Regardless of your reasons for wanting something like this, this is how simple it is! However, let me start off by telling you my reasons for making it.
About six months ago, we got fed up with drama surrounding LED projectors and LED TV’s – and our monopolized, malicious and malignant power utility (ESKOM), and so I decided to improvise. Looking back, I’m not one bit sorry!
About 2014 I bought a 32″ LED TV – ESKOM killed that in 2017 with repeated deliberate rolling power blackouts (called “load-shedding” in South Africa). Instead of spending another ten large on a replacement, I opted for a projector.
That worked great for a while, until that too showed a flaw – a growing brown spot that burned into the picture film inside the unit! A replacement unit did the same thing – and so, having stretched the patience of my insurance, I decided to forego projectors as well! (I detailed this problem in a review in August 2020.)
While waiting for insurances to sort the issue out, we resorted to watching our series and movies on a laptop! I think you can imagine the adjustment that took – once used to a display image that covered a third of the wall opposite our sofa! The trouble was, laptop and computer LED screens are a little small to see from a table across a room! It surely was frustrating!
I came up with a solution – if the screen itself were closer to our eyes, and about eye-level while sitting, it wouldn’t really matter that the screen was smaller than our previous projector display arrangement!
But how to do this? I thought about suspending a computer screen – I had a few old ones gathering dust in a cupboard since we switched over to laptops – which I could do via a pole hanging from the ceiling. I bet I could even make it look good too! The trouble with that of course, was that it would be in our way when not in use.
Instead, I thought of a way to put it on some kind of arm that could swing aside and be hooked up against the wall when not in use. The weight of the screen gave me pause though, because our walls are plastered with notoriously soft ‘chalk plaster’… nevertheless, I madly went about planning different versions of the same idea…
In the end, I settled on the idea of a double arm with the monitor suspended at the end of it, on a swivel, with a hinge on the wall end, attached to a tall wooden plate. Aside from the hinges and the bracket holding the monitor, the entire thing is made of wood! The base plate is mounted onto the wall with six rawl bolts.
When not in use, it can be swung aside out of the way, and hooked up to the floor lamp with a wire hook. When I moved the floor lamp some time later, I simply fitted a longer hook to the bookshelf instead. When we want to use it, we unhook it, and it automatically swings down to the forward position right in front of the sofa! Break out the popcorn and drinks! It’s movie or series time!
The screen doesn’t operate in isolation of course – it plays from a Raspberry Pi mounted separately on the wall – but of course that’s not important for this project! You could run it off a PC or laptop, or even a mobile phone or tablet (if you have the right connections) if that’s how you want it! I tidied up the cables leading to power, sound, signal, etc. with cable trunking.
We run the sound through a surround-sound speaker system when there’s power, and through a Shoxx speaker mounted behind the screen during “load-shedding”, and the whole thing is really very pleasant. The only thing we considered changing about this set up in future, was to replace the screen with a slightly larger model, which we did in December 2022 – but more about that later.
Another future improvement I’m also considering is to add a vertical tilt adjustment for the screen, since the image is less visible when you get lazy and lie down on the sofa – but that’s a flaw or feature that differs between makes and models of screens!
Upgrade: Larger New Monitor, December 2022
We bought a larger monitor brand new in December 2022. We specifically looked for a new one that had a lower power consumption than the older one we were using (40W), and ended up with one that uses (17W). The reason for this was to put a lower drain on the UPS system that runs the house during “load-shedding”, which rages for about 4 or 6 hours out of every 24, which in turn helps to prolong the lives of the batteries. There are a lot of small items that run on the UPS during that time period, chargers, lights, etc. and it all adds up!
Before getting the screen we settled on, we stopped in at Game, a local South African chain store owned by US giant Walmart. As I described in a previous article about the projector this system replaced, the quality of their sales people has also continued to fall in the meantime, as in December 2022 when we visited Game to look for an LCD monitor, the salesman couldn’t have been more disinterested.
The monitor in our price range, on display on their shelf, was unplugged and not connected to a computer.
“What’s the display look like?” I asked, unwilling to buy a screen for R1,700 of which I haven’t seen even the picture quality – just based on his dodgy say-so! I mean, seriously!
“Just like that one over there.” He replied disinterestedly, pointing at a different make and model entirely, and no amount of asking, cajoling or prodding could seemingly convince him to just connect it to one of the computers on display to demonstrate the picture quality of the product to a potential customer.
“Congratulations, mate, you just lazed your way out of a sale!” I said. Not even the thought of a sales commission was apparently enough – so I walked away, and spent R400 more on top of that price somewhere else for something far better as it turned out. In my experience, Game’s salespeople are rock-bottom, basement level abysmal – lazy, ignorant about their products, useless and dishonest to boot. If they told me it was raining, I’d stick my head out a window to check. If I can’t research the model online first, then walk in and buy it off the shelf myself without needing their “help”, I really won’t bother with Game in future – and I hope you bear this in mind in your tech adventures as well.
In Conclusion
Believe it or not, we’re very happy with our solution – and years later, still prefer to use that instead of a big-screen TV or projector system.
Pictures included – enjoy!
Have a DIY day!
Cheers!
All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2020.