Platinum Tools EZ-SnapJack
Filed under: Network Products, Power and Data Ditribution
Waaaaaaaaaaay back in the day (okay, so it was only this past February), I talked about an EZ RJ45 plug that saved tons of time for installers because you slide all 8 wires into a wide, unpartitioned slot, instead of inserting each wire into its own individual channel. Believe me – I did a couple of comparison terminations myself, and the EZ version was practically fun compared to the standard RJ45 plugs. The hands-down winner. Well, I’ve just met the EZ RJ45’s soul mate: Platinum Tools’ EZ-SnapJack™, otherwise known as the keystone jack that’s about to rock your world.
If I remember correctly, I actually giggled with glee as I witnessed my first demo of this product. Now, I’m no jaded, punchdown-weary telecom tech, but I have done a few jack terminations at work and in the Learning Lab at CEDIA Expo 2008 (just a quick aside – if you get the chance, go). And while keystone punchdowns are no big deal, they definitely land on the time-consuming side of things.
Not anymore – well, not as long as you’re using EZ-SnapJacks™. These things work exactly the same way as the EZ RJ45 connector, in that you just arrange the 8 wires into the correct sequence, slide them into an alignment sleeve, and then trim the ends. From there, all that’s left to do is pop the prepped cable into the open jack, snap the top down (which, by the way, is the action that acts as the actual “punchdown”), and you’re done. It’s complete and utter laziness, but in the most positive and productive sense of the word. All I have to say is: way to save time on the job.
TeleAdapt Wired Connectivity Pull-Through Hubs
Filed under: Cables and Wires, Power and Data Ditribution
Generally speaking, I’d rather be at my place than staying in a hotel, but here and there I’ve found a few “hotel-only” features that I’ve wished I could have taken home with me. Minibars, for instance. Who wouldn’t want an ever-stocked stash of soda and macadamia nuts right in their very own bedroom? Then again, that would just make one chubby, and a girl prefers to stay in single-digit clothing sizes. And then there’s the coveted glass and travertine shower with rainfall showerhead… but that’s a little out of my bank account’s league right now. So where does that leave me?
At the desk, of course. Well, not the actual desk itself, but the sleek little disk-shaped cable holder stuck to the top of it. You know, the thing that holds onto the built-in Ethernet cord, so everything’s ready to plug in as soon as you whip out your laptop. Unlike at home, at hotels, you never have to crawl under the desk to find the cable. It’s an altogether winning concept. Now, I have far too much of a conscience (or guilt complex?) to make off with lodging-establishment property, but unlike the shower and minibar, those nifty cable-holding hubs are both readily available and in compliance with my ordinary-person budget.
Before I go any further, I should probably tell you exactly what they’re called: TeleAdapt Wired Connectivity Pull-Through Hubs. And they’re the exact same thing that you find at hotels and resorts – right down to the desk card that holds your choice of instructions or messages. If you’re going to use it at home or at work, you could always stick a motivational quote or something funny into the card holder, but if that’s not your thing, you can just remove it completely.
The TeleAdapt hub has a weighted base and a suction cup to keep it in place, and here’s the really cool thing – it isn’t just for Ethernet cords! There are 3 types of pull-thoughs, one each for Internet, Audio, and A/V connections – and each one includes a cable for its respective application. But if you already have all the cables you need, just go with the Cablesitter, a non-wired model that can be used with any cord you have.
Christmas Tree Ornament Touch Dimmer
Way to liven up my dragging Monday. We just turned the clocks back this weekend, but despite that extra hour of shut-eye we got just 36 hours ago, earlier today I was taking Monday morning a lot harder than usual. That’s until I started working my way through my accumulated weekend e-mails, and came across a pre-Christmas electronics sale. Christmas? Electronics?
Those two little words reminded me of the AmerTac™ Westek® Ornament Touch Dimmer, a very cool piece of electronics that resembles a golden snowflake ornament, but isn’t just there to look pretty. Get this: it actually lets you dim your Christmas tree lights! I’ve been wanting to take it for a spin for quite some time, so today was the day to make it happen. I rifled through our sample box, came up with the magic ornament, and returned triumphantly to my desk. Luckily, despite my nerd-girl appearance, deep down inside I’m a Buddy the Elf at heart, and have a string of Christmas lights stashed in my filing cabinet year-round. So I dug those babies out, plugged in, and started yelling to my coworkers to come and check this thing out.
