Charging Shelf

[Roger Mills]

One or two people have mentioned making a charging shelf, to tidy up the arrangements for charging mobile phones, tablets, cameras, toothbrushes, etc.

Have any of you made one and, if so, how did you go about it?

I'm proposing to make one, and need to sort out the details. I have bought a 6-gang individually switchable extension lead thus:

- which is wall mountable, using two keyhole slots on the back.

I shall mount this horizontally on a wall with a shelf - maybe 600 x 225 above or below it. I can then keep all my chargers plugged in but only consuming power when actually charging. The items being charged will sit on the shelf, of course.

I can't decide whether - to keep the cables as tidy as possible - it's best to have the chargers above or below the shelf. I'm tending towards having the power under the shelf, and slotting the back of the shelf - with only the ends touching the wall, to pass the cables through. I shall probably shorten the extension lead cable too - because the 6-way jobbie will sit just above an existing power point.

Any thoughts?

[whisky-dave]

Why bother ?

[Roger Mills]

Largely because I often want to charge several things at the same time - and am running out of power points unless I scatter the items around in different rooms. I probably wouldn't have thought of it if somebody here hadn't mentioned it.

[Chris J Dixon]

I was able to retire some of my collection of wall warts by using one of these.

Which has been trouble-free so far. You do need to make sure you match the output socket to the device, some can be fussy, and they are not identical.

Chris

[Theo Markettos]

Couple of thoughts:

Are any of the devices you have suitable for wireless charging? Some phones etc don't have it built in, but you can get an adaptor that sits on top of the battery. If you fit a wireless charging pad, you can just chuck the phone on the shelf and it'll charge. That's handy when the phone rings and you can just pick it up, rather than have to pull out the cable.

Also, is it worthwhile doing this with DC (for instance USB, or 'car chargers' and a strip of cigar lighter sockets)? It would seem inefficient to have a string of bulky mains adaptors all separately generating 5V to feed into their respective gadget.

Also don't forget to consider cooling of the adaptors - some (cheap'n'nasty ones especially) can run hot.

Theo

[Tim Watts]

The biggest two problems are:

a) Excess DC cable;

b) Dust;

a can be solved by neatly rolling the slack and sticking a tie wrap or velcro band around it.

a and b can be solved by sticking some slotted trunking along the back of the shelf (or maybe regular trunking with a series of 10-20mm holes, big enough to pass a powerplug or micro USB or USB plug through. You can roll up the excess cable inside the trunking which contains nothing but DC, and it's a minimal dust collector. You can even pou lables on it to show what each lead does.

[Tim Watts]

Because it is actually a good idea :)

[charles]

What I use is one of the vertical, 4 sockets a side, mains extensions. It allows for chargers for mobile phones, ipads, other tablets, etc. There are

7 wallwarts in it as I type.

[whisky-dave]

It'll probbaly fail to be useful once a lead is too short or gets tangled up around something else and the whole lot comes crashing to the floor. I tend to like charging things up where I'm most likely to use them. My idevices in the main room as I can still use my ipad when it's charging. toothbrush well that can go in the kitchen it doesn't need to go in my frontroom. If I had a mobile phone I would charge it near to where I was I wouldn;t want to have to go into a differnt room to answer it each time.

For me the mass of small tangley cables is enough for me NOT to even charge 3 things up in the same area.

[Roger Mills]

Looks useful, but a number of my devices have dedicated chargers which are not USB-based e.g. the Karcher window vac.

[Roger Mills]

using trunking at the back of the shelf in which to 'lose' excess cable was something I *hadn't thought of. Good idea!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Suppose I must have three. ;-)

One in the workshop for tools etc. One in the kitchen for phones etc. One in the bathroom for shavers etc. Probably need another for all the etc.

[Johny B Good]

Assuming a full complement of 6 smpsu based chargers typically consuming less than half a watt each when not plugged into the device they're intended to charge, I'd say the extra cost of the individually switched sockets extension lead over that of the cheaper unswitched one might well be recouped in as little as 2 1/2 years (possibly as little as 5 years if the charger standby power consumption is more like 1/4W than 1/2W - you can, literally, get a 'feel' for this low level of standby consumption if you don't already possess a suitable energy monitor to test with).

I'm assuming a charging time of 8 hours average per device. If it's more typically 2 to 4 hours, the payback time will be even longer. However, being able to switch them off after a short 2 to 4 hour session could, potentially extend the service life of each charger by anywhere from 3 to 12 times[1] compared to their always on operation using the £6.29 cheaper unswitched 6 way extension socket option.

IME, most of these small smpsu based wallwart charger supplies seem to last 3 or more years without any trouble so extending the life to 9 or more years seems overly optimistic of the useful life of a large proportion of their associated gadgets.

As is so often the case, the economics of such extras as a switch per outlet can prove to be rather more marginal than they first appear when all the factors are given proper consideration.

[1] or even longer yet again by a factor of the number of days a particular gadget can last for between charging sessions.

[Roger Mills]

Thank you for your detailed financial analysis.

However, I was really hoping for comments on the ergonomics rather than the economics of what I want to do. I've already bought the 6-way switched jobbie, anyway.

[meow2222]

What will the shelf do once its been charged?

One thing to watch out for not yet mentioned is suicidal chargers & appliances. Give the shelf a lip all round.

If I were doing one I might make it from 2 layers spaced apart with lots of 2.5" holes dotted about. It gives one more place to lose excess cables while adding a little ventilation.

I'd also think about how to make it easier to recognise which charger is for which appliance.

If the shelf is low down it might even work to screw some chargers to the underside so only their leads are visible.

NT

[Roger Mills]

Plead not guilty and apply for bail?

It won't be that far above another surface - so probably not enough height for suicides.

Someone else has suggested using trunking at the back of the shelf to contain the spare cable, which I think is a better idea.

Many of them have proprietary plugs at the device end, which will only fit one device. I could also label the wallwarts.

Most of them are wallwarts, and thus have to be plugged into a socket. Those which are not are things like toothbrush chargers which have 2-pin mains plugs with short mains leads to the working bits - little spiky things which the end of the toothbrushes sits on. I'll need shaver adapters for the 2-pin plugs, and can possibly glue the charging basses to the top of the shelf. [The toothbrushes wouldn't stay put if they were upside down below the shelf!]

[Michael Chare]

Interesting find. These are cheaper:

[meow2222]

I doubt either will be enough, both would work better

IME toothbrushes charge fine hanging on the mains lead :) I guess there's enough friction.

NT

[Dave Liquorice]

The switched one enables you to switch off things that don't automagically drop back to trickle charge and cook the batteries if left on charge.

Ergonomics, I have a switched 6 way mounted above the shelf on the bottom edge of a large board that wall mounting chargers can be fixed to. The 6 way being about 6" above the shelf so you can see and swap chargers about without knocking things off. A gap between shelf and wall is useful to drop cables through and hide underneath. My shelf is only 8" deep, 10" would be better.

[Dave Liquorice]

I was going to say that's fine for iThingies but for useful things, like drills, screwdrivers, vacs etc not a lot of use.

I've got one of these, just over a tenner from Amazon:

ger

Note that you can pull all of that current from any one port(*). Many chargers out there are quoted as 5V/8A or WHY but the max you can take from any port is 2A, like the Bolse example.

(*) >2 A needed to cope with a Raspberry Pi and 2 TB USB powered HD powering up together. My small selection of high power resistors didn't load the unit above 3.8A but you could take that from single port. The voltage regulation leaves a little to be desired IIRC at

3.8 A the voltage was down to 4.7 or 4.6 V, fine for charging, not so good for actually powering kit.