla
:
- Palm TX PDA
- Panasonic PV-GS250 Camcorder
- Olympus DS-2 Digital Voice Recorder
- Canon SD500 digital camera
- Yaesu VX-6R tri-band ham radio HT
- Kestrel 4000 pocket weather tracker
- Motorola V710 cellular phone
This translates into some charger cables with wall-warts, a USB media
reader to
plug in CF and SD memory cards, a few docking stands that provide power
and connectivity to their associated gadgets, a USB hub and outlet
strip to minimize dangling wires, and
some random support cables that just need a place to live.
Here's
the pile of related clutter, all of which was taking up desk space in
the general vicinity
of my Macintosh:
Actually, I skipped ahead a little with that photo. The
plastic that most of the stuff is sitting on is a 16x12-inch piece of
Lexan® Thermoclear® polycarbonate sheeting, a nice
ultra-light
material that I used for some of the sub-panels in
BEHEMOTH
long ago. Pretty much anything will work, however (including
a scrap of
paneling); the key is covering the bottom of a suitable pack with a
flat surface that can accept adhesive-backed Velcro®.
(Actually, you could use sew-on hook-and-loop directly attached to the
fabric of a reasonably stiff pack, but that's a lot more work... and
much harder to edit later).
The pack I chose to receive all this is a left-over laptop bag
from long ago, extracted from a musty pile in the deep recesses of my
lab. It's not too critical... you just need something that
holds
its shape, is large enough to accommodate the pile of stuff, and tall
enough (in
my case, about 3 inches) to accommodate the thickest item (an
outlet strip carrying huge inefficient wall-warts).
The exact arrangement is completely non-critical, and you can
get
as fancy... or as crude... as you like. I bought a box of
black
Velcro® Industrial Strength Tape (2in. x 4ft.)
,
and had plenty left over. To make occasional
handling of the items more pleasant, I recommend standardizing with
hook on the
substrate and loop on the devices. Here's what it looks like,
a
couple hours later... with all of its associated gadgets plugged in:
Already, this has dramatically changed my workflow. It sits
out
of the way on my desk, with one AC cord snaking off to the wall and one
USB cable making its way to the hub behind the Mac. I always
know
where my portable devices can find power, or where to plug in a media
card full of images. And when I want to go mobile with the
laptop, I have
one bag already packed with
everything that lies
between the computer and the gadget pack. It would certainly
be
possible to lighten it by getting rid of the evil wall-warts and power
strip (using a multi-output DC switching supply hard-wired to a
power-entry module), but realistically,
this particular combination of components is probably only good for a
year... since today's whizzy must-have gizmology is tomorrow's
eBay
item.
Incidentally, most packs that are suited to this project have a few
stray
pockets here and there... providing storage for related but floating
items like the DV (FireWire) camcorder cable, "battery eliminator
cable" for same, USB extension cord, AC adaptors, backup batteries, and
other things that are related to the gadget collection, yet are not
worth
carrying all the time. Let it
evolve to fit your needs (ain't hook 'n loop wonderful?).
Next: Rechargeable Battery Management
Before I close this quick how-to piece, I should mention the second
half of the project (to be detailed here when it's
completed). A
closely related need involves all the stray batteries, as opposed to
those that are recharged within their corresponding hand-held
devices. I have standardized
on Ni-MH, and found
this
excellent package with 10 AAA, 25 AA, 8 9V, 10 C, and 8 D
batteries... along with a tester and a smart charger:
This is about to get a similar packaging treatment... in a matching
pack that zips onto the first. The binder will be included
(yes,
I know, paper is a retro and crude storage technology... but it is
so
non-volatile), since every battery is serial-numbered and has a
corresponding page on which charge dates and current "assignment" are
recorded. This allows wear-leveling across the entire
inventory, as well as early detection of failing cells. It
also eliminates that maddening problem with having a mixed inventory of
batteries of unknown history: digging around trying to find power for
an immediate need, eventually "borrowing" partly-discharged
units from another device.
The Grand Scheme
At the beginning of this article, I mentioned
that I am getting ready
to move to a boat. This process enforces a more streamlined
way
of looking at the familiar clutter, since on-board space and weight
budgets are severely limiting. I started realizing that it
boils down to an issue
of
granularity, where the goal is to reduce the
number of
objects to a minimum... each one embodying a single clear
function with a well-defined relationship to the rest of the system
(just
like object-oriented programming!). The docking pack is
merely
one step along this path; I
am similarly coalescing tools, parts inventory, documentation, audio
components, libraries, and
other resources into well-defined and packable
components. After all, it really should be possible to grab
one's
essentials and
leave without spending weeks making lists and
sorting things into boxes.
I wil report further on this as it develops...
Cheers from the Microship lab!
- Steve
Follow-up Notes
This was
linked
from MAKE: Blog
on May 4, 2006. One reader observed: "I'd kind of
want
those outlets to be individually switched... no need for all that power
draw just to recharge one battery."
I agree completely, and should have commented on that
earlier.
This pack was cobbled together from junk that was lying around, and the
use of a single power strip creates a whole cluster of phantom loads
when only one is being used (the most common scenario, the photo above
notwithstanding). I would much prefer to switch them
individually, and am watching for off-the-shelf hardware that will make
that neat and easy. Ideally, the ugly wall-warts should be
velcro'd down individually, each on an AC-dongle that terminates in a
small switchbox. It would of course be trivial to build, and
it
will probably come to that when I make the move to the boat... when the
easy-to-ignore global resource scarcity of American life is
replaced by a daily
amp-hour budget that's very much in the foreground!
