- At my new place,
there's a lot of stuff for me to charge,
everything from batteries to controllers,
to my freaking car.
So Anker sponsored this video
where I'm going to be showing you guys
all the really cool solutions we've come up with
to charge all of my devices efficiently and safely.
And we are off to a really, really good start here
as you can plainly see.
(upbeat music)
Obviously not everyone needs a solution
to charge their high powered, electronic water guns.
But as a parent, I can tell you
whether it's a water gun or some other electronic gizmo,
it's a pretty crappy feeling
to have your kids come to you and say,
dad can you play with me?
Can we play with those?
And you go, oh, they're not charged.
Can you wait four hours?
Well, right, it's not real.
It's not reasonable.
So, the solution we've come up with here
is Nick Callanan printed out these 3D printable holders
for the spyra water gun.
I mean, shout out Thingiverse by the way
because you can find fricking anything on there.
(spyra water gun blasts)
Okay, there's a slight flaw in the system.
There we go.
Then this is where it gets genius.
So the cable management for all of them
is run right along the length of a gun.
So you barely see them.
And one of the things I noticed about these
is that they always retain a little bit of water
and it gets freaking nasty.
So, we installed this little water trough.
Obviously it's not going to run the water off
outside the house or anything like that,
but it gives it somewhere to just sit and evaporate
where it's not going to stain the wall
or cause a puddle on the floor
that could be a slipping hazard.
Pro tip by the way, if you're using LTT cable ties
or any other hook and loop style fastener
on a braided cable like this one
you want to put the soft side in.
That's actually why we have logos on both sides
because otherwise the hard side
will just kind of pull it out and cause little fuzzies.
And then the whole thing won't look nice like this does.
The cherry on top for the water guns is less about charging
and more about battery management.
This little smart outlet will allow me
to put a little battery powered switch right here,
that you can press to activate this entire circuit.
So that way they're not just sitting at 100% charge,
constantly being charged all the time
which could cause the batteries to swell and die.
Coming around to the back of my media center,
I think I did job of the cable management.
Okay look, you can see it from the front, alright?
But it's pretty clear that we can do better.
Step one, is going to be replacing my existing power bar
with one from Anker that has more plugs.
And step two, is actually going to be salvaging back
some of my plugs
by replacing multiple power bricks with individual ones.
This right here is from Anker's GaNPrime lineup.
It's a 65-watt charger.
That's super small.
Thanks to its gallium nitride design.
And it's got two USB-Cs
and a USB-A allowing me to charge my switch
as well as for my Harmony universal remote receiver.
Now obviously when it's sitting behind my media console
I'm not going to be moving it around.
But one of the key benefits of these gang chargers
is that they're super portable
compared to something like a 65-watt Apple brick.
It's literally half the size.
Anker also offers their 737 GaNPrime charger
which will deliver up to 120-watts.
(power brick bangs)
(laughs)
And that is why I hate attaching power bars to things
because you either try and line up the screws
on the little keyhole things
and it like never quite goes in, right?
Or you hot glue it.
This is actually with like extra strong, hot glue
and it eventually comes off anyway.
Fortunately, I have a new solution.
This particular one isn't from Anker.
This is from LTT store,
but I'm sure they won't mind me talking about it.
This is what I'm going to call the grand piece
of our upcoming cable management lineup.
Basically it's a little universal doodad-a-ma-jig
that fits into any one of these keyholes.
You tighten it on like this and boom, magnetic mound.
I mean, assuming there's metal here,
we'll put a metal thing there.
- [Plouffe] Oh are those the LTT cable management things?
- Yeah. - [ Plouffe] Oh.
- The goal was to have it be so strong
that you can plug and unplug things.
- [Plouffe] Yeah, without it taking it off.
- Without it taking it off.
But when you need to move it. [Plouffe] You can pull it off!
- Magnets baby, how do they work?
The LTT store power brick holder.
Ah, okay, wait for it.
If you have like a ton of like power bricks and cable,
power bars and power bricks and stuff like...
This just changed the game.
And probably the coolest thing about this
is Jacob from engineering spent literally months,
probably longer than I would've allocated to it,
optimizing the magnetic field orientation, whatever.
So that these things would have just wild strong,
hold strength.
Look at this.
(power brick bangs)
That's what it takes to pull it off.
So once it's on there, it's on there.
- [Announcer] A few moments later.
- And we're done.
