Electronics charging solutions?
 

Over the holidays it seems that the number of chargers and rechargeable devices I own has about doubled in number. I have an Cygolite front light, 4 Hotshot tail lights, GoPro camera, camera battery charger, Bluetooth speaker. Then we also have a couple of other battery chargers for different still cameras around the house, my son has a kids version of a tablet. Luckily they're all USB/mini-USB or standard outlet chargers.

Just wondering what others have come up with to keep everything sort of contained in one place. Just throw everything in a box with charging cables? Or have you made something more elegant? I bought a power strip, and a 4-port USB charging hub to try to de-clutter some of this stuff and not use up half the outlets in the house while all my lights and camera batteries are charging.

Would love to see some ideas.

Change one or multiple outlets to the Leviton 15 Amp Decora Combination Duplex Receptacle and USB Charger and charge your devices without needing a cludgy powerstrip.

I charge my camera before I go on a trip, I can get about 2,000 photos out of a battery, and I have a spare or two. Charger stays at home.

Most of my electronics charge with a standard USB on both ends. My watch is an exception and its charger comes with me.

That doesn't help when I have 6 to 8 things to charge, and I would still have cables strewn all over the house. I'm trying to come up with a solution to keep it all in one place, preferably all plugged into a single wall outlet. But I also want to keep it neater than the potential rat's nest of a power strip and 6 or 8 charging cables all clustered together at the end of the kitchen countertop.

I've seen posts on other forums where people have gone DIY and turned a USB cord into a charging (but not data) cable for specific devices. Can't find the one for my watch right now but:

http://i.imgur.com/lZASVDbl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/MTcRYlOl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/31m4FoXl.jpg?1

I've seen others that were more elegant and did not use paper clips.

It seems all my gadgets now charge from USB, so I have a power strip in the living room with lots USB chargers plugged into it. I keep various types of USB cables there. I call it the charging center. Sometimes my wife is charging her phone, I'm charging something else, and a visitor is charging a third thing, all at once.

Just get yourself a high output USB charger with multiple outlets. If you want to be fancy there are commercial units with 50 outlets. There are reasonably priced domestic units with 8 outlets and 20A output. Like this one: http://www.amazon.com/EZOPower-Inter...0W+usb+charger Get some 2A USB cables so whatever you plug in charges as fast as it can. USB is now rated to 2A so it makes sense to take advantage of this.

I have lots of USB devices and charge them with a six port charger that I got on line from MobStub.Com. If I remember correctly, it ran around $15.00.

+1. I use a Anker 6 output 12A charger that senses the load and will charge up the 2.4A on an output.

For me, part of the problem/annoyance was due to the length of the USB cables. We recently installed top and bottom cabinets in a nook, off the kitchen. Its counter has been designated for the base of the phone/charging station. I changed the outlet to the same one Mephisto linked, and got a multi-USB hub from Amazon; I also got several 1-foot USB cords so I don't have a rats nest. It's not perfect, but it's much better than it was.

That Leviton wall outlet only puts out 3.4A total. (15A is the 120V rating). If you're going to run a wire from the wall outlet to a USB hub, IMO it's be better to run a power cord from the wall to a USB charger like the Anker charger I recommended. Still one wire from the wall to a small box and the short USB cables to each device being charged. There's more power available and you can take it with you.

I can see where that Leviton outlet would be useful on a kitchen counter top outlet where you might tend to charge your cellphone.

I was thinking about this today too, and I ended up going with this

On the shelf where I tend to put all my cycling related gadgest such as lights/etc, I just have an 8-outlet power strip mounted and several of the 2-amp USB transformers and a handful of appropriate cables - two of them are micro-USB (like what I need for my Garmin 520 and Bontrager Flare R taillight), one Mini-USB (used on the Serfas Thunderbolt taillight and older Garmin 500, and some older Niterider headlights I have), Apple Lightning (in case I wanna charge my iPhone while I'm working on my bikes), and then a couple of the specific chargers for my big-daddy Light&Motion headlights that I use for night MTB riding.

That's about what I did. I have a power strip that has the Magicshine charger, a charger for the 18650 batteries for my flashlights and a USB charger for my Viz360 in the room I use for bike storage. I turn the power strip off when I'm not using it, and have a 4 outlet travel charger in the living room for my phone, my GFs phone and her tablet.

I guess getting some short cables is the way to go, probably from Monoprice.com. Finding a power hub isn't the problem. I'm just trying to figure out a good way to keep it all contained.

At this point I'm thinking small shoebox with some cardboard pieces to create small compartments for the various lights and other things to reside in, and cables going to each, and a place for the power strip and charging hubs.

So this is what it looked like the other night when I had everything connected and charging all at once:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...pszbf7bwjg.jpg

I don't have a close-up pic but I found the shoe box from my Bontrager SPD shoes, which has a little diagonal divider piece in them, so I stuffed everything in there with the power strip on one side, charging cords and USB hub on the other side, and a hole in the end for the power strip cord. It's a little crude but definitely more contained than that rat's nest in the above pic. It's on the 2nd shelf in this pic with the white power strip cord coming out the end:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...psmirnmnaz.jpg