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Submitted by: seen by jakeblue at LanParty via Submit a Kludge!
Favorite Comment: Fixer Kees says, “$1000 worth of equipment, hung in a $1 plastic crate suspended by $0.10 worth of shoelace. What could possibly go wrong?”
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When people say “vaca” pics, I wonder just what they were DOING with that cow. That WOULD be embarrassing.
What an ingenious way to mount expensive camera equipment. Keeps all those expensive installation and wiring charges crashing from sky high to rock bottom.
I think by “vaca” you don’t mean “cow”, is that supposed to be short for “vacation”?
Well whatever it means, I hate people who say ‘vaca’. Really? It’s too much effort to say the rest of it?
It bugs me, too. My least favorite, though, is “adorbs,” which always makes me think, “Well, now it’s automatically not cute anymore!”
Hey, if you switch the ‘d’ & ‘s’, it becomes ‘absord’! I mean, it kinda sounds like ‘absurd’.
I just noticed a change in the title of this post. Believe me, TIFI, this was all no reflection on you or your blog. Unless you start to say “adorbs,” and then I’ll take it back.
That’s a well hung projector. What’s the kludge? Not putting the ceiling tile back properly?
I agree, this needs a little something. Bungee cords?
He’s using flimsy rubber tie-down straps to hang a plastic milk-crate box holding expensive electronics from a high ceiling, and he’s anchored it all to thin aluminum ceiling-tile rails that aren’t designed to hold much more than the weight of… ceiling tiles! If that’s not a kludge I don’t know what is.
A professional installer would have built a proper electronics cage and then hung that from a rigid-construction metal frame. That would be clamped, bolted or welded directly onto the rafters that are presumably hidden above the ceiling tiles.
Actually I can see a store manager doing this.
The ceiling tile grid might not be “structural” but it’s far stronger than you give it credit for; in our office it’s supporting 3 inches of fiberglass insulation as well as the tiles, and supporting a camera is not a big deal for it. However, the more elegant way to do this would have been to replace one of the ceiling tiles with a structure that supports the camera, instead of hanging something like this from the grid by wires.
Those “thin aluminum ceiling-tile rails” are a lot stronger, and do a lot more than you’re considering. You apparently haven’t spent a lot of time in drop ceilings. There are power cables, phone and network cables, air conditioning ducts. Well, there are plenty of other things up there. Forgotten tools, hidden drug stashes, dead fish (by ex-employees usually), and rats.
The photo isn’t clear exactly what the strings are. Shoe laces or tie town straps, they’re both sufficient. The whole rig probably doesn’t weigh more than 6 or 7 pounds. You can’t tell in the picture if they’re attached only to the aluminum frame, or the steel structure above it. Either way, it’s more than strong enough.
You’re describing a very strong structure to hold heavy weights. A metal frame welded to the ceiling structure? You could hang a Buick from that. While I’m a card carrying member of the overkill club, that’s just too much.
Well, most drop cieling frames are designed to support ONLY the ceiling panels. Anything else is supposed to have its own independent support.
It also looks like it is rigged for easy removal. Just cut the front single support string and projector will come down for easy disconnection and sweeping up.
Yep, sweeping. As in, sweeping up the pieces of the projector you just smashed because it fell off the jury-ringed kludge of a contraption someone attached to the ceiling tile framework.
Easy, there, Sarge! Larry’s not coming over to install one at your house next. Well, as far as I know, anyway.
But the photo doesn’t show that the shoelaces are tied to the aluminum rails. They could easily be tied to something stronger above. In fact, on the one cord that you can see, it clearly is not tied to the aluminum rails and goes beyond them to something else.
I don’t think this is near the kludge you think it is.
You sure explained the hell out of that joke, Sarge! That joke sure as hell ain’t gonna go confusing no one no more, leastwise not ’round these parts.
Maybe the 30 year old frame work in my school is stronger than newer installation. We suspend everything: student work, large speakers, projection screens. This may be the solution to the five years I’ve been waiting for someone “official” to install MY projector.
$1000 worth of equipment, hung in a $1 plastic crate suspended by $0.10 worth of shoelace. What could possibly go wrong?
I love Powers of Ten.
As it falls it could pull some wires and burn your $100K and get you a $1MM lawsuit from your neighbor.
You’d pay a whole dollar for that plastic crate?! But where can I get shoelaces for 10 cents?
So I reversed the numbers, that still makes this a priceless kludge
No, I totally believed your numbers– just planning out my future budget…
Actually I think that basket probably costs $10-$20, noting the multiple colors, diagonal support, multi-segment design (to alleviate stress on the cross-beams), varying thicknesses of plastic (showing off both the design and the complexity of the mold). All that considered it should be obvious this was no $1 basket, at least until somebody punched this huge hole in it so the projector would not be affected by it. After that it is probably a -$1 basket.
This looks more like school use than home use.
At least they didn’t use the car jack and stack of books to hold this up as well.