There's obviously still a lot of cables back here
but we were able to consolidate everything
that was plugged into the wall behind me,
all six of these outlets
into this one power bar and everything is strapped up
to the back of our media console
including an extra LAN cable that's super convenient
to just grab down and run to wherever
we need it in the future.
And so much cleaner.
There we go.
(laughs)
Now controller charging.
Same thing as the guns, kids want to play games.
They don't want to worry about charging controllers,
adults too.
Rather than settle on just a place to charge Double As
and Triple As,
I've created the ultimate charging station.
These little wire shoe racks
are available for next to nothing
at places like IKEA, Home Depot or even on Amazon.
And what's great about them
is that they allow for adequate airflow
for your chargers and your batteries
while also reducing the risk of fire.
One thing that I would like to improve about this setup
is getting rid of this little bit of carpet here
and actually screwing a metal plate to the wall right here.
Because while double a batteries are unlikely to catch fire.
Some of the types of batteries that I'm charging here
could say, for example
the lithium ion batteries for my tools
or these 18650 based Tesla batteries
for the kids' Radio Flyer, Tesla ride-ons.
Those are not nearly though as dangerous as these.
Any DIY batteries live inside separate metal enclosures
because even under ideal conditions
these LiPo batteries can cause some wicked, wicked fires.
Anker's contribution to this one, pretty straightforward.
Another one of their very well spaced out power bars
and then LTT store contribution.
Eh, little cable management clips.
Anytime we need them just, you know.
Let's take another crack at this.
Okay, good.
I didn't want my car charger just lying across the floor
because you never know kids could run over it
with their bike or you could accidentally roll
a piece of equipment over it or whatever.
So with a simple spring balancer and some aircraft cable
we were able to suspend the car charger up above me.
I think there's still a bit of fine tuning to be done
with respect to the lengths of the aircraft cable
or whatever else.
But boy, is that ever better
than having it dangling along the floor, right?
Sometimes as is admittedly the case
with these Ninebot Go-karts.
There's not a whole lot you can do
to achieve perfect cable management nirvana.
I guess we could build some kind of like
two layer stacker with all the bricks,
power managed into it or something like that.
At the very least we have this,
a 3D printed enclosure
that allows me to take two power bricks
and turn them into just one,
while also offering some protection
from the bangs and scuffs and scrapes
that are likely to probably not do much to them.
Okay, this wasn't really necessary
but whatever the Go-karts are here
and they plug into the wall a little something like this.
Okay, then we'll go like that and then like that.
For my nightstand,
my before setup is actually pretty solid.
I've got a total of eight USB ports
with these two right here.
I've got this non-slip mat here
that prevents anything from me,
accidentally tugged off the table.
And then I've got this single wireless charger
that'll do a phone, AirPods and Apple Watch
if I had one of those.
Thank you Apple for not making it the cheese standard
as well as having a USB-C here
that I put my little Uber ring charger on.
I can pop on there
but that's not to say that we couldn't do better.
These don't do fast charging.
And I've got a fair bit of mess under the desk
that I think could be improved.
As for my wife Yvonne's set up,
she just has the one of these quad port USB-A things.
She honestly doesn't really charge much.
Just her phone and then her AirPods,
which are not plugged in.
Oh my goodness.
I didn't even notice this.
This needs to be replaced, yeah.
I think Anker has probably got us covered there though.
Now technically the adhesive I used on these is temporary.
It's actually the same as this stuff, but when it's clean,
it's a little like micro-suction cups.
Boy, does it ever grab.
(laughs)
Ah, there we go.
And the adhesive that's on the other side of it is wild.
This is the intended side.
You can kind of stick it places if you want.
Aw, that's better.
We're all Ankered up,
we got their PowerPort Cube coming off the wall over here.
This will do USB as well as AC power
that goes straight into one of their GaN chargers here.
This puppy will do a total of 150-watts
through a combination of three USB-Cs
and one Type-A,
so two of these USB-Cs are going up to the top.
We've got one of them here.
This is probably going to be for phones and random devices
and then one of them is dedicated to this side
and that's for my Ayaneo or Steam Deck
or whatever flavor of the month handheld gaming console
that I'm going to be using.
So that'll sit right about there.
Obviously we've got more USB ports up here.
So two Types-Cs, one Micro B, and one Lightning connector.
And those are all easily accessible, but here we go.
We tuck it in a little, something like that,
without taking up space on top of the desk
and without being an eye sore.
Oh, so much better.
Not much we can do about how messy Yvonne's nightstand is
other than just put it all in a pile
and hope this is how you wanted it put away hun, hah.
But hers is great because there you go.
