Outdoor movie theater: a digital projector ceiling mount

In preparation for warm spring weather and long summer nights I am already gearing up my outdoors installations, in particular, a video projector will be handy to screen some movies.
It will be working together with a Miracast Wifi display, so it can show streams from practically any device.

The projector is a fairly lightweight model, because I only desire an about 150 cm wide screen.

There are various commercial ceiling mounts, but they all seem about flimsy and inaccurate to adjust. So I quickly fabricated a precision-adjustable mount.

First, a metal plate was affixed the the projector, with a standard UNC 1/4″-20 screw. It is about 10 mm thick hard aluminum, just a piece of leftover scrap (that’s why there are various holes in it).

On the projector side, a 1 mm NBR rubber plate is used to avoid movement and scratches.

The adjustment uses three M6 screws, 1 mm pitch will allow very precision adjustment by Allen key.

For the ceiling side, we use an 18 mm thick piece of plywood, and a M10 bolt. Surely, a longer bolt, rod or pipe could be used depending on the needed distance and rigidity. For the current setup, the M10 bolt is plenty rigid enough.

There are three springs (stainless) to keep the holding plate – mounting plate system tensioned so that the adjustment screws can work precisely.

Still, we need to get a suitable projection screen, and some speaker.

But already now looking forward to various summer movie screenings.

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