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Comment by joshstrange

21 hours ago

This bags or bins or whatever your preferred organization method is. Don't just have "cables" group them. This is how I discovered "yeah, I don't need all these DVI/VGA cables and I can do with only 10 extra HDMI cables".

I'll second "grouping" with "capability sorting". Get a cable tester and sort your cables by Charge/USB speeds. Even with my default "grouping" of things like "USB-C -> C", "USB-A -> C", etc I still was buying new cables for projects/uses since I wanted to make sure I got exactly the speed/power requirements right. Now all my cables are sorted by capability and that led to more purging and less purchasing since I can go to my cable bins and grab exactly what I need.

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joshstrange

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booty  21 hours ago

God, yeah. I try to label the USB-C cables directly by capability with my label maker, if they are more than basic charging cables.

  • zimpenfish  16 minutes ago

    I went for a colour label system - one colour for type of cable (C-C, A-C, etc.) and one colour for capabilities (power, usb2, usb3, usb4+, etc.)

    Makes it super easy to find, say, a data microUSB (blue, orange) for the Audiomoth) or a simple charging microUSB (red, orange) for the old blood pressure cuff).

  • zxexz  7 hours ago

    Somewhat recently, on a wild night out on the town, I ended up buying a USB-C <> USB-C cable tester[0]. Using it, I managed to find a few amazing cables amongst my collection. Gave away the others with context. I want something like this for every type of cable.

    [0] https://caberqu.com/20-42-c2c-caberqu.html

  • dataflow  17 hours ago

    What marker do you use to mark them? Is the ink durable and easy to read?

    • mceachen  12 hours ago

      I bought a cheap pack of 5 colors of 3m electrical tape. Each cable gets one or two pieces of tape:

      Data:

      White if usb2

      Blue if it supports USB 3 data (because 5Gbps USB 3 ports are mostly blue)

      Green if TB/USB4/40Gbps

      Power:

      None if low/no Power Delivery

      Yellow for 45W PD

      Red for 65W+ PD

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