So I have many project ideas in my head and figured I would share them with my many thousands of readers (ha!).
- a charging station for my many portal electronic devices. You can buy these, but the nice ones are expensive, and the cheap ones are annoying. I’m going to use a powered USB hub for charging though, rather than trying to contain the massive power bricks. Means I need to line up a cheap supply of USB cables for each device, which is easily done. Then find a box that will work, or build one. Should be an easy, and fun, project.
- Dozens of house hold projects, including building a closet downstairs for the toys, and to cover the unsightly pole and old chimney down there. Also a studio in the garage which will be costly and time consuming, but well worth the effort I think.
- A pole in the backyard for some bird feeders that will have a few branches to attach feeders to. I want it hinged so I can tilt it down to fill the feeders, as well as some sort of anti-squirrel gimmicks. I’ll feed the squirrels in another location.
re: the USB charging stuff, I had mixed luck trying that. I was actually doing it for the car — iPod, cell phone, DS, etc. Just leave one cigarette-lighter-to-USB adapter plugged in, and swap USB cabless. easier and less bulk.
Some of the off-brand ones I bought at radio shack simply didn’t work. I got this one that looked like it was ideal — it had chargers for the DS, PSP, iPod and mini-USB. But the iPod one didn’t actually work to charge the iPod? and when plugged into the DS, it was too short to put the DS anywhere useful with it plugged in.
for one in-home, the real challenge is just making something attractive that can hold your devices and hiding the cables. if the set of cables is fixed, you can just bundle them with heat wrap and hide everything else under the desk or in a drawer or whatever.