Custom Aluminum Monitor Stand For The Home Office

Monitor stands vary wildly in price, from a few cents for a pile of books from a thrift store to hundreds of dollars. One trendy style, as [Steven Bennett] puts it, is the “General Grievous,” with adjustable arms splayed around a central pole. While effective, it is not particularly aesthetically pleasing. [Steven] set out to make his monitor stand out of extruded aluminum.

[Steven] started with a cantilever design with a VESA adapter and a c-clamp. With some 3D-printed adapter brackets, he could attach them directly to the tracks in the aluminum. Of course, the 3D printed parts, while great for prototyping, might not be the best choice for the loads he was planning on. He sent it off to a fab to get some powder-coated steel parts. After using it for a few months, he revisited the drawing board. Moving away from the cantilever with an offset center post, he switched to a single 1×4 piece of aluminum. This allowed him to create 3D-printed attachments to hold his headphones, flash drives, and cables. A build guide is available online, as well as printable add-ons.

While it doesn’t have a built-in computer like this glorious wooden stand, we can’t deny the utility or the aesthetic of the aluminum version.

Video after the break.

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Android Controlled Monitor Stand Uses Marbles As Ball Bearings

[mobile_earth_explorer] sent in an Instructable he put together documenting an Android-controlled rotating monitor stand he built.

The stand itself is three disks turned on a lathe out of a 18mm thick board. After turning these disks, [mobile_earth_explorer] hopped over to his bench grinder and made a semicircular tool to carve out the track for the ball bearings.

Once the disks could rotate freely on each other, the only thing left was to carve out a space for the servo, Arduino, a pair of pots, and the wiring. The pots control the maximum speed of the monitor stand as well as provide a manual rotation control for when your phone is across the room.

[mobile_earth_explorer] wrote the Android app so up to five of these swiveling monitors can be controlled by just one Arduino; yes, that might be overkill for home or office use, but we’re sure it would be highly useful for some sort of presentation.

You can check out a few videos going over the conception and construction of [mobile_earth_explorer]’s monitor stands after the break.

Continue reading “Android Controlled Monitor Stand Uses Marbles As Ball Bearings”