Those Pesky Cords

We started with a laptop and life was simple. The laptop sat on a removable shelf that serves as a desk in our guest cabin. When guests arrive or work is necessary on the engine below the berth it was simple to move both the laptop its power cord and shelf.

Chaos took over as our laptop acquired friends. An external hard drive was added for continuous backups. A CD burner stores our growing files of digital pictures. A scanner was too inexpensive to pass up and has been handy for document copy. To make all things work at once we added a USB hub. A wireless mouse, which comes with a USB connection for the transceiver made photo editing easier. Finally a docking station was added for ease in using the laptop in other areas. Had this been a normal desktop installation the rat nest of wires would be tucked behind furniture and forgotten. On a boat however that rat nest doesn’t hide well under a mattress and pulling everything apart and putting it back together for each guest or major engine access was a real pain.

I was in the midst of tearing everything apart to do an oil change and grumbling a bit loudly about having a bigger pile of cords than hardware. “Why not build all the hardware into a small portable box and move everything still connected at once?” Ruth suggested. The tape measure came out as soon as the oil change was complete and we began rough figuring to see how big a box we’d have to have built. Then inspiration hit again and we decided to prototype our idea using one of the plastic file folder boxes that travel on our bike racks when we make a grocery run. A second plastic box was quickly scrounged to serve as a shelf for the hard drive, CD burner stack we made while hiding all the wires inside the turned over box. The printer went on top and we found that the scanner when not in use fit nicely on edge between the cord box and the file box edge. The open grid of the file folder box made it simple to route power and USB cords around as needed. Cable ties hold everything in place.

The prototype became the final design. One power cord from the concealed power strip under the shelf box connects power. One USB cord connects into the laptop docking station. They coil up nicely and with a Velcro strap connect to the side of the file box when we relocate the hardware. Now it’s fast and simple to teardown and set back up when guests arrive or engine work is needed. We thought we have to take the printer off the top of the box in rough passages, but have found that it rides quite nicely and hasn’t been a problem.