DIY Dual Monitor Stand

Doesn't look very ergonomic...

crabbygeek

The one thing that doesn't compute for me with most of these DIY projects is, do the people doing these things have nothing better to do? If the polished version is $200 bucks, do you take into account how much your time is worth, and how long did it take to fabricate this?

Personally, things like this, while $200 bucks may be steep, spending a day or half day on a project like this would cost me more in time than it's worth, when you could order the real deal, have it delivered, and spend all of about 5 minutes installing it. Instead of investing all the time planning out a DIY solution, running around getting the supplies, and then the time actually building it.

I just don't see how this type of thing saves money.

@Zombie16[THC]: what would bother you more is the buttons and extra frame trim being in the middle of your image space. and those clamps are plenty strong. and you could even use a thin strip of rubber if you were really concerned over friction.

Sesheron

I dunno, something just bothers me about those clamps. Couldn't you use a T section of pipe and then mount that to the brackets? Also the top monitor being upside down would bother me as well. But for doing with what you got for $60 I'd say it's a B-.

The kid on the book is staring at it in awe.

Anyone know what's running on the top monitor or is it just a wallpaper?

Armbie

Gahhhh. Wow. The would totally suggest going for a wall mount from Monoprice, and using two smaller diameter pipes. This was you can screw directly INTO the pipes and each pipe bears half the weight and pressure. It would also be a lot more solid than using screw clamps. probably cheaper as well as you are only using 8 screws rather than four clamps, and the kits usually ship with the screws.

Good job i guess...

But this can't be all that comfortable to look at. And with my personal experience, the vertical viewing angle is much worse than the horizontal one. And on top of that the monitors are Acer's...

the problem here is that his top screen is turned 180deg. If he uses subpixel font smoothing (e.g. ClearType) then all his fonts on the top screen will look really, really bad.

Neat. I've never seen dual monitors done vertically before. I can see the benefits for webbrowsing, Word, etc, but, it's a nightmare ergonomically. I recently mounted my dual monitors side-by-side using articulating wall-mounts. I had to lower them, because I find any monitor with the middle of the screen higher than my eyes makes my neck hurt when used for extended periods.

It would be a low-cost mounting solution for putting together something like these guys have: [infovis.cs.vt.edu]

heltoupee

@DiscoZombie: it isn't just about money. There is a certain satisfaction of taking something in your head and actualizing it.

If there's an affordable solution then fine, but these projects give you the skills to make something just how you want it, no compromises. What will you do when a solution doesn't exist?

Without DIY we wouldn't have many of the great innovations that have improved our lives.

SamburgerHandwich

@DiscoZombie: The fatal flaw in your argument is that it assumes that the person would otherwise be doing worthwhile things with their time, all the time.

I'm a big DIYer, and a lot of the time I spend on my DIY project is my downtime, which would have otherwise been spent aimlessly browsing the web, watching tv, reading, or performing other idle distractions. If I'm gonna burn hours, why not burn them doing something worthwhile?

Another reason I like DIY projects is that I can customize them to my specific requirements. Why spend $200 for a roundish peg for my round hole, when I can spend $60 and four hours making a perfectly-round peg for the same hole?

And finally, there's a sense of pride and satisfaction that comes with a DIY job well done. It's the same pride and satisfaction that comes with baking your own bread instead of buying it at the store, or knitting your own scarf instead of shelling out $60 for one, and so on.

DIY isn't just about saving money. It's about crafting something yourself and the benefits that come with it (one of which being saving money).

@DiscoZombie: I know, right? I just spent $80 on a triple monitor stand. If you do a quick Google search, you can spend ~$70 for a vertical dual monitor stand. It's a scant $10 more than the solution offered here and definitely more functional.

Daniel Fowler

why on earth would you want to have to look up to use your monitor? my neck hurts just looking at the photo.

grimdeath9740

@SuperTuna: You might just be reading the wrong blog then.

AmphetamineCrown

I need less posts on DIY and more on DIFM.

*This comment was typed via Dragonspeak*

SuperTuna

@DiscoZombie: The real reason for DIY, at least for me, is when you know you can do it better than anyone else. If I can make that end table look way nicer than the one at Ikea (and sturdier), I'm not giving them my money.

However, this project doesn't really look better than anything on the market. It requires you to buy parts, so thats a drawback (some things I'll DIY just because I have the hardware lying around).

In fact, yeah, I think this fails on all levels. it isn't that much cheaper, it is ugly, and it forces one of the monitors to be upside down. It really just looks cobbled together.

Thomas Lawn

@AmphetamineCrown: Depends on how you wanna hack your life though. You might wanna hack to make things cheaper, I wanna hack to make me lazier ;) :D

SuperTuna

@DiscoZombie: But, $200 is ridiculous for a monitor stand, that's more than the monitors themselves.

