Power management for laptop trolley

[vivalagoobs]

Ok, bit of a random one but any help would be great.

 

One of our feeder schools are currently in the process of buying a bespoke laptop trolley as they did not like the size/shape/colour etc of the ones on the market.

 

The trolley is being made by a bespoke funriture company, I have seen the drawings and have worked with them on some aspects of the trolley. (Everything has been done to make sure it complies with the current how to suck eggs regulations)

 

The only problem the company are finidng is a power management soloution or a safe way of having all 32 netbooks plugged in at once i.e power supplies. We have a few lap caddy's and they use a timer which the extensions blocks are plugged in to.

 

Does anyone know of a soloution that is on the market or any other ideas, the company are going to test the electrics before supplying it to make sure everything is tiptop and safe.

[sacrej]

the lapcabby units have a power manager in the back of them, you may be able to buy it seperately from a unit...

 

I believe the company that makes them is called Monarch....thats what our supplier told me anyway.

[sted]

wouldnt the simpelest way be to give it 2 plugs?

 

the last netbook trolley i saw had a box in the back that took time to drop full load on the power socket from the lights it looked like it added load in 5 stages then when stage 5 completed the laptops started charging

[sacrej]

would you want it on all the time though?...

our unit rotates between charging devices so its not charging all units at once, plus its timed so will only come on at certain times of the day.

[vivalagoobs]

Not to fussed about the time function, I have already contacted monarch this morning and they won't supply one I think the best bet is oging to be two plugs coming out of the back.

[flowerpot78]

Hi, I heard Lapsafe can supply power management... just a thought

[maniac]

The lapbank trollys we have simply have 4 8 way leads in the side of them, with each one having a seperate plug, so you do need 4 plugs per trolly, although we've found you can get away with plugging these into a 4 way lead and it doesn't fuse. The issue is not the amount of power they draw, the reason most people get problems with circuits tripping out is because of earth leakage from the adapters, particularly when they are first powered on.

 

The latest HSE guidelines recommend plugs conforming to IEC 60309, otherwise known as commando plugs for laptop trollies, but this is often impractical.

 

Mike.

[Tyrfau]

Lapsafe sell a charging station called LapCharge that could be put in a trolley I guess, though it may be overkill for what you want or make the bespoke trolley way to expensive as it appears you'd need three of them for 30 notebooks

Lapcharge-charging

We are looking into buying a trolley from Keep It Secure and had a demo of one last week. Power management is in a big brick at the back which is removable for maintenance\replacement. They're a British company who design and make their own stuff (though I didn't enquire as to whether that extended to the power management brick itself) so they might sell you one. You can find them here: Contacting Keep IT Secure Ltd