Recent science fiction movies always show people sitting at stylish semi-transparent desks that have all kinds of strange and wonderful gadgets in them. Our desks look like something your grandfather might have sat at. [Frederick Vandenbosch] must have seen those same movies so as part of contest he decided to build the desk of the future.
The desk is as much a furniture project as an electronics project, but it does have a Raspberry Pi, a scavenged laptop LCD, embedded touch sensors and LEDs, a wireless charger, and a built-in sound system. In addition, it uses a Gertbot and some stepper motors that it uses to raise and lower the screen in and out of the desk (watch the video below to see how that looks).
[Fredrick] used Python to get the major functions of the desk programmed. We couldn’t help but think of all the things you could do with an easily programmable desk surface: show stock quotes (or sports scores), notify about e-mail, or other things. Although it doesn’t look like it would be simple for a simple user to add those things, if you were a handy programmer, they look like they’d be in reach.
We’ve seen some desks before, but nothing quite like this. We couldn’t help but wonder if you could add some Minority Report-style goodness to [Frederick’s] already impressive desk.
Nice logo on his website, almost wish I could steal it. B^)
Will you change your name in order to use it? :-D
That’s the tricky part B^)
My sister made it for me, I could ask her to make one for you ;)
You know, instead of the current desktop,he could use a 50″ flat panel and have it display circuit diagrams he’s working on.
A plexiglass type overlay could be used to make a touch sensitive input.
(just rambling on)
That would probably be too flexible for a desk surface. A big sheet of tempered glass might do, something like a shower door
something that is missing is a laser keyboard/mouse for user input http://betanews.com/2014/10/07/atongm-bluetooth-virtual-laser-keyboard-lets-you-type-on-any-flat-surface-review/
i cant help but think i actually wouldnt use the raising and lowering feature that much considering the speed at which it operates.
Yeah I was sitting here watching that and praying that it was booting while it was coming up. Thankfully it was :P
Still a really nifty desk & project.
That was actually a lucky coincidence (raising time = boot time), but yes, I need to speed it up :)
As cool as it is (and it IS cool), it’s really slow. Fortunately, that’s probably a fixable thing though.
easily fixed by getting real TV lift parts. he just needs to spend money on the real parts to easily upgrade that to nice and fast and a lot larger monitor.
I was thinking that until I saw how slow the thing boots! Looks like it’s timed to the boot speed, which I guess is ok.
What worries me is the touch sensor to shut down the machine. One stray elbow and suddenly all your work is gone.
My pc boots like 4 times until this thing comes up. This should be improved or it’s unusable.
Your PC isn’t a Raspberry Pi running Ubuntu. Ubuntu MATE takes forever to boot up on the Pi vs other Pi OSes, however once it’s booted it is generally fast enough for daily use.
Personally, as much as I love the Pi, I would have gone with a laptop with a broken screen for the base PC (keeping the other Pi to control the desk and lights, of course). You can get a very powerful “broken” laptop on eBay for not much more than a RPi 2, use its HDMI or VGA out, and your choice of OS is not limited. However, he may have been working with what he had on hand to keep costs down, or he may have wanted the feeling of accomplishment in using nothing but Raspberry Pis for his project.
There are certainly (a lot of) things that can be done differently. The project had to be centered around the Pi and its add-on boards.
Aaaaand this is why we still use desks like our grandparents: because all those blinkenlights and motors add nothing to the experience. And I’d hate it if my monitor went away if I leaned on the desk with my hand.
Nice build, though. Cute art project, at least.
Looks neat, but I would take a Mayline over this any day of the week. That old melamine grip holds my monitor in place just fine…
I have a 10 dollar door and two 12 dollar trestles as a desk. The door is good because it is cheap, light and has a stiff framework with a smooth skin, a single panel of equal thickness melamine or particle board would be either very heavy or floppy. Plus doors are usually 2 metres long and quite wide too, an equal sized desk was going to be 150 aus. I also use a section of extension cord as a belt, but that is just fashion.
You still hang an onion from your belt? B^)
Josh, ++ that. I’ve used doors for workbenches a number of times in the past, for varieties of things. Model airplane building among other things.
I’ve got a large solid core door (probably 4×7 feet) with oak veneer I rescued from a dumpster. It is the centerpiece of my wood shop. For legs I grabbed laminated oak panels that used to be sofa ends from the same dumpster.
I want a desk like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvayPCoHGFE
Blade Runner music!
I kinda want to try something like this, but with pulleys working with 2 water buckets, so that as a peristaltic pump moves fluid from one container to the other it performs the lift function…
Props for the build, but really should have just used a laptop strapped to the bottom feeding the video output to that monitor, that way he could raise and lower the screen faster. I’d probably lose my shit if I had to wait that long in an emergency.
He used an Ikea desk. Those things are super wobbly. All that work and his desk will be wobbly :(
Nice concept. The sound needs some design too thow.
looks totally useable apart from it being a little slow. improve the speed and it looks like a nice part of your house.
Why two RPis? Couldn’t this have been achieved with one RPi2?
Nice build and documentation.
It could have been achieved with one rPi and a simple micro controller to handle all the controls and lights.
True, but it was a challenge sponsored by Raspberry Pi, so we had to use those instead. Using a microcontroller would’ve made the controls cheaper and easier to program.