Vertical adjustable monitor/TV mount for standing desk

August 22, 2016 6:08 AM

I'd like to do a standing desk in my extremely narrow home office (a.k.a closet). My space is pretty limited -- I actually think the Oristand I've ordered as a pedestal may be deeper than my actual desk, but I can deal with that. I'll have a keyboard at hand height and laptop at eye height, but I don't have additional room on the pedestal for my lightweight 24" monitor. I'd like to move the monitor up and down -- about a 3 ft. traverse.

I have a plaster-and-lathe wall I can mount into. There is no rear desktop to clamp a monitor arm onto. Also, the monitor must tilt left about 45 -- it can be fixed at this yaw if necessary.

I'd like to use a conventional TV mount that I could get cheap on Monoprice etc., but I can't just take a horizontal mount and turn it 90˚ because those have no resistance to gravity, and I'm concerned that ball-and-socket mounts won't be able to maintain position over time.

Right now the practical option seems to be installing a tiny bookshelf and heft the monitor to and from its new altitude, but there are two cords to tangle, and the opportunity for clumsiness seems high if I do this 3 – 4 times a day.

I've seen one medical office mount that seems to suit the purpose, but it's $200 and appears to require manual locking of the joints into place. I don't want to pay that much, and if I did, I would want it to float without needing locks.

A separate pedestal is a possibility, except I really am tight on space. I paid so much for Oristand piece of folded cardboard because it can fold flat in seconds while still being stable when unfolded. So needing to stash a 1'x1'x3' prism when I'm not using it is a bad solution.

With some decent plans, DIY is a possibility.

posted by blueshammer to Work & Money (6 answers total)

Is your monitor VESA-compatible? VESA is a common standard where there are four holes on the back and it allows it to mount to a series of standardized brackets/arms. If it is, you can just buy a wall mount VESA arm with bracket and that will work swimmingly. By no means are all monitors/all-in-ones VESA compatible, but a big chunk of them are, and there are adapter brackets, too. And a VESA swing arm would fit the bill pretty well.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:31 AM on August 22, 2016

installing a tiny bookshelf and heft the monitor to and from its new altitude

Seems to me that you could engineer something using wood or metal railings that works like a hung window, with pulleys and counterweights on either side to balance the weight of the monitor. You could have a shelf lip sticking out from the bottom of the "window" to stand your monitor on, or fix the sliding element directly to the VESA mounting holes.
posted by flabdablet at 7:48 AM on August 22, 2016

Response by poster: Yes, it is VESA-compatible, but I'm wary of expecting a swing arm to handle a 3 ft y-axis change and maintain the viewing angle without drooping. Am I being overly worried?

We actually have an old home and have replaced some ropes and counterweights ourselves, so this solution also occurred to me. But I'd love to hear from anyone who's undertaken such a DIY.
posted by blueshammer at 8:28 AM on August 22, 2016

There are tons of hacks using IKEA components on pinterest. You might browse through some images to see if there's something there that ticks your boxes.
posted by vignettist at 8:39 AM on August 22, 2016

I'm wary of expecting a swing arm to handle a 3 ft y-axis change and maintain the viewing angle without drooping. Am I being overly worried?

I'm using a VESA arm that can handle probably two feet of swing right now. It might seem like they would droop, but most of them actually have a hex screw that adjusts tension to account for differences in monitor weight. I am pretty sure there are longer arms that can handle a larger swing built on the same principle.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:47 AM on August 22, 2016

Hmmmm.... looking into VESA arms, the gas spring ones (like I have) do seem to tend to be limited to a y-axis shift half of what you're looking for or less. I guess my understanding of how those are measured was kind of off.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:07 AM on August 22, 2016