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The RoboReel: An Intelligently-Designed Motorized Extension Cord System

By Rain Noe - March 28, 2013

in Object Culture | Hand Tools

The otherwise-useless skill I've picked up from working in a photography studio: Untangling and elbow-winding a kinked extension cord. It's a pain in the neck to do, but after each and every shoot I have to go about the room collecting and organizing them.

Which is why this RoboReel Power Cord System is looking good to me. When I first saw it, my kneejerk reaction was "That's ridiculous and bulky, who would want that?" but quickly came to realize how much time I'd save in the studio alone. For those in shop and garage environments it's bound to be even more useful and, with the ceiling mount, out of the way. And I dig the built-in safety features you'll see in the demo vid:

P.S. For those of you using compressor-driven tools, the company is working on an Air Reel variant; for those of you with lawns, their Water Hose Reel can be rigged up for hoses and sprinklers.

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mid-western designer

11 years ago

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To pile onto this, a company I worked for previously received the garden hose product over 10 years ago as a hot piece of mess - a design sold to the client with no understanding of how to make it work...a classic example of ID doing it's 'thing' and providing a dis-service to the customer.

We bid on the work to engineer and 'fix' it, and the client bailed 'cause they thought they were closer to being done then they actually were.
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Andrew

11 years ago

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This particular product has been hotly discussed/debated on the Garage Journal message board, by guys who are not particularly into design, but are very passionate about their tools. General consensus seems to be that this is a fancy (and expensive) gadget for displaying, rather than working with.

I have a ceiling mounted, spring-loaded extension cord reel that works just fine. I use it constantly and it's never bound up on me, even in my sub-zero unheated garage. For the price of one of these Robo-reels I could buy 5 or 6 of mine. I coil my air hoses by hand and my water hose on a manual reel... no problems.
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Aaron

11 years ago

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I like the concept but I have to ask if rolling cables is that much of a drama. If you knew how to roll cables properly you wouldn't have made that statement! It makes them easy to roll, and even easier to roll out.
As far as this thing goes, I didn't once see them try to roll out this whilst not mounted to something (wall, ceiling of bench mounting block) and I suspect that is because the combined weight of the cord and the reel friction would see the base dragged across all but the highest friction surfaces (and all but guaranteed to occur in the case of the water or air hose reels.)
Also I'd imagine that corkscrewing will still occur if swiveled too much progressively over time. Are there any stops on the swivel motion?
I don't really like the over dramatization of the spring loaded reel retracting - placing it next a window with things to hit - noce touch! It's rather disingenuous to my mind. Anybody who has used one of these knows that you don't let them go and the extra five seconds required to do this is not a big burden.
On the flip side I do really like the ceiling mounted concept for industrial workshops - it would overcome some of the issues presented by fixed mounting of traditional reels, which I see quite often.
Overall however I can't help but feel that this is a solution to a problem that very few people can genuinely lay claim to. I'll put it in the"because we can" category for now until they do a industrial/commercial duty version.
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Justin

11 years ago

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Let's be clear here: The gentleman behind this, James Tracey, earned his money building a debt collection firm with over 750 employees. This company, Diversified Collection Services, has a number of complaints against it. Many of these complaints revolve around illegal and/or unethical collection practices. Sure, it's a great product - but it comes with a strong association to a, well, shady company. It's a shame.
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