All you do is plug a string of lights into the dimmer’s adapter, plug the adapter into a power outet, and you’re ready to go. From there, just touch the “ornament,” and you can adjust your lights to low, medium, and bright settings, or turn them on and off. The dimmer itself hangs right on a Christmas tree branch like any other ornament, and no one will be the wiser. The AmerTac™ Westek™ ornament dimmer is great for conserving energy and extending the life of your Christmas lights, or it could just be a fun thing for those with a flair for the novel to have around. You can either wow your guests with your “magic” skills, or just discreetly mess with them by changing light levels every time they glance in the direction of the old Tannenbaum. Either approach you take, you know it will be fun to watch (wink)!
MicroCare Fiber Connector Cleaning Sticks
If fiber optics were to have a dual arch-nemesis, it would definitely be that nasty pair known as Dirt and Grime. Think about how you can’t see quite right when your glasses or windows are smudged up. That’s because any dust or stickiness settled on see-though glass or plastic obstructs the proper flow of light, so objects on the other side can appear distorted. The same thing is true with optical fibers – these clear glass filaments relay data (in the form of light signals) from one point to another, and if their end-faces are covered in dust, fingerprints, or other grimy residue, the signals just aren’t going to come through right. Think of it as a bad game of telephone – you start out with a clear message at one end, and get stuck with a garbled mess at the other. Talk about something being lost in transit…
When it comes to fiber optics, clean connector end-faces equal clean data. It’s a simple as that. You just need to know that the cleaning products you’re using are truly taking all of the contaminants with them, instead of leaving a few particles behind to mess things up later. One of the most well-intentioned but sloppy connector cleaning implements out there is the fiber optic cleaning swab. Often made out of cloth or foam, these swabs may seem to get the job done, but are actually notorious for leaving behind microscopic bits of lint, which are often generated by the swabs themselves. You’re really not doing yourself any favors by using them.
You would be greatly helping yourself out, though, by cleaning your fiber optic connectors with Fiber Connector Cleaning Sticks from MicroCare. Just like swabs, they’re flexible and made to fit inside the alignment sleeves of fiber connectors, but material and cleaning-action wise, they’re worlds apart. MicroCare cleaning sticks are tiny cylinders molded from from lint-free fibers. When a solution-dampened cleaning stick is inserted into an alignment sleeve and pressed against the connector end face, its fiber ends actually open up slightly, allowing them to spin off-center as you turn the connector. This simple action allows the fibers to pick up far more dirt and debris, and actually wick the contaminants up into the tip. When that cleaning stick is removed, nothing is left behind except a squeaky-clean end face.
Cord Caddy Medical Cord Organizer
I can’t believe I’m doing this. Me, the chick who swoons when she hears words like “vein” and “needle”, and runs screaming from the room Macauley-Culkin-in-Home-Alone-style when her friends and family decide to go TMI and start swapping surgery horror stories. Today, I’m tackling the medical world. Yikes.
We’ve talked about home cable management, office cable management, and special event cable management – but today, we’re going to the hospital. You heard me. They may smell funny and weird me out, but on the serious side, hospitals are chock-full of critical cables and hoses that need to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. There’s no time to waste when a medical emergency arises, so monitor leads, hoses, and other cords need be in order – when someone’s life is on the line, doctors and nurses shouldn’t have to stop to untangle equipment first.
That’s why the Cord Caddy™ Medical Cord Organizer has been such a hit with healthcare professionals. Their jobs are stressful enough without having to wrestle with disorganized equipment carts. The Cord Caddy™ mounts right onto medical stands, IV poles, wall brackets and other fixtures to manage cables right at their sources.
In addition to the general neatness and time-saving factors, there are also the matters of infection control and money savings. The Cord Caddy™ is instrumental in keeping hoses and cables off the floor, which not only prevents them from being dragged through who knows what kind of bacteria, but also keeps them from being trampled underfoot during procedures. I’ve read testimonials from hospital department heads, raving about how much money the Cord Caddy™ shaved from their annual cable replacement expenditures. So think about the Cord Caddy™, medical professionals. It’s one worthwhile investment – for you, for your employees, and for your patients.
