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Searching for Quailty A/V Carts? 43

Posted by Cliff from the multimedia-on-wheels dept.
Tyrson asks: "I work at a university and we are looking to purchase new A/V carts. At the moment we have the plain and simple shelves-on-wheels and the nicer multimedia display carts. The simple carts are sturdy yet insecure and lack useful features. The display carts are secure and useful yet built from weaker materials that only last a few semesters. We are looking for A/V carts with useful features preferably built from metal or plastics. After googling it and making some phone calls I had found several good carts that were sadly upwards of $1,200 apiece. I don't expect them to be cheap, but $1,200 was a little to steep. Does Slashdot have some suggestions for us?"
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Searching for Quailty A/V Carts? More

Searching for Quailty A/V Carts?

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  • Long's AV (Score:4, Informative)

    by waynegoode ( 758645 ) * on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @06:52PM (#12639516) Homepage
    Not sure exactly what you are looking for, but try this category [longselectronics.com] at Long's AV. Also search for 'cart' to see more. $100 to $600.
    • What? You mean he's after a trolley? and he comes to slashdot to find out? What's the big deal? it has wheels, and shelves and you put things onto it and move it around... This story's just plain weird.

      Maybe someone out there can help me find the perfect role of sticky tape. I want one with a few features, will last the whole semester, preferable made of plastic and doesn't cost upward of $1200. Hold on, I'll ask slashdot !!
      • What? You mean he's after a trolley? and he comes to slashdot to find out? What's the big deal? it has wheels, and shelves and you put things onto it and move it around... This story's just plain weird.

        Maybe someone out there can help me find the perfect role of sticky tape. I want one with a few features, will last the whole semester, preferable made of plastic and doesn't cost upward of $1200. Hold on, I'll ask slashdot !!

        Well, it *is* "News for Nerds"...I guess the "Stuff that Matters" fell by the
  • C'Mon, honestly !! I can't be the only one that's not heard of these.. As far as I can tell, you're referring to and Audio/Video Cartridge? BUt the 'shelves' reference throws that out the window. Or are you looking for a shopping cart with an Audio/Video display on it for showing the customers adverts while they cruise the aisles??
  • AV Carts are Audio Video Cartridges used in high volume A/V data media centers.

  • Put those university resources to good use (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Toxygen ( 738180 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @07:23PM (#12639871) Journal
    In our university complex (and I suspect in many) we have machine shops that are well equipped enough to build nearly anything you have the imagination for, and plenty of classes where students are taught and trained to do the building. Why not take your request to the professors of these classes and have them build some for you? It would be an excellent practical project for the students and you could save a boatload of money on parts/labour for a system that could be custom built to fit your needs.

    An example of a similar project happened a few years ago when the university needed a new retaining wall built for a pretty high and nasty hill next to the road. The old wall was basically a big slab of concrete and it had a very pronounced lean towards the road and was in danger of collapsing, so instead of hiring someone to design a new one they gave the project to the senior engineering students who designed a new wall for their school. That part of campus that was once an eyesore is now a beautiful piece of landscaping.
    • Why not take your request to the professors of these classes and have them build some for you?

      It doesn't even have to be for a class. A lot of universities have one or more "student shops" that students can pretty much use on their own, generally for school related things (grad students in experimental physics, for example, tend to do a lot of machining). Even when the shops belong to one department, they tend to be shared to avoid duplicating resources too much. You can probably get someone who can
      • You can probably get someone who can weld (it's not hard)

        I am not sure if you are commenting here on "getting someone" or "welding" - if the former, I appollogize for the following, but if the latter...

        For a beginner, welding is anything but easy. Welding is a skill that takes a lot of practice and a bit of stamina as well. It takes a knowledge of metals and heat, how thickness of metal, temperature of the metal, the kind of metal (and in certain cases, if you are welding two similar, but not quite the sa


        • For a beginner, welding is anything but easy. Welding is a skill that takes a lot of practice and a bit of stamina as well. It takes a knowledge of metals and heat, how thickness of metal, temperature of the metal, the kind of metal (and in certain cases, if you are welding two similar, but not quite the same types of steel together, the knowledge of that), etc - to produce a good weld.

          Good advice and great details (and beyond my competence level), but I think the project in question is a bit simpler th
        • Sure, you can make welding as hard as you want, but the OP is looking for a sturdy AV cart, not a precision road bike made from thinwall titanium or a bridge to support tanks crossing the Tigris.

