Here’s my take on an inexpensive charging station that stops vampire power and keep our phones / bluetooth / radios in one location ready to use. The soft box was found at The Container Store. The switch is for the Belkin Remote Power Strip. These days most of the smart phone chargers suck very little vampire power, but I have a couple of hand-held transceivers from Yaesu and Icom that are the old transformer type. The power strip has a couple of outlets that are powered all the time, so I plugged one of our phone chargers in there as it’s needed the most.

The one dislike I had with the Belkin big ON / OFF switch is you really have to push it hard and it makes a big snapping CLICK when it goes on or off. It almost feels like you’re going to break it. I was hoping for a sexy smooth touch button. I achieved this by taking the switch apart and removing some of the CLICK plastic on both the ON and the OFF side. Notice the black arrows in the picture. Now the switch sits centered between ON / OFF and with a soft tap I can control power to my inexpensive (slightly hacked) charging station.