Knowledge is power (or a possible end to the tyranny of plugs)

[sub]I apologise in advance for a post that will be of scant interest to non-travelling, non-office wiring, non-geeks but…[/sub]

Possibly the simplest, most intelligent idea I’ve seen in a long time - integrated power and data solutions:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3054894.stm

or a company selling them:

http://www.powerdsine.com/

Someone has observed that the humble RJ45 not only has wiring to spare for networking, but is also one of the few international standards going - power sockets vary, phone sockets vary, but thank god by the time that ethernet was taking off then global economies of scale had kicked in and it’s pretty much the defacto standard for network connections around the globe. Such a simple bloody observation, but the amount of time, money and frustration this could save poor travelling, office running geeks like me is ridiculous.

For example, power plugs. I can’t even tell you how much it annoys me that around the world there must be a good 40 different formats for such a simple bloody task. Travel through europe to africa can require a dozen damned plugs, just to run your hairdryer. Piggybacking on the existing RJ45 standard sorts this out in one easy method.

Networking a building? Well at last you can avoid running hideously expensive redundant loops of copper. I’ve got a quotation on my desk from a contractor for a building our company is looking at buying. I could probably divide this buttock clenchingly scary figure by 4 through such a simple architecture.

Seriously, I just love this sort of simple, clean solution. I raise my glass to whoever thought of it.

I dunno – works for low voltage things like USB devices that get their power from the parent machine. But if you start putting serious current through the data cables, then I can see all sort of Code and building issues arising. You have to start worrying about overload protections and wire gauges and grounds, and the regulations for installing network cabling will become increasingly restrictive.

You’re definitely not going to be running your hair dryer off an RJ45 jack. Solid state devices, yes, but nothing with a big current draw.

Oh thats great, just spoil my daydream with petty realism, why don’tya.

Harumph.