Monitor Mounts and other Computer stuff Geeking Out Your Boat Forums

I fabricated a stainless fold down monitor holder on valkyr for my 24 inch monitor. In the up position the monitor snugged up between two of bows on the roof. Down I could slide it side to side and up or down to adjust its position. As well as rotate it to be seen in the salon. I had plans to add a second smaller monitor but never got to it. Not sure if I ever uploaded pictures of it. I will have to take a look.

If you are comfortable creating your own design and then fabricating it I would get one of the little small 120 volt harbor freight inverter welders. Cost about 160 dollars if I remember right. They work great for light stainless tubing and plate. Secret to them is to use the thinner welding rods. If you use the more normal size welding rods they just don't have the amps to get a good arc. but with the thinner diameter rods you can do some nice welding. Whole unit is about the size of a loaf of bread. So perfect size for keeping on a boat.  I think a decent size inverter would run it just fine also so you aren't tied to a dock while using it. You should be able to use it for emergency repairs to many of the stainless components on a boat from chain plates to pulpits. Chain plates would be a pain as they are thicker than you really want to weld with this small a unit but you could probably make enough passes to fill in and weld the thicker metal. Stainless tubing such as pulpits is ideal for this unit. You can also weld either polarity which is a nice feature. I'm usually not a big electronis person from harbor freight but this has good reviews and personally done good service for me.

here is link to one I have.

http://www.harborfreight.com/8.....61749.html

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couple other tools I have gotten a lot of use out of on the boat... random orbital sanders both 5 and 6 inch ones. Roto zip for some cutting but more for the cutoff and grinding blades. Also the flexibile wand  attachment. Basically a dremel on steroids.

oscillating multi tool for all your detail cutting and sanding. one of best tools ever.

http://www.harborfreight.com/v.....62867.html

I'm sure their are others I'm not thinking of but all these are seriously flexible and or heavily used if you do a lot of your own work. The harbor freight stuff I linked to are some of the few powertools from them that I would get. I would also pay for the extended no question warranty. Two years and you just bring it in and give them your phone number to verify warranty and they hand you a new tool. Haven't had to use it yet but their stuff is not known as super high end quality. However these items are so cheap that you can buy it and the warranty for 1/5 the cost alone of a bosh or other higher end tool.

Marine satellite is expensive. I took that out of one of the casino boats here and and installed a 3g system good to about 6 miles offshore. Saved them about 2200 dollars a month and got better performance  up to the point they ran out of signal. For their application though it worked perfect. All they needed was to get past the 3 mile line to be able to run the casino. So they could run up and down the coast between three and 6 miles out with no problem. Nice thing was that all the hard ware to do the 3g system only cost a little more than a grand. It cost them more for the labor to install it.