My quest for a Charging Station

More than half a dozen of gadgets which needs charging every night? Well! Being a part of the family they also deserve a dining room. And hence begin my quest for a charging station. I came across many devices. Most of them are highly expensive, or not available in India or have some or the other problem.

I don’t own a house (Yet 😦 ). And that’s why I can’t get those fancy USB wall outlets in every room. So I had to do something about it, else me and my wife were fighting every day on who is going to use the charger now.

1. So, the first resort was my ex-colleague who works for a gadget magazine. I pinged him and asked him that does he know of any good charging station which can take care of a few USB devices and also have some regular power outlets. He in response gave me a blank face and said I have no clue.
2. Being disappointed I thought to take the refuge of http://ebay.in . Found some very stunning products. But none worked for me. Let’s see which they were.

   

This was the result for a quick search at ebay.in. My gawwd! 7 bloody thousands for a charging station. I would rather add one more gadget in the fleet by that money instead of buying a charging station. Give me a break. Those devices were good, but should have been in a range of INR 2000/- to justify its need. So I dropped the ebay.in plane there itself

1. Then I thought to give a try at ebay GEB (a.k.a Global Easy Buy). The result was actually good and I found a very good device. It was the Belkin Conserve Valet Smart USB Charger.

   

   For around 3.5 grands it’s indeed not a bad buy. But its smartness became a problem for me. This device is the result of a green initiative by Belkin. And as a result this device is capable of switching off the power of all its USB ports after 4 hours to conserve electricity. But the problem is, there are many devices including my iPad which when charged with a non-complaint (which is not provided by the manufacturer ) charger takes a long time to charge. And this long time could me much much more than 4 hours. So I had to drop this product as well.

2. Finally I decided to go to a shop physically and do some old age physical shopping. And I dropped in Croma Stores. There I picked up two products. One was the regular USB wall socket adapter. The only difference was, it had 2 USB ports instead of one. So I picked up two of them so that 4 USB power outlets can be managed by them. Each of the adapter coasted me around 800/- these adapters are called Croma Dual USB Power Adapter

1. But the second product was a bit more innovative and again comes from Croma. That was a 4 way charger

This is actually two port USB Charge which can charge any* (* Read any as most of the) USB device either thru a Wall power outlet, or thru a car cigarette lighter port, or using a 9 Volt battery or finally by using a 2 regular AA batteries. This device I thought could be very useful when you have some many mobile devices which charges thru a battery. So if you carry this small 110.5 grams device with a pair of AA batteries or a 9V battery, you can easily get an extended power in your mobile devices for a few hours. And when you find a car or a wall power outlet, just fix the same to fully charge your device.

So finally, with these 3 devices and a Microwave oven 😉 . My new charging station looks something like this.

And the best part is, for at least one Plug/adapter, even if you take it out from the power socket, it still keeps your device charging.