Too many projects, too little time

My desk at office is raised high because I often like to work standing up. The ergo folks are good and I feel quite comfortable in that setup.

It bites when working from home. My only desk being occupied by my personal laptop, the office macbookpro goes on the bed and I am in a pretty bad ergo position when sitting on my chair. I could make a wooden table specifically for work, but it would take up valuable space, and won’t still be adjustable. There gotta be a simple solution but I kept procrastinating doing anything about it. Till yesterday.

I got a light box for my color slides and got the urge to bring out my projector and enjoy viewing them on the wall. Again I faced the table issue, ‘coz the projector needs to be adjusted at the right height to enjoy a good quality show.

And then it hit me – a wooden plank on top of a sturdy tripod can work as a super flexible platform.

Quickly implemented my design at the woodshop around midnight and after the epoxy dried, it looks like it is working absolutely fine. A small piece of velcro can ensure the laptop does not slip. A bungee cord can secure the projector.

The most important construction part here is obviously the attachment of the quick release (QR) plate to the board. Some fairly heavy and expensive gadgets are gonna be on top so I had to design this part carefully. A standard 1/4″ nut is equivalent to a standard tripod socket, and it is pretty small, so it must be installed at the center of a foot square plank very rigidly. I drilled out a 1/4″ hole and then using a forstner bit, drilled a flat bottomed hole just big enough to fit the 1/4″ nut, till just a millimeter from boring through the other side. As a result the nut could sit a mm away from the QR plate, separated by the wood. It is now secured from the bottom and sides and I poured two-part epoxy on top of it to completely lock it in place.