3M Macurco Carbon Monoxide Detector and Controller
Filed under: Electrical, Workplace Safety, energy conservation
A lot of us worry about carbon monoxide silently and invisibly building up inside our homes, so naturally, we make sure to stay safe with carbon monoxide detectors. But from the business/public safety standpoint, have you ever realized that CO can easily reach dangerous levels in garages and warehouses, too? Any enclosed area that plays host to vehicles and machinery that run on (read: burn) natural gas, wood, coal, or petroleum products can develop deadly high concentrations of carbon monoxide.
In these settings, one answer is to keep ventilation fans running at all times, constantly circulating air so that CO doesn’t have the chance to build up. This generally does the job, but it can also leave facility owners with hefty electric bills, as well as cause an undue amount of wear and tear on the vent fans, which will inevitably need to be replaced every few years when they burn out.
So it’s sort of a Catch 22. If you don’t monitor and control carbon monoxide levels, you put yourself, your employees, and your customers at risk for CO poisoning – or even death. But if you responsibly keep tabs on things and take measures toward maintaining safely breathable air, you’re going to significantly lighten your wallet, as well as consume a lot more electricity than you probably need to. What’s a business owner/property manager to do?
Check out this 3M™ Macurco™ Carbon Monoxide Detector and Fan Controller, that’s what. This CO detection unit actually wires into your fan control system, so that your ventilation units only need to run when a certain level of carbon monoxide is detected in the ambient air. As long as levels remain safe, your fans stay off. But as soon as elevated CO levels are detected, this unit automatically fires up the fans, and leaves them running until the air has been adequately cleared. As a result, the 3M™ Macurco™ control system not only saves lives, but your utilities budget and fan components as well.
How’s that for a happy medium?
Vutec ArtScreen TV Masking System
Call it blogger’s block. I was wracking my brain for days, trying to settle on which product to write about next, and just kept hitting wall after wall. All I can say us that it’s a good thing that my husband has been on a home theater kick this week, because the other night, while we were out for a stroll, conversation took that turn, and I started to school him on some of the cooler A/V accessories out there. Somewhere in the course of my monologue, Vutec’s ArtScreen™ came up, and a lightbulb went on in the old cranium. “By gum,” I thought, “I haven’t told them about that one yet!” And so, here we are.
Now ladies, I know that many of you, like me, have guys who are Jonesing for a sizable plasma or LCD screen, which would preferably be mounted smack in the middle of the most prime living room wall. And guys, I know that it’s hard to talk your women into one of those, because (also like me) they just don’t want to have to look at it all the time. And that’s where the ArtScreen™ comes in -it’s the middle ground that just might make it possible for everybody to get what they want.
The Vutec ArtScreen™ is what is technically referred to as a “screen masking system,” but in regular people speak, it’s a clever disguise for your wall-mounted HDTV. Made up of a custom frame, a small motor, and your choice of “art,” the ArtScreen™ lets your TV be a TV when you feel like watching something, but also helps it masquerade as wall art when it isn’t in use.
Here’s how it works: you select a framing material that best suits your tastes, and it’s made into a custom frame according to your TV’s exact measurements. This frame is fitted with a motorized roller, which raises and lowers a custom “canvas” (featuring artwork from Vutec’s collection, or a design of your own) at the touch of a button. Wanna catch the latest episode of “The Big Bang Theory”? Click. Picture up. Had enough TV for the time being? Click. Picture down.
You know you want one.
Datacomm Electronics Recessed Media Box
Filed under: Home Theater, Power and Data Ditribution
First of all, let me say that I am not a two-face. A few months back, I did a blog post on a line of home theater wall plates that act as transition points for A/V cables wherever they enter into, or emerge from, your walls. Really neat products. Today, I learned about a different set of wall plates that operate under the same general concept, but with a slight design twist. So, before I tell you about those, I just wanted to clarify that I still fully endorse the first wall plates I wrote about. But new mention-worthy things come along from time to time, right?
Okay, now that I’ve cleared the air, we can get down to business. Like I said, the particular wall plate we’re going to be talking about today, the Recessed Media Box by Datacomm, is made to cover cable entrance and exit points on your walls, but unlike the hooded designs you’ll find a lot of the time, they’re styled more along the lines of self-healing grommets. If you’re wondering what the heck I mean by “hooded design” and “self-healing grommet,” let me explain.
