Trashcan solutions

 We just returned from a family event in Florida.

At some point I mentioned to Mason that for many years and in multiple locations at our home in Montreal, my offices at CGI, and now at our home in Toronto, I have used trashcans as a solution to the wire mess that is inevitable with computers and network gear. 

Mason was interested to learn more, and I promised photos. Mason expressed concern that bundling power supply cabling with ethernet was not recommended due to electro-magnetic interference. I acknowledge that, but it's something I have always done, and haven't had any issues that I am aware of.  Although see below about a magnet war that destroyed some key equipment.

Sending one photo by email is fine, but multiple photos is a trickier challenge due to file size.

I thought about alternatives, and decided that a blog post could do the trick.

So here goes.

There are a number of ingredients that result in the wire mess:

1. Power supply
1. There are the power bars needed to plug in all the devices. Sometimes the power connection is direct (for instance with a Mac computer) more often the power connection is indirect and requires plugging in an AC/DC adapter.
2. In addition to the little brick that takes up space on the power bar, the AC/DC adapter has a long-ish cable, often with a micro USB connection that plugs into the device. That is the first source of excess wiring. Modems, routers, bridges, they each have a little brick and excess micro USB wiring.
2. Network cabling
1. Modems, routers, computers, printers, microphones, and other devices that depend on rapid and voluminous data use RJ45 ethernet network cables, as well as phone or optical cabling. While it is possible to make custom length cables, I have never bothered, you will soon see why.
2. Often the ethernet cable runs to and from from the network components are short, in the case of my network gear, maybe from mere inches to a foot or three max. That means more excess wiring, depending on the length of the ethernet cables.

There are readily available tools you can use to tame cabling, but tie-wraps are essential.  In my most recent cable management for my sit-stand desk I installed Ikea undermount cable trays. I posted a video that you can get here. A word of warning about electro-magnetic interference that I did have though. In the video you will see that I mounted two Ikea lighting remotes next to the remote for the sit-stand desk. The Ikea remotes are held in place by strong magnets. Over time the magnetic field from the Ikea remotes destroyed both the sit-stand desk remote, and the control unit for the motorized legs. It took a lot of brainstorming with the amazing support folks at Progressive Desk to figure out what was happening. You will see in photo #1 below that the Ikea remotes are now installed on the risers for my monitors. The sit-stand desk is back to working perfectly. Hopefully the Ikea magnetic remotes aren't working on destroying anything else, like my Mac.

So here is what I do.

1. I plug everything in.
2. I use tie-wraps to route the cabling.
3. All the excess cable gathers at a single point along with all the DC power supply cables. From that point, the cables are gathered and from there descend into a trashcan (most recently I used a Muji storage cube). The excess ethernet cable takes the same path. All the power bars currently there are four, and all the AC/DC adapters live in the trashcan.
4. That's it. Wire mess tamed. Easy-peasy.

Here are the photos. In the first photo if you look carefully you will see 7 cables on the desktop in this order: lightning cable, micro USB cable, female USB, female USB, lightning cable, USBC, lightning cable. I can pull on each of those cables to extend them. The reason that works is that you can see in photo #5 that the excess cable simply falls in a controlled way into a trashcan. The other cable that falls into the trashcan is the main power cable that connects to the power bar that sits in the Ikea cable management tray. As my sit-stand desk rises and lowers, the cables lower into the trashcan, or rise up, as the case may be. Kind of cool, very functional, very handy.

Photo #1

Photo #2

Photo #3

Photo #4

Photo #5

Photo #6

Photo #7

Photo #8