Subj : Seeking cable management ideas....
To   : All
From : bp@www.zefox.net
Date : Wed Jun 12 2024 01:56:09

Has anybody come up with an inexpensive way of organizing cables
among groups of Raspberry Pi hosts? The problem tends to be power
supplies. Most come with a fairly long cord and coiling it results
in a sort of bird's nest. Shortening it might be possible for the
older Pi's, but probably not for the later USB-C models. Stock
length cables are better a foot long than an inch short, so in the
end they're all at least a little too long.

Adding usb-serial adapters for monitoring serial consoles, powered
usb hubs for external disks and the disks themselves makes for a
very confusing and hard-to-trace nightmare.

It's all made worse by a need to individually remove and replace
hosts and components without disturbing others. For example, when
testing suspect components. More than once I've unplugged the wrong
Pi to hard reset a stalled host.

There's a very old photo at http://www.zefox.net/~fbsd/pi_cluster.
Now the tangle has grown to seven Pi's plus a few hubs and drives.
The network cables were re-routed but USB and power remain a mess.
I'm working on a cleanup while waiting for the new Pi5 to arrive,
but progress isn't impressive.

Has anybody come up with a way to make the excess cable "dissapear"
while preserving the ability to change connections?

Thanks for reading, and any ideas....

bob prohaska

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
 * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

.