E-rope: saving the planet one socket at a time

As we all know, the biggest problem with conventional power strips are the unconventional plugs with whom the ol' girl mates. These boys come in all sizes and shapes resulting in at least one or two unusable sockets due to overlap. Well no more dear reader, at least not if the 2006 IDEA award winning design concept from the kids over at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute is taken from art to part anytime soon. The E-rope, designed by Chul Min Kang and Sung Hun Lim, is a modular power strip which can be twisted about to better accommodate cable gore with large, bulky plugs. Worried about vampire devices quietly leaching power off the mains? No problem, just give the socket section a 90-degree twist to strangle-off the current. Of course, while you're down there you could just unplug the damn thing but that's just an inconvenient truth, eh?

[Via inhabitat]

[strider_mt2k @ Jul 11th 2006 8:22AM]

Now that's something I think we can all agree is very, very cool.

[Kay @ Jul 11th 2006 8:22AM]

i thought it was Pratt Institute...

[sat @ Jul 11th 2006 8:29AM]

PRatt not PLatt Institute.

[Khaytsus @ Jul 11th 2006 8:35AM]

I agree, the reflections and ray tracing, well done.

The idea itself is retarded.

[Gordy @ Jul 11th 2006 8:59AM]

Overloaded circuits be damned...I guess.

[Josh! @ Jul 11th 2006 9:00AM]

Thomas Ricker must be Japanese. Give him a blake.

[Christopher @ Jul 11th 2006 9:03AM]

Isn't Pratt in Manhattan? I remember seeing them when I sent to SVA... maybe I was thinking Parson's.

-C

[dc @ Jul 11th 2006 9:27AM]

Looks kinda like Rubik's Snake.

[cycomachead @ Jul 11th 2006 9:35AM]

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

we all aggree thus is cool!

[Markp.com @ Jul 11th 2006 9:44AM]

You could just use propper plugs like we do in England and not have any of these problems! ;)

[dpk @ Jul 11th 2006 9:51AM]

I like it. I don't understand the hostility at the end, though. If you have 3 or 4 wall-warts sitting there, and you've done a careful job routing the wires so they're not completely fugly, having a convenient way to turn them all off at once is pretty neat.

That said, I'd probably prefer to have a inline powerswitch.

[Jed @ Jul 11th 2006 9:54AM]

Ok, that's enough for me Thomas. Please please stop calling all gadgets 'her' - these are machines and the contsant 'she' references really grate. I suppose these sockets are male because of their 'prongs'. Sigh.

Male/female references to plugs/sockets are established and accepted. Your incessant, and ridiculous, references to every known gadget as some kind of woman have got me to the point where I may have to stop reading Engadget altogether - and that would be a shame.

[Charles Taylor @ Jul 11th 2006 9:54AM]

Not a bad idea, but what happens to those bulky AC adaptors when I twist the plug? Talk about a mess of wires. Also still doesn't solve the problem of "guess and pull" when trying to disconnect devices that have similar looking bricks.

[Wonderboy @ Jul 11th 2006 10:03AM]

I don't know about "strangling off" the power... I don't want machines thinking that's acceptable behavior when they start wanting to turn us off...

[Karl @ Jul 11th 2006 10:39AM]

Now that's a neat idea:)

[cuby @ Jul 11th 2006 10:49AM]

it looks like a whole bunch of new-and-improved cactuars.

[WhyNot @ Jul 11th 2006 11:34AM]

personally, I've always liked the Power Squid myself...

http://www.powersquid.net/

[modenadude @ Jul 11th 2006 11:43AM]

Josh! - it's actually the other way around; Ls go to Rs ;)

[Josh! @ Jul 11th 2006 12:33PM]

modenadude, oops! For some reason, I thought that they pretty much flip-flopped. L's went to R's--and vice versa. Those crazy Asians! :P

[ugh138 @ Jul 11th 2006 12:52PM]

your better off with a 20 outlet model (PS7224-2) from Tripplite

[E @ Jul 11th 2006 1:20PM]

Pratt has a satellite campus in Manhattan, the main campus is in Clinton Hill Brooklyn. Cross streets are Willoughby Ave and Hall St., Dekalb Ave and Classon.

The only enclosed campus in NYC, trees grass... It was more fun when I went there, on a warm night with the windows open, you could hear the hoods over in Bed-Stuy shooting at each other all night long...*sigh* memories....

[booda @ Jul 11th 2006 1:54PM]

This is a solution looking for a problem. The actual solution to the powerstrip problem is, as mentioned above, the Power Squid. In short, don't make the unit with a hard case at all...instead, have one central point and then have various "tentacles" with an outlet at the end of each. Nothing is more flexible than a cable.

[MiatasSuck @ Jul 11th 2006 6:50PM]

As a couple others said above: PowerSquid.

Awesome device, I wish to hell it'd been me who invented it.

Everytime I have to "stock up" before a trade show, I run over to Fry's and fill up a shopping cart with them.

[Will @ Jul 11th 2006 7:05PM]

Yeah the PowerSquid is better.

This looks stupid.

[Loweded Wookie @ Jul 11th 2006 8:13PM]

This idea kind of sucks. It's a band aid on a broken arm.

The most logical idea is simply to widen the distance between the sockets on the board to compensate the larger box style power supplies.

Why hasn't multibox developers cottoned on to this idea yet? It's so simple and doesn't require that much more resources.

Or am I just being to logical for this craphead world? ;-)

[Redmond Cooper @ Jul 11th 2006 9:29PM]

I'm gonna have to agree and say that the powersquid already solves this problem

[Keith L. Dick @ Jul 11th 2006 9:42PM]

Interesting idea tho I wonder if it will catch on and sell alot of units??... Hmmm

[BlueFuse @ Jul 11th 2006 10:55PM]

Looks like someone could possibly go crazy with these and burn their house down.

[Sarah @ Jul 12th 2006 12:17AM]

modenadude and Josh,

You're correct that Ls go to Rs when "translating," if you will, a foreign word into Japanese. The "R" sound in Japanese, though, is a sort of cross between an "L" sound and an "R" sound, so when saying (or spelling) something in English, whether to use an L or R is often confusing because there are two options in English while in Japanese there is only one. Therefore, it is very possible that a Japanese person might say "lain" instead of "rain" or "Platt" instead of "Pratt."

[Claudiu Spulber @ Jul 12th 2006 1:33AM]

I know where they got the idea from. There were some snake toys just like this a long time ago on the market, so they just thought on using them with plugs.

[Taraje Solomon @ Aug 15th 2006 4:46AM]

Greetings all. I'm glad to see so much in depth conversation about this topic.

I have to say that I have been working on a similar design (minus the 90 degree turn-off option) for the past 3 years. My company is in the process of developing a consumer office supply product called a S.L.I.P. Strip ™(Sliding Lockable Inline Power strip)

We have secured a provisional patent for the product and received a PIES evaluation from the WIN center (http://www.innovation-institute.com) for it as well. From its evaluation, the S.L.I.P. Strip ™ received 85% likelihood of success, scoring a high mark on 38 out of the possible 45 criteria. I would be great to get your honest feedback. You can take a look at a CAD animation here: http://www.capitalmindz.com/slipstrip.html