Working from home is becoming a norm due to COVID. Not surprisingly, proper home office setup is becoming trendy. I have watched a lot of videos on Youtube regarding desk setup. It feels like I shall write down my setup as well, for future reference.
Because I am renting in HongKong in a fully furnished flat, there is very little I can do about the desk without negotiating with my landlord. So, I kept the desk as it is and try to fit everything into it:
My current setup has three screens:
- 27inch Sumsung HD monitor I bought in 2016. It is used as my main monitor
- Dell 2518D I bought in 2019 paid by my employer for COVID home office setup. It is set to vertical on the right
- ASUS Zenscreen MB16AC I bought in 2018 when I needed to do some coding on the run
The three monitors are plugged into Intel NUC11 on the left via HDMI, Mini DisplayPort and USB Type-C respectively. The main monitor also connects to a hdmi hub to allow me to use it for PS4 and MyTV Super.
I have two keyboards connected. The one below is an Ergodox EZ split keyboard with brown switch. The one on the top is a Logitech K600. the former is wired and the later is connected via bluetooth. I normally use the Ergodox keyboard but when I connect a second computer (Raspberry Pi or Jetson Nano) to my main monitor, I use the K600 so I don’t need to unplug/replug the cables. That is where K600’s touchpad helps to reduce the need for an extra mouse. I also use K600 for a little bit of gaming when function keys are required. As my custom layout for Ergodox EZ doesn’t have them mapped.
For mouse, I have a Logitech MX vertical and an Apple Magic Trackpad. I always enjoyed Mac’s trackpad when using my macbook. It is so good to find out that I could use it for Windows with this open source driver. It doesn’t support bluetooth, so one more cable is required, but that is fine for me.
I have Logitech C925 for Zoom and Wechat video. Next to the webcam is a screen bar for lighting. I don’t use it that much though. I have an old Creative D200 bluetooth speaker behind the screen which is also connected to the main monitor via cables. This allows my PS4 and MyTV super to output audio as well. When I listen to serious music, like classic music, instead of D200, I use the Creative Sound Blaster E5 with my headset, which is Denon AH-MM400.
I enjoyed this 3 screen setup, which is a lot of spaces but also quite compact at the same time. The main monitor is only HD, which is a little bit lacking in today’s eye, especially when the vertical monitor is 2K. Having a NUC really helps to reduce the footprint as well compared to a full PC, without much compromise on performance. Although given how hot HongKong is during the summer, I added two fans on each side of the NUC to help reducing the heat, even though the room is usually with AC turned on. I would like a better speaker for music, but given the space left, it is hard to find a good fit.
The cable management is quite a bit of mess. But I just ignore it for now. I added a 16 port USB hub recently, which helps to reduce the number of cables to NUC, but I shall really spend more time to clean up the cables.
I had a lot of these stuff pre-COVID. The main additions are webcam, vertical monitor and the wireless keyboard. In addition, I have also upgraded my wireless router from a cheap TP link one to ASUS AC68U, so I have faster wifi connection. One thing would really be nice is to have a wired connection from the router in living room to here. But that is too much a change I need to talk to landlord if I want to have the cables in the wall, or too much of a hazard if I just put the cable on the floor.
Along with the wireless router, there is also a Raspberry Pi 4 connected to ORICO 2 bay hard drive enclosure running plex. As HongKong summer is really hot and living room is usually without AC, I had 2 more fans there to provide extra airflow.
If I had more space, I would prefer to have the second monitor horizontal instead of vertical. This is because when I use the main monitor for something else, the vertical monitor doesn’t really work as a primary monitor as a lot of applications just don’t scale properly or look weird.
As a final note, I think I shall stop buying more stuff as I have more than enough. But …
Last modified on 2021-07-22