Hey all, first post here, coming to you with a conundrum I’ve found myself in. I’m doing visuals for an upcoming rave at a ruined building in a forest and the projector setup is becoming a huge hassle. The stage is an elevated platform about 5 feet up in this little enclosed clearing:
We checked it out and decided the mound by that tree on the left would be the best place for the visual setup, but we are needing to secure the projector and keep it up a bit higher. To keep this short, does anyone know of a way to possibly mount a projector to a tree? I was looking at the VJ kung fu mount Yovozol made a video on but the grips those use pretty clearly won’t work on a tree! I was looking in the direction of these cheap metal pole straps
but i’m lost after that. My projector only weighs 10.1 lbs so the weight isn’t a huge issue, but the risk of breaking the projector and fucking up the night definitely is. Thank you if you read this far- here’s a cat picture for your patience
Can you make a shelf and use the large hose clips to fasten the brackets to the tree. Using a jigsaw you could get the shelf flush with the trunk of the tree.
Then secure the projector to the shelf.
I might be able to find a jigsaw at the local makerspace but i also don’t know how i would attach the board to the tree. I’m thinking to do a shelf similar to this one: https://youtu.be/I_u_-eOuRJw?si=vrm6uOIrsWo8h2XA
Made a sketch for reference of what i’m thinking to do.
I got a sheet of particleboard from work and some hinges, metal loops, and those hose clamps at the recycled building supply store. Need some sturdy wire and some more loops to tie the wire to for keeping tension off the hinge. The rave’s not til the end of the month so i have some time but I’m trying to avoid any last minute panicking as this’ll be the biggest show i’ve done by a long shot. I’ll test the rig out and report back soon!
Aye it looks good. Design is not critical only weight distribution. Beamer should be attached to the shelf as well. Use a bandit strap ( ratchet) strap for that.
The tree will survive a couple of screws or nails if necessary but remove them afterwards.
A good and tree-safe way to mount to trees is to wrap a carpet remnant around the tree and secure one or more 2x4s to the tree with ratchet straps. Then you can attach your mounting solution to the 2x4s using bolts or screws. I would not use hose clamps (they’re not designed for irregular surfaces) nor would I drill or nail into the bark, depending on the type of tree, it may not be good for the tree and it may not be as secure as you might think.
Thanks for the advice. I ordered two ratchet straps and i’ll pick up a cheap strip of carpet from the recycled building material store. I’ll find some bigger brackets to attach to the front that the straps will fit in
I feel like i overbuilt this but it feels really sturdy. The machine screws i got weren’t long enough for the thickness of these boards but this is just about ready to test
…sorry - being a pretty ambitious hobby-woodworker i do not share the enthusiasm as i see a couple of flaws in the design and the execution:
do not use particle-board in an outdoor project
do not rely on screws to pull two boards together but
rather mount the angle-irons ‚outside‘ so the weight ‚leans‘ on the screws but does not pull on them
do not use stretchable stablizers
if possible do not use wood-screws but screw through the boards and place another big iron on the opposite side to distribute the stress
…i did not write this when i saw the photo the first time, however, after the enthusiastic comment i feel the urge to comment before anyone else uses this design and hint to the above mentioned improvments…
Thanks for the critique- that actually saves me a lot of guess work. I was already imagining the particle board getting wet and crumbling to pieces but I rationalized it to myself. I was also going to use steel wire but i just had bungee cords on hand.
When you say use a big iron on the other side of the board do you mean to use something like a nut? Also do you think 1/4” plywood suffices? I appreciate the help because I’m just borrowing hand tools from my local maker space and I don’t know jack about woodworking
…sorry, i really did not mean to put your work down - actually, i did not say anything before as i thought that perhaps you might get through with it (for one event) - but if others now follow your example (…)…
…for outdoor use i would choose ‘Siebdruckplatte’ (german word, available everywhere) as base material - which Google translates to ‘screen printing plate’, but its rather a specially coated, waterproof plywood that is used for example when pouring concrete (check Google for pictures)…9mm is minimum, 12mm would be good, 15mm starting to be overkill…
…with ‘big iron’ i would describe either big-to-huge-washers (to distribute the pressure) or better - if you have the tools - a piece of flat iron with holes drilled to match the holes in the angled iron you are using…then sandwich the angled-iron with the plywood and the flat iron using machine-screws, washers and nuts…
…as you are using a maker-space as workshop i bet there are people ‘at your disposition’ happy to help and advise; perhaps you can even persuade someone to help you weld customised angle-irons (with hook-attachments on the back) and make fitting drilled-flat-iron-bars for the other side…
This rave went down last night and went overall a lot smoother than the organizers or I expected. I didn’t have much time to rebuild the mount so I just replaced the bungee cords with a solid wire and it turned out pretty well. Probably wouldn’t use this mount too many times ofc but it took a lot of abuse and held up great.
My set had a few things go wrong- I couldn’t get the videos of the DJs’ logos to play on my recurboy no matter how I rendered them, I should have brought more RCA cables, and my Melted Electronics Strange Loop wouldn’t play a lot of videos I had spent most of my prep time making despite testing them before the show and retrying them over and over throughout the sets.
We decided to project over the graffiti which looked really cool but was hard to see much with a 5100 lumen projector. I ended up using mostly the AVE mods with audio reactivity coming from a Tascam recorder (borrowed from my roommate- came in clutch due to being too far from the board to get sound from) combined with feedback on the WJ-AVE5 and playing with the superimpose color to the beat.
