DIY Light Up Cable Protector

writ­ten and updat­ed 3/04/23

What: Out­door rub­ber cord and cable pro­tec­tor ramp that lights up

Why: To charge a Bat­tery Elec­tric Vehi­cle (BEV) from a 120-Volt out­let by run­ning an exten­sion cord over a side­walk. This is for very infre­quent use (emer­gency charg­ing in the event of poor mem­o­ry or inclement weath­er). Not only is it a ramp which low­ers the chance of trip­ping, but when placed at night, hav­ing it pulse-shine increas­es vis­i­bil­i­ty. Cou­ple it with a spot­light or porch light­ing, should be plen­ty of indi­ca­tion of a haz­ard.

Sup­plies: Cable pro­tec­tor ramp, util­i­ty knife, razor scraper, bat­tery pow­ered/­cut­table/out­door-rat­ed LED strip with light modes, dou­ble sided stick­er dots, pli­ers (option­al), paint scraper (option­al), Shop Vac­u­um

Cost: 2‑Channel Cable Pro­tec­tor Ramp ($54.19) + LED Strip ($11.99) + Dou­ble-Sided Stick­ers ($5.99) = $72.17

Time: 1 — 2 hours

Process

• Gath­er Sup­plies (the rub­ber ramp, itself, is extreme­ly smelly, so would rec­om­mend a few days of off gas unless stor­ing in a shed our out­side)

• Test fit, mea­sure, and mark

• Start cut­ting. Use of razor blades are the best for cut­ting through thick rub­ber. Make sure to use safe­ty glass­es and gloves. Be care­ful!

• After remov­ing pieces in incre­ments, use the razor scraper to clean up the bot­tom.

• Test fit again. In this case, the bat­tery case still does­n’t fit, so now to widen the side.

• Use pli­ers, the paint scraper, blades all togeth­er to remove the rub­ber

• Yay! It fits now!

• At first, I thought I’d need to drill holes to make the light more vis­i­ble, but I wast­ed time doing that because it works per­fect­ly with­out the holes!

• Sticky dots now, to hold the LED lights in place. I am aware that the LED lights have an adhe­sive, too, but for ease of removal/replacement I opt­ed for the sticky dots

• Test time!

• Yay!! It works! I was real­ly, real­ly ner­vous about it out there all night long, but it worked real­ly well, and noth­ing bad hap­pened accord­ing to the cam­eras I had trained on it. I also had the porch lights on, but with­out the lights, it looked real­ly great, too. You can’t tell in these pho­tos, but I left the mode on a fade in and out. Grant­ed, this was win­ter, and there are typ­i­cal­ly very few peo­ple wan­der­ing around in the cold, dark, but I’m glad to see that in a pinch, the option is there to charge my EV overnight.