The Monitor Wall

[Guitar]

And a great idea it was! It still relied on me to drill correctly, which didn't exactly happen (who woulda figured) but it was a crap load easier and more accurate then plotting them by hand. Awesome! I'm home for lunch and to charge my shitty Harbor Freight drill right now. I really need to invest in a good one...this one sucks! Anyways, onto the work...

My cart full of shit. All this fit in my Mustang..and who said you need an SUV! (I do..I very much want a truck...)

Laid out and waiting.

You can see the two tabs above I have to cut off and the cylinder on the bottom.

Taping off! About 5-6 layers I believe.

About to transfer...cut the sides to make it cleaner.

It worked! Whether subconsciously or not, the size was even almost perfect for the board. Awesome.

Original holes drawn vs the ones from the tape...I actually wouldn't have been too far off (granted I made these closer to the edge) but this worked!

Kind of screwed on. This drill coupled with these screws are a royal PITA. The drill first of all runs out of power quick and has no torque. Whatever. The screws are these cheap ass Chinese screws from Amazon, 100 in the pack, and they strip easy - but not only that, when I'm tightening everything down to get them flush, the heads just love to pop right off. So frustrating..luckily I don't plan on taking this apart anytime soon...at least the four together.

This row came out NOTICEABLY better than the first. It proably helped I gathered the monitors that were the most similar to each other, but the tape method had a lot to do with it. Can't thank you enough for that idea Frogger!

And would you look at this.

Two down, two to go.

 

[Nordic]

Those huge pictures look amazing on that.

 

[Guitar]

Those huge pictures look amazing on that.

That image is actually 5120x4096..so it's gonna look awesome. I also have another image that is that size, but I like the piano better than the violin. Might have to stitch together some interesting wallpapers myself for this. But we probably won't be seeing much of that.

Just found a handful more cool ones too

 

[Nordic]

I have some nice landscape photos I have taken. Sizes are variable but a common size is 5472x3948. Upscale them a bit maybe. If your interested that is.

 

[Guitar]

Sure. I love wallpapers... I have somewhere between 50-100gb on my PC somewhere - mostly common resolutions though.

 

[Aquinus]

What's your endgame plan with the displays? 4x4?

 

[Guitar]

Yes.

I don't think this PC likes the four monitors. With three it acts fine. With four, I can get to Windows and get to display properties, but when I start applying display things and such, it seems to not like it..bluescreens happened a few times. Why I think it might be the card is even when I had 8 hooked up, when I moved something over to the two corner monitors, they would freak out and I'd get a bluescreen. But then they were fine...so who knows. I took the fourth card out and seems to be fine. Need to diagnose whether it is the card specifically or the problem of having all four. Nothing wrong when they're in the system just when monitors are hooked up.

The transfer of the holes is going fine. However, these monitors are older and the holes are different - no problem I made another transfer sheet. But the issue is they also are not as deep...the screws I have are 40mm which they were kind of long to begin with but the only size I could fine. However they are a lot longer than they need to be for these holes. I have a friend who works at Fastenal who should be able to get me some screws maybe Monday..so we'll see what happens. I did put together all the monitors for mock up at least.

The work station.

All 16.

The 12 working.

So I only actually have two rows 'completed' at this moment, and I'm probably going to redo the first. Then I still have the problem of mounting them in a wall formation - 2x4s with bolts through them are going to be the solution I HOPE...but still not sure how this is going to be actually on the wall.

If you have money...just buy 4 vesa mounts or whatever for however many monitors you're doing and be done with it. This is cheaper but a PITA. Also, I think this would be cooler in a 5x4 formation or even 5x3 which I initially wanted to do...but I also didn't want to have an unused spot.

That's all for now...maybe some updates this week, maybe not.

 

[Frogger]

Would like to see a shot of the 4x4 from the back to see if your concerns from post 14 were valid.
Your welcome

 

[Guitar]

Would like to see a shot of the 4x4 from the back to see if your concerns from post 14 were valid.
Your welcome

I think they will be too short for at least the top row...power cords luckily we have a bunch and a fair amount of long ones. VGA cables, I have a good amount of, but not this long. It does look like length is going to be an issue, I had to use an extender on just ONE in the top left corner and I could've switched the cable out with a slightly longer one but didn't - unless the PC is mounted really close I am going to run into an issue. However, I've been contemplating a few different ways I want to run all the cables and securing them to the back and all that, so we'll see what happens..I need to get all 16 on boards first and I'll worry about cable management last probably.

 

[Aquinus]

I would try disabling aero and/or changing the primary display to be the top-left most display. It's entirely possible that it's not happy driving 3D on so many cards at once. I assume you're using the latest nVidia drivers as well?

 

[Guitar]

I would try disabling aero and/or changing the primary display to be the top-left most display. It's entirely possible that it's not happy driving 3D on so many cards at once. I assume you're using the latest nVidia drivers as well?

I was going to disable Aero for performance and that may help. And yes latest drivers of course.

 

[Jetster]

Very cool

 

[Peter1986C]

It will be a pain in the butt though to get the contrast, colour settings etc. equal, unless they are the exact same model. Still, nice project.

 

[Guitar]

Yes it is going to be, even with ones of the same kind because some are so old and might not even be working properly..gonna be super fun!

I think Aero was the problem...got them all to display and stay, moved a window across all, no problems...except the GPU cores reaching 70* for one or two of them. No fans on the side yet so we'll see if that helps but might have to end up making an enclosure or do an open case style thing with PCI-e risers..we'll see. Getting them in wall formation comes first.

 

[Toothless]

I know with Win8.1 that you can disable the task bar on all but one monitor. Might help to make it look better.

 

[Guitar]

I'm hoping UltraMon will allow me to disable them all except on the bottom row.

 

[Guitar]

I may have the screws I need tomorrow to get this going again...friend ordered me some 35mm M4 screws instead of the cheap Chinese 40mm ones I was using..too long and the heads broke off because they were pieces of crap. I plan on finishing it this weekend along with redoing the first row if I can get them tomorrow. May or may not have them mounted - since we are moving offices, I unfortunately am not sure if we'll actually have them displayed. The best I think I'll do is get them setup with 2x4s and sort of sitting upward. We'll see.

 

[Guitar]

Went to work today and started to work on it. Nothing went right. These screws are better and the right length but the holes I drilled on the board were apparently way off. Did another board, way off. Like 3-4 of the monitors have one of the screw holes fucked up now, one of them has two because they aren't very sturdy. I'm getting discouraged, this is not fun. Taking a break from it and not sure what I'm gonna do yet. Really need a drill press and a good template because apparently either I'm drilling like a retard or the holes are for some reason way off when I lay down the tape on the wood...some were a whole half inch off almost and it doesn't make sense to me. I need new boards now (I have one good one and have to still do 3 rows of monitors) and just not sure what I'm going to do with it at this point.

 

[Toothless]

Lots of duct tape and glue might help.