Home Recharging Station?

[AnalogDog]

With all the stuff that we need to recharge today, not even encluding all those batteries we so love, it seems to me this is a good place to see if you all have messed around with a home recharging station for everything.

Right now, mine is on the top of my bedroom dresser with my C9000, PDA cable, phone cable, camcorder recharger, and a pile of NiMH batteries in TD boxes. In short, there is only one thing I would not replace about it, the Squid extention-distribution cord.

I have thought about building some sort of under cupboard sort of thing, but I suspect it would be very big.

There seems to be a number of challenges: getting power to all the devices managing the cords. heat dissapation, having it agree with the better half's sense of design and so on. But it would seem to be the convienent thing, to be able to grab all one's rechargables in one place at one time.

Maybe its not worth it, or maybe with some prebuilt enginuity it could be made easily. I would love to hear what has been made, and what has worked, and not worked.

Rob

 

[bridgman]

I put a lot of sliding drawers into my kitchen design. The top row of drawers is about 4" deep. One of those (near a power outlet) is dedicated to chargers. I just pull whatever I need out of the drawer, drop it on the (fireproof) countertop, plug it in and let it run.

Only problem is that there are cupboards directly above the charging area, so a really serious fire might catch the upper cupboards. Ideally I guess I would charge on the island, but all the simulations (yes, 41 use cases and about 100 simulation passes to get the kitchen layout optimized ) said that I should use the island drawers for something more frequently accessed than chargers.

I know most people set up a charging station either by the front door, in a pantry, or in a pull-out drawer wired for AC, but I didn't plan that far ahead nor did I anticipate how many different chargers I would end up with...

 

[Eugene]

I've tried to standardize on AA and AAA's for as much as I can to eliminate the number of chargers. Then there are the odd ones for the camcorder and cell phone. I've put a second shelf in the top of my closet to make more storage space then added in an outlet there with one always hot and one switched for a light. Then the plug strip it sitting on the back of the top shelf with the cords going down a 1/4" gap behind and sitting on the bottom shelf with all the chargers. Then I standardize on all 12v in chargers when possible and power them from one 12v supply so I can have smaller cables and connectors plugged in and /or daisy chain a few power supplies.