The Monstrosity

This article was brought here after 4 years at Hack-a-day.io.

The Octoprint Logo.
The Monstrosity is this 4x4 frame which allows me to build the workstation I need without marring or drilling any holes into the walls of our spare bedroom.

As you can see, there are 3 computers and six displays. Five of the displays are all connected to the computer on the right. The top left display is for my Ubuntu machine which runs ~~Zoneminder~~ AgentDVR and keeps me aware of what's happening outside. The third machine runs headless except for a pair of KVM switches which allow me to look in on it if I need more than an SSH terminal.

This third machine is named Brilliant, and is the hub for my PiNet. Ubuntu, MySQL, nginx, Python, Gunicorn and Flask all run on this little i3 leftover 24/7. It is a faithful little guy who never complains.

I'm going to jump straight to the Gallery here. The captions under each photo will take you through the construction of The Monstrosity.

A Monstrous Gallery

The entire assemblage is pretty much self-contained, requiring only these cables for connectivity and power.

The left side. Notice the double 1x8 braces. I didn't want it moving.

I framed in some 2x4s across the back to accept the display mounts for the larger displays. It also acts as a place to set some components, including the UPS, a network switch and Brilliant which runs Mother.

This is The Appendage, which was added months after building the original Monstrosity.

My stand-up desk fits in perfectly. That might be because I designed it that way.

This corner bracing really works great. It may be overkill, but I don't think so. There is no movement in the framework at all.

1/16" aircraft cable holds these plywood shelves up. It is actually a great system. Very strong and stable.

Desktop pipe display stands were inverted to suspend these displays. And that's a 30MB MFM drive there on display. When rust was king!

I bought these mounts at Harbor Freight. They get the job done, and that's all I care about.

The UPS reports 455W of power is used by all the gear when running. Not too bad considering.

CONSTRUCTION DETAILS:

The Monstrosity is constructed out of 4x4 pine with 1x8 pine used on the corner bracing. 8" x 1/2" lag bolts hold the 4x4's together.

Both big computers sit on simple plywood shelves that are screwed to 2x4 bracing on the back edge, and suspended with 1/16" aircraft cable on the front. The cable passes through the shelf via 1/8" holes, then wraps around a sheet metal screw with a fender washer. This secures the cable so no swaging of loops was required.

The smaller displays are suspended from the upper 2x4 crossbeam on the pipe part of a dual display desk mount I was already using. I unscrewed the base, drilled a hole, and hung them from the 2x4.

The two larger displays are really just 43" TV's. One is a TCL Roku TV, and the other is a Samsung SmartTV I got on sale at Best Buy. Both are 4K @60hz, and both work great each and every day. Each of them was about $250.00. You don't have to spend vast sums of money for a decent display.

In my daily work, I spec a ton of high quality display mounts for clients. For myself, I drive a couple of miles down to Harbor Freight and spend thirty bucks on their display mount. You know what? It works just fine. I mean, a display mount doesn't have a complicated job. It just has to sit there, hold the display still, and don't let it fall down. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

One major design requirement in my mind was to keep stuff off the floor. A second design requirement was to be able to walk around all four sides of my 'skeleton cubical'. Both of these design imperatives are met perfectly by this setup.

My wife is impressed, even though she calls it 'that monstrosity in your office'. I really like it too.

The Monstrosity is certainly A Thing That Works!

A Monstrous Gallery

CONSTRUCTION DETAILS:

links

social