Not enough books, not enough jack–that’s why.
This actually would be a nice fix to one of our problems at work… A projector Vibrates constantly because 2 tons of HVAC is above it… I’m going to submit this as a solution proposal.
Same problem in our office (same reason), and for a minute I suspected you were the Chris in the next cubicle. But I asked him and you aren’t — he’s never heard of TIFI. (Unless he’s lying to me…)
The projection is that this kludge won’t be well received upon failing!
“Got ‘er all hooked up. Now, what movie do you want to watch, Legends of the Fall or Crash?”
“If you don’t like those, I also have Down and Out in Beverly Hills, or season 1 of The Fall Guy.”
“Oh, and I also found an old copy of “Collateral Damage.”
What about Falling Down? Michael Douglas was brilliant in that one. Not a lot of suspense, though.
A-tisket a-tasket
A grey and yellow basket.
Strung a projector up today.
Adjusting it, I dropped it.
I dropped it. I dropped it.
Adjusting it I dropped it.
All because I used this kludge
to keep money in my pocket.
Nice! It’s all I can do not to tap dance along.
Have to admit, this is pretty good… ive been known to hang projectors in nightclubs mcguyver style using chain and gaffa tape
This set-up was clearly done by a basket case.
And now, students, if you’ll pay attention to this slideshow, you’ll see just how much Kludging 101 will impact your penny-pinching lives…
There’s a class for this? Hot damn, sign me up!
Each week in Sunday School, the grade fives would pray for the projector to fall before Miss Murray’s verse by verse Powerpoint in Leviticus. “Really,” they thought, “how much faith can it really take to make that thing fall…?”
Here’s my advice, Sunday schoolers: This thing is going down with just one well-aimed paper airplane. The Lord helps those who help themselves.
You’re welcome.
Hey, it works at least..just don’t sit underneath it !
Behold the future, robots in a hammock while the human beings will do the repetitive work.
Behold the future! Where robots sleep in a hammock and the human beings do all the repetitive work!
WIN! Genius install of a projector in the ceiling. No more $300+ ceiling mounts. Question is, how would one go about adjusting its position? Do they need a sailboating course to learn how to pull on the lines?
archiveing videos….your doing it wrong
Yes – you should at least use some lengths of chain link, as my church does; they’re much stronger. We rent space, so we have to setup and take down everything each week. So, we have a wooden platform, hung from the rafters, and a long plastic pipe to keep the cords from both machines together on their journey to the tech table.
Day 148: “I have managed to create a photon cannon out of a can of peas, soda box, a beer can, and a flashlight. I used it to hold off the zombie horde. ‘Twas very sucessfull. After the attack stopped, I realized I was out of peas(My only food) and I broke my flashlight. Oh the humanity.”
Day 151: “I did something horrible yesterday. Yesterday, I was out of food after the zombie horde wave, and I needed food badly. So I did something I’m not too proud of. I decided to risk my life by running out the door, grabbing a dead zombie, and eating him up. All went well until I looked at what I grabbed. Turns out I took a small child by mistake. It is a shame what I did next. But you know what they say… Good food, good meat, Good God! Lets eat!”-End Transmission
If you look closely you can see the ceiling plate being moved by an amateur ninja. He’s probably planning to steal it and use the footage to blackmail a senator whose affair was caught on tape.
I once hung a €30,000.– beamer 5 meters above the ground. It was put on a piece of wood, connected to the ceiling of the 8 meters high hall with steel wire. Put I had nothing to fasten the steel wires with. So I tied knots in the steel wires. But knots in steel wire un-knot because you can’t pull them tight. So I left a 1m piece of wire after the knot. I folded it back onto the part of the wire between the wood and the ceiling, and wound it with duct-tape. It was solid as a rock. It took a lot of time to remove at the end of the week though. Which is probably a good thing, since the beamer would probably have crushed the kids sitting under it
I once hung a €30,000.– beamer 5 meters above the ground. It was put on a piece of wood, connected to the ceiling of the 8 meters high hall with steel wire. Put I had nothing to fasten the steel wires with. So I tied knots in the steel wires. But knots in steel wire un-knot because you can’t pull them tight. So I left a 1m piece of wire after the knot. I folded it back onto the part of the wire between the wood and the ceiling, and wound it with duct-tape. It was solid as a rock. It took a lot of time to remove at the end of the week though. The beamer was used to project onto a 6×9 meters screen (which was a massive kludge as well). It had a 1500 Watts RMS bass speaker behind it. The kids that watched movies on our kludgery LOVED it.
This place has also wedged a speaker into rafter-space and hung something by chain from the centre of a ceiling tile … if a bit of plaster can support a length of chain (not to mention the weight of what’s on the end of the chain) the rails can surely support a milk crate a few shoelaces and a projector.
This is a great idea to forgo the $800 mounting fee that is pretty typical. Maybe if my school wont hang it for me, Ill try this out. Much safer than 5 year olds bumping into the table it is on constantly.