@Daniel Fowler: Could we please get a link on that triple stand? I've been hunting one for ages, and all the ones I've found are over $300.

Michael Crider

@DiscoZombie: Word.. half of these are pretty dorky, that's right, lacking intellgence.

Who does this vertically n e way?

@AmphetamineCrown: The angle of that setup would be a neck-killer for most people, but maybe he's tall or something.

But it's the rigidity of it that bothers me. Both screens are fixed to that pole. With multiple monitors, an articulating arm is best. It clears your desk space, and allows you the freedom to move the monitor to any position at any time.

Adam - Your writing is usually so good. What happened?

"over three times cheaper"? That's completely meaningless. How many times cheap is the $200 model? One? None? What's three times One Cheap?

I'm guessing you might mean, "less than one third the cost."

ZaidGadgetscenti

well, I used a pair of speakers and an external hard disk... until my monitor fell forward and hit the keys... now it's a bit scratched, not unusable, but now I can't sell it like this
:(

@DiscoZombie: This is not a day or day and a half project. Order the wall mounts, one trip to home depot, and 1/2 hour later you have a monitor mount.

That said, I'd much rather spend more time to get something better looking and more functional. I think the ergonomics of two monitors flat on kind of sucks--to view the upper monitor, you would be seriously craning your neck and your angle of view would be off--LCD's aren't very good off angle. Given how high a center of gravity this has, I'd also be concerned about tippiness and the torque on the pipe floor mount. He indicates he used #12 1" screws, but he's only screwing into a 3/4" piece of wood, so I'm not sure how that works...

I had considered building a multi-monitor rack a while back after reviewing some LH office spaces. The way I would have tackled the problem would have been to use 1" square 14ga steel stock, miter some cuts for appropriate viewing angles, mig weld the thing together, and make it floor standing or bolt it to a wall. *That* is a day to day and a half project... But, it would be completely custom and totally overengineered, just the way I like it.

Then I remembered that I have absolutely no need for more than one monitor.

AmphetamineCrown

@SamburgerHandwich: I'm not against the DIY principle. I do plenty of DIY solutions here myself. But in this case, when you're looking at the solution online, already solved for you, the logical next step would be to reserve your time for something else that actually requires a self-constructed solution. Not burning gas and time to undercut the price. That's not DIY, that's being cheap.

I don't see the "crafting something yourself" and "pride of accomplishment" and all that in this specific DIY. This particular project was aimed at saving money, not making something that looks or functions superior to the retail version. The hose clamps should tell you that. And if then we are discussing the money factor, my original statement stands. The time, gasoline, etc involved in this erases any benefit.

Don't shoot the messenger.

@NightInfinity: Must be some seriously lousy monitors for less than $200 bucks.

I spent $2k on ONE of my screens.

Uhh, I prefer having more horizontal space rather than vertical space, thank you. But then again I'm not everyone, so this might appeal to someone else that is not me... I suppose.

Giving a grand total of $60.85 (plus tax, tip, license, registration, etc.) and some elbow grease.

tip?? registration? license? what etc? or is this just thrown in for some contemporary humour?

@[www.tykesupply.com]

Daniel Fowler

@grimdeath9740: I have a leather recliner, so it's really not that bad .... I can rest my head back on the chair and it's all good.

ElementalMember

@heltoupee: " I can see the benefits for webbrowsing, Word, etc" .... since the original photos, I have lowered the screens to just above my speakers. And I do like using the vertical stretch for viewing facebook or LH comments, etc.

ElementalMember

I'm not feeling it. IT look like something you'd see on [thereifixedit.com.]

zdislaw

@planetarian: not to concerned with the top screen, it's mainly used as additional space for stagnant apps i.e., email, music, etc.

ElementalMember

@Fierock: just for humor ;-)

ElementalMember

check out my alternative setup that works for a small/large vertical setup:

[www.solvengineer.com]

@minivolt: hehe, I agree with you totally .... personally I've been doing the multiple screens in a horizontal configuration for years. I just wanted to try the vertical way to see if I could adapt to that. Acers aren't great, but they get the job done & I've had 'em for a long time. I'd like to go the 24" Mac LED Cinema Display route, but $900 is waay out of budget!

ElementalMember

@Armbie: That's just a collage I made in Picasa and posted it on the same background as the wallpaper on the bottom screen.

ElementalMember

@crabbygeek: Yeah, it's bad for your neck to look up, that's why traditionally dual-monitors are done in a horizontal alignment so that you don't strain your neck.

@DiscoZombie: This whole project took me less than hour to purchase & throw together .... so if I made $50 an hour and it cost me $60 & change to purchase .... I'm still well under the $200 mark.

ElementalMember

@Daniel Fowler: That's cool, too bad I didn't know about that sooner .... but then again, I do have a cheap hollow Ikea desk so that wouldn't work (currently).

