I have lately found myself participating in more and more virtual build sessions on-line. I am probably the most remote member of the East Carolina Plastic Modelers chapter, since I live in Lansing, Michigan, but I participate in their Tuesday virtual build night every week. I have also started attending the Cold War Aircraft SIG virtual build night, and I’m hoping to start doing one with our club, Capitol Area Modelers Society.
Until recently, I didn’t have a computer in my man cave, and so I had to attend these groups on my phone. That was fine for carrying on conversations but not as good for seeing other people or their work, so for some time I’ve wanted a PC in my workspace. I’m not much of a television watcher, but I thought it would be nice to be able to look up and display reference photos, so the computer would have other uses, as well.
The problem has been a lack of space. I love my room, but it’s not spacious and desk space in particular is at a premium. I suspect that this is a problem for many modelers. I also wanted to keep this at least somewhat on a budget. I’m not planning on using this computer for any heavy lifting, just video and image display, so I didn’t need anything fancy.
This week I solved the problem and I’m going to walk through what I did. I bought everything from Amazon, so if you want to do the same thing, it should be easy enough.
First, I needed a place to put a monitor. I didn’t want it to be on the desktop, so that meant wall mounting it. I bought the Mount Pro Single Monitor Wall Mount for 13 to 32 Inch Computer Screens, currently priced at $29.98. I used a pair of Tapcons to mount this to the concrete basement wall.
Next, I needed a display to hang from that arm. I chose the Dell SE2426H 24” Monitor for $99.99, bringing my total to $129.97. I thought a 24” monitor would be a good size, since the display would not be far from my seat, and it turned out to be a good choice, as I think a 27” display would have been more difficult to reach around. It comes with an HDMI cable, so you don’t need to buy one like I did.
Of course, the monitor’s not much good if there’s nothing to plug it into, so I needed a computer. A Google search for “micro computers” led me to select the Beelink S12 Mini PC. It has an Intel 12th Gen 4-Core N95 processor, with 8 GB of RAM and a DDR4 480 GB SSD drive. Both the RAM and storage are upgradeable, but I’m planning on accessing my photo library from Google drive, so I thought this would be just fine. It’s about 4 ½” square and about 1 1/2” tall, so it doesn’t take a lot of space. It has 4k graphics, two HDMI outputs, four USB inputs, a LAN input and a mic/speaker input. If you’re not using a monitor arm, you can mount this computer to the VESA mount on the back of the monitor. I was able to tuck mine into the corner on top of my spray booth. The computer was $279, bringing my total to $408.97.
Next, I needed a mouse and keyboard. I didn’t want a normal-sized set, as I would have to move all of my work out of the way to use that. Instead, I bought the MSRVI Mini Keyboard with Touchpad, with Bluetooth and 2.4G. This thing isn’t that much bigger than your phone keypad, but I’m not planning on using it to draft long letters or emails. Instead, I need to be able to click a few times, and maybe make a Google search or two. This thing can fit in my pocket, so it doesn’t eat valuable real estate. It has multiple backlighting options and a built-in laser pointer if you want to distract the cat. It was $19.99, bringing my total to $428.96.
I already had a set of speakers so the last purchase I needed to make was a camera with a built-in mic. I settled on the Logitech C920S HD Pro Webcam. I mounted it to the top of the monitor and it works great. The only issue I have is that the monitor screen goes right to the edge of the monitor, and so the clamp for the camera obscures a little bit of the screen, but that problem would probably be the same for any webcam. This camera was $67.16, bringing the grand total to $496.12. You could probably buy a cheap notebook computer for less, but this, at least for me, is a more functional solution.
Overall, I am very happy with this setup. The Zoom conferencing will be nice, but I think over time the ability to easily access reference photos will be even better.
Speaking of Zoom, this week the East Carolina club tried a different hosting option, Digital Samba. This is a free hosting service. The consensus was that it was easier to use than Zoom and the video quality was better. The price certainly can’t be beat, so even though I have a Zoom account for business, I am going to propose using Digital Samba for CAMS if we end up having a virtual build night.
Email me at ncwitte@wittelaw.com if you would like me to send you links to any of these items.
Leave a Reply