          A decent MIG welder and a bunch of cheap steel and even a beginner can be putting together AV carts in a couple hours (I was certainly doing more difficult stuff than that after an hour or two). I wouldn't even recommend buying a welder for a project like that-- borrow one or use one from somewhere at the universi
          • You may have been a "natural born welder" - I started out using a 220V AC/DC stick rig filling holes and cracks on the frame of an old, dirty, rusty, oily leaking pig of a fourteen wheel dump truck behind a house in the hot summer afternoon Phoenix, Arizona sun - ie, typical welding conditions (heh). My rod stuck constantly, I probably had heat stroke, I thought I would die from the welding fumes - but learn to weld I did, eventually, because I knew in the end it would be worth it, and it was. I guess I sho
    • I agree, get your engineering department or if you have a "shop" type of program get those welders and designers involved. If you want to get inventive talk to your art department. This isn't American Chopper or Monster Garage, but it could be just as much fun for the right designers.
    • No, no. You should always try to find a comercially available product before custom making one (unless it's for fun or for learning something yourself) Yes, we could all knit our own clothing and build our own houses, but specialization of labor is a basic principle of Western Civilization and ignoring it means wasting your time doing tasks it's cheaper to hire others to do. Why would anyone want to get custom-made equipment commissioned for such a clearly commercially-available product? Also, about that

    • I think this is an excellent idea. If you have a mechanical engineering department, ask a professor to initiate a class project to design and build what you need. AutoCAD should be available to the design students and there are sheet metal bending programs available for free (as evaluation-ware) on the net. Plastic construction is not really feasible for this "home-built" type of thing.

      I'd like a followup on how this project develops if the decision is made to build the carts. BTW, what does one look like?
  • Buy -one- of each of the top three candidates. Conduct a trial to determine which works best, and what features from the #2 and #3 you would also like.

    Now, find the local Vo-Tech and ask them if they would be interested in manufacturing a few custom carts to your specs.

  • InterMetro (Score:4, Informative)

    by TomSawyer ( 100674 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @08:12PM (#12640318) Homepage
    I guess they've changed their name to metro [metro.com], but they have modular commercial shelf systems capable of carrying 800 lbs. per shelf. To turn them into a cart just requires modular parts like big beefy wheels. I put together my entertainment center from their parts and had my fat ass relatives sit on them to test the weight claim. I'm very happy with them and I can always turn them into something else. They're chromed steel so I don't have worries of scratching them or corrosion. I did put solid wood panels on the shelves for looks and a more stable surface for my electronics but you might prefer the ventilation.
    • Heheh, InterMetro...for people who love their house to look like the stockrooms, kitchens and light storage rooms of the Oregon Zoo [oregonzoo.org].

      This is particularly amusing, since I used to work in retail before they privatized my department. That zoo has by coincidence a Jurassic Park-esque look to it and have enough of a sense of humor about it to occasionally play music from the movie soundtrack. But working around that shelving all day every day with the occasional Jurassic Park soundtrack music thrown in the m

    • When we filled the tables in our server room, we put everything on metro carts. The open wire shelves are good for both ventilation and tie-wrapping cables. I put about 50% more stuff in the room using these.

  • Go Anthro (Score:4, Informative)

    by DaRat ( 678130 ) * on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @08:16PM (#12640340)

    Anthro Corporation [anthro.com] has some of the best components to make A/V and general computer carts around. You can make a pretty pricey cart, but you can also get by with a reasonably priced cart. The best part is that you can configure the cart exactly the way that you need it. The carts are extremely sturdy and well built.

    Look out for their sales. The April sale was 35% off on phone orders

  • Check out Anthro. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Mark Imbriaco ( 133740 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @09:30PM (#12640852)

    Anthro [anthro.com] makes some excellent products that could probably be configured to meet your needs. I use an Anthro fit System Standard unit [anthro.com] as my primary desk, and I absolutely love it. I think their utility cart would probably suit you well. They also do quantity discounts [anthro.com] based on the dollar value of your order.

    Good luck.
  • My church / preschool makes them themselves from high quality plywood and hardware. They've outlasted plenty of commercial furniture.

  • SMARTdesks (Score:3, Informative)

    by capaz ( 458747 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @11:30PM (#12641634)

    We've used the lectern/podium units from SMARTdesks [smartdesks.com]. They cost $1000+, but were lockable and had lots of nice features and custom options (we had custom cut-outs for VCR's in the front doors).

    My main beef with them is that, though sturdier than some, they did still tend to break down (broken hinges, etc.) over time.

    One annoyance that we've had to deal with is that in order for these to be relatively movable in a classroom, we have to tether them to a wall panel with a sizable cable bundle (power, vga, VCR a/v, ethernet, etc.). Of course, now we would go with wi-fi instead of wired ethernet, but still can't get around the other cables. I sure would like to find a better way...

  • Not a dumb question (Score:3, Interesting)

    by greenlead ( 841089 ) on Thursday May 26, 2005 @01:18AM (#12642112) Journal
    This isn't a dumb question at all. A couple of months ago I was planning one of these out. I wanted a rackmounted computer/sound system for my church on a cart, so that I could move it anywhere in or out of the building, and still be setup quickly. I wanted to keep it closed, for better security. I also wanted to have a ventilation system, complete with a a temperature-controlled switch to turn on extra fans if the equipment gets too hot. I wanted to have a KVM so that someone could plug in a laptop if they needed to run the projector without having to know how everything in it works. Unfortunately, I lacked funding, so I never got to find out how my design would work.
  • Back in the day when scopes weighed 70 lbs+, Tektronix made carts that are built better than today's cars.

    Just look for a Tektronix Scopemobile cart. The older, the more metal it has.

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