ElementalMember

@ElementalMember: My apologies. I was analyzing it from my perspective. It's 30 minutes to Home Depot here. So considering the time to think it out, half hour to HD, shopping time, half hour back, time putting it all together, plus an hours worth of gas at $3.05 per gallon, and figuring the entire thing would've probably consumed a half day for myself, I'd be much farther ahead to just order one and keep working while it gets delivered.

And that's all I was saying before, is that most of these types of projects don't make sense to me because of all those factors. Also because the "back" (front) of my desks in the studio face out and are fully visible to everyone, so I would prefer a highly polished appearance, even in support hardware.

Whole house audio though? Definitely my kind of DIY. ;-)

that gave me an idea, think i'll try it, only i'll put a miter on the post at 22.5 or 11.25 degrees and make the top one angled. i just love to turn a 20 minute project into an entire weekend ordeal...

nt0xik8ed

I must have mistyped the url to get here, I really have no idea how I typed 'SnarkyReviewsOfDIYProjects.com' instead of lifehacker.com.

vinylrake

@DiscoZombie: One might consider the time spent reading a thread about saving money a waste of time if you can afford to drop 2K for a monitor. Some of us get by with bargain monitors and DIY not because the end result is saving SO much or looks BETTER than the commercial solution, but because we don't have the funds to just buy everything we would like.

And before you accuse me of reverse monetary snobbery, you might pause and realize you have judged monitors as 'seriously lousy' without knowing anything about them other then the cost to the person who purchased them. You don't know if the person paid full price for them, if they are $800 monitors the owner got via Black Friday doorbuster deals, if they were purchased used from a good friend who let them go for a song, from a local graphix company's going out of business firesale, etc.

vinylrake

I love DIY, but a dual-monitor vertical stand on Monoprice is only $24

zapwizard

@GitEmSteveDave_IsPyroclastic:
Or he could just get the dual-monitor, vertical mount from Monoprice.com for just $24

zapwizard

@nt0xik8ed: You'll have to miter both the bottom and top or the joint won't match up. You will also have to weld them if you want the strength to support a monitor. In which case you will not be wantin' to use galvanized pipe.

AmphetamineCrown

@vinylrake: what is your wishlist of things you'd rather see on lifehacker?

i like things like this, but i understand not everybody does.

These comments never make sense to me... Unless you are taking unpaid time off work in order to do this then it isn't costing you any money for your time. The only way that time is money is if the alternative to using that time is actually getting paid to do something with the time. An opportunity cost only exists when the alternative has value. If your only other obligation/opportunity during that time was sitting at home watching BSG then it doesnt cost you any money it just costs you the opportunity to watch BSG.

ZaredGadhero

I think that using this technique would be ok, but you could almost as easily use 1 or 2mm aluminum plate and drill your own holes. Talk about cheap! Depending on the weight of the monitor, you might need to step up in what grade you use...

I dont like the hose clamps. Its like using metal zip ties.. This is virtually not adjustable.

And last thoughts are on the wood its self. There is a potential for a lot of weight to be vertical here. The grain of the wood has cleavage running lateral and stands to be a potential weakness. Could be better just to make a clamp that would screw into your base of your pipe, and clamp onto your desk.

The thought about multiple pipes is good, but not for a vertical stand..

Is that thread lock on the pipe???

LoralieCresphontes

@DiscoZombie: hehe, understood .... things used to be at least 12 miles from my house 5 years ago, but now it's all within 1/2 to 4 miles.

ElementalMember

uh... [www.monoprice.com]

$21.03

@vinylrake: Well now, we'll never know that will we, because he failed to provide such a fantastic story of getting top-quality monitors for a steal, as you have spun for us. Perhaps they were really $25 monitors and he got ripped off by a guy in a van selling them for $200? Could go either way I suppose.

Taken on face value, sorry but $200 monitors are crap. Deal with it.

@ZaredGadhero: Not everyone uses computers during their leisure time.

You assume everyone has a desk and stuff like this on it at home and WANTS to do this kind of stuff away from work. I don't. To me, this is work related activity.

When I'm done working for the day, the last thing I want to see is a computer. So, for me at least, yes, time is money, and there is no computer time or working-on-gear-time that isn't money. That goes for working on it or with it.

My leisure time is also valuable. It's the time I spend unwinding & regrouping & resting & enjoying things away from the work environment. Not constructing monitor framework, or anything else work related. And that time is worth more than $60 bucks or even $200 bucks.

You probably could use PVC pipe for super cheap.

@ElementalMember: that would still manage to bug the crap out of me. I actually have a few Acer screens just like those (non-widescreen) and that little bit that juts out below the screen has always been a source of minor irritation.

that's retarded... you need to tilt monitor when you stack them. Waste of plumbing material here...

Gaspard De Coligny