In every home theater setup, there comes a point where your A/V cables need to come through the wall and attach to your A/V equipment. So far so good? And while some people go for schmancy, professionally-wired wall plates, some of us want to forego the extra steps and expense, and just pull our cables out of a hole in the drywall and carry on with our business. But you don’t want an ugly, rough-cut hole staring you in the face. That’s where hooded wall plates come in. They create a neat border around the exit point, and protect cables from abrasion as they come through the wall. The hood actually helps to further neaten things up, and direct the overall cable flow.
On the other hand, you can have a self-healing grommet-style wall plate – case in point, the Recessed Media Box. With this type of face plate, cables are fed through radial slits in a flexible material. These slits gently grip and conform to your A/V cables, holding them in place while ensuring that no gaps or holes are left around them. The gap-free factor is the part that I really appreciate, because I’m not completely sure that I’d want an ever-open hole in my living room wall. In the event that pestilence or mold spores were lurking behind my drywall, I’d want them to stay there, not have a way to creep through. But that’s just me… I’m an apartment-dweller with shared walls, so personally, I just like the idea of having somewhat of a seal in place.
UPM Outdoor Programmable Timer
Filed under: Electrical, Power and Data Ditribution, energy conservation
Autumn is here, Halloween’s right around the corner, and now that the Sun is coming up later and setting a little earlier every day, I’ve been thinking that this is the time of year when an outdoor timer could really be appreciated. A lot of people have outdoor lights that are set to timers, but during the Fall and Spring, when daylight hours can drastically shorten and lengthen, it can be tough to synchronize your outdoor lighting with ever-shifting sunrises and sunsets. Instead of having to constantly recalculate and reset things for yourself, how about letting a photosensitive timer take care of things for you?
UPM’s Outdoor Programmable Timer makes timed lighting a no-brainer because it’s equipped with a built-in photocell that detects ambient light levels. When the photocell detects darkness falling, it automatically turns the lights on, and the next morning, it shuts things off when it senses that the Sun is putting out enough light for you to get around by. Sounds like a nice thing to have around, doesn’t it? You can always know that you’ll come home to a lit path, and if you’re one of those go-getter morning people who leave the house before it’s light out, you’ll still be able to see where you’re going.
This is not only great for those of us who tend to trip over ourselves in the dark, but it also helps you to be more aware of your surroundings in case the might be any uninvited guests lurking in the shadows. I don’t want to go on too much of a tangent or bring unpleasant things to mind, but I live in crazy South Florida, and simply put, things happen. I used to live in a neighborhood where a decent-sized feral cat would occasionally prowl during the night, and lately I’ve been reading newspaper stories about people being robbed near their front doors as they’ve gotten home from work late or left very early in the morning. I used to leave the house before 5am, so needless to say, I appreciate the extra measure of security that mere light can bring. A timer like this just makes that easier.
And back to business – I’m just going to tell you one more thing. I’ve been focusing on the photocell aspect of this timer, but I should mention that it also has a time dial for manual settings and overrides, so that gives you a little more flexibility for more fun things… like Christmas lights.
Triplett FlipLite Work Light
Filed under: Tools and Cases, Workplace Safety
The only thing worse than working in the heat or cold is working in the dark. Call me crazy, but I don’t think you should ever have to squint your way through a job. Aside from being inconvenient and flat-out annoying, poor lighting can cause you to work slowly, strain your eyes, and make mistakes. To say the least, it must be stopped.
If you’ve been working with inadequate light because you need both hands free and don’t quite fancy gripping a flashlight in your teeth, then your situation is about to change. Meet the Triplett FlipLite, a folding pocket-sized work light that’s not only designed for hands-free operation, but can also be adjusted from 30° to 180°, so you can get the light you need at any angle.
As I mentioned, this is a hands-free light. Not to say that you can’t hold it while you work, but what’s really nice is that you don’t have to. Thanks to a flip-out hook and a magnetic back, the FlipLite can either be hung up, or just stuck onto any steel surface. How’s that for convenient?
The FlipLite casts its bright glow via 18 white LEDs, and runs on 3 standard AA batteries, the first round of which is included with the light. And you can rest assured that juice won’t be wasted – as soon as you snap the FlipLite closed, the lights automatically go out to preserve the life of your batteries.