You can easily see and access it.
If you need to plug in more cables,
see if she wants this Micro B or whatever else.
And the one that she actually uses in bed is a Type-C
that'll reach right over to around here.
One of the coolest things about Anker chargers
is their PowerIQ 4.0,
which will automatically detect the devices
that you have plugged in
and then distribute their total power budget accordingly.
So if I were to add another Type-C over here
say one for the Ayaneo and one for my laptop
which I often charge my backpack right here
just a little something like this,
it'll automatically distribute the power as needed.
My problems here in my office are too full.
One is that I didn't have enough RGB before,
as you can see we got that sorted out.
But number two, its that my cabling situation?
Is A messy and B in some cases downright dangerous?
This is the AC power cord that was running to my subwoofer.
Step one, is going to be to pull off my existing
far too long XLR cable.
Although it was conveniently managed
with this LTT magnetic cable holder
and replace it with this custom perfect length one
from the one and only Dan who built it for me.
Thanks Dan.
That's why we call him Dan, the guy.
And this one, I can't get perfect no matter what.
This fiber optic cable just can't be coiled up tightly
or jammed in anywhere.
You got to be super, super careful with it.
So I'm just going to take one of these
and then accounting for that needs to be height adjustable.
I'm going to leave a little bit of extra collage there.
And then I just need one
of my little cable management arches, boop.
Also, I hid away my DisplayPort cable here.
I'm using an HDMI TV right now,
but I'm probably going to switch to DisplayPort monitor
at some point.
So I'll just leave my cable here
and then it'll be ready to go for you when the time comes.
If I was willing to settle for wireless headphones
this wouldn't be a problem,
but I'm going to have to accept at least one hanging cable
under the desk.
And that's the one for my headphones.
Let's just go ahead and put this magnetic arch here.
These Anker USB hubs are super handy,
they have a combination of data ports
and fast charging ports.
And while I wouldn't normally recommend
strapping them in the way that I'm doing right now
because you'll probably give up at least one of your ports.
Yeah, you can see that spacing.
I give up one of my data ports.
The benefit is that hides under my desk
and I never have to see it.
(upbeat music)
Well, it might not be the cleanest setup in the world
but considering how much is going on with this set up:
cameras, microphones, lights, other more different cameras,
other more different microphones,
there's it's just a lot to it.
I am very happy with the result.
Oh, did we ever power it on?
(laughs)
Okay, it's on now.
That's good.
I want to show you guys one of the coolest features
which is that everything's magnetic,
which means that even though I never use a standing desk,
if some butt had were to come and standing-ify it
it would just rip the magnets off
rather than actually breaking anything
because this fiber is extremely fragile.
I'm not going to go outta my way to test this theory.
Our magnets are also like crazy strong
but theoretically it's a fail safe that does exist.
In the boys' room we get to check out
one of our coolest products yet.
This is the 727 Charging Station.
This is part of their GaNPrime lineup.
And it's got a number of things on it.
Two Type-As, two Type-Cs.
These are PD Type-Cs.
So you could charge something like, oh shoot.
Where'd I put all the laptops.
Ah, yes.
Say for example, a Chromebook for school
or other more different laptop
for doing anything other than school.
And this is really neat.
It's also got these super cool duplex receptacles.
Look at this.
It pops out when you plug it in.
So that's how it can stay so slim.
If you want a tighter form factor,
they also have the 615 USB Power Strip
in their GaNPrime lineup with 65-watts distributed between
two fast charging USB-C ports, two AC outlets
and a USB-A port.
This last one's really cool.
This is their 733 Power Bank.
It's part of their GaNPrime lineup.
So it has the same active shield temperature monitoring
that checks like 3 million times a day
or something like that, to make sure nothing's overheating.
And this is going to replace two things in my backpack.
lttstore.com.
My 10,000 milliamp hour power bank
which you can see,
it's actually not a dissimilar size to
that gallium nitride for you.
And I believe this is a 65-watt...
No, this is a 100-watt charger.
Ooh, damn, I thought it was...
You know what?
I'm switching back to the framework anyway.
So, it'll be the 65-watts
that I need for my framework laptop.
It actually replaces both of these pieces,
plugged straight into the wall
and just uses a standard Type-C cable.
Love that dual purpose
and that way I never have to think about
charging up my power banks separately.
It just charges whenever I plug in my laptop.
Oh, and you know what else I don't have to think about?
A Segway to our sponsor,
'cause the video was brought to you by Anker.
Hope you guys enjoyed it.
Bye.