For the last year or so I've been working from home one day a week, easily able to take part in meetings with colleagues thanks to Mozilla's marvelous, long-standing support of remote employees. Hanging out with some Twitch streamers at PAX West gave me a chance to pick up some great tips on how to improve my work-from-home video stream, and I pieced together a simple arrangement using an Elgato CamLink and my Sony a6000 mirrorless camera, with an old desktop microphone stand pressed into service as a mount positioned behind my monitor.

Fast forward to the present and, like nearly everyone else, I'm working from home every day. I decided it was time to upgrade my basic video streaming setup with something more complete and adjustable. Aaron Pareki's excellent post about upgrading your home video setup referenced Caleb Pike's YouTube video detailing a single-pole mount much like what I was looking for.

You should go watch Caleb's video to get the full idea, but the design is built using desktop monitor mounts and arms made by WALI Electric. While lots of similar mounting products exist a key feature of the WALI modular system is that all the arms and connectors can be disassembled using the hex wrench included with the gear. As Caleb's video illustrates, that lets you rearrange and repupose arms designed to hold computer monitors to work with camera ball heads, brackets and lights.

In my case I wanted one two-part arm on which to mount my camera so I could swing it through a wide range of positions side to side. A second, shorter arm could hold a simple LED-based fill light closer to the center position of the pole but still with some flexibility in angling illumination relative to the camera. The project proceeded in phases, given me an opportunity to experiment with arm disassembly and reassembly, overall positioning on my desk, and ways to best secure the camera and light.

Here's the final result close up so hopefully you can see how everything goes together:

Demand for work-from-home gear is particular high right now and the parts I ordered directly from WALI's web site often show as unavailable. Here's my parts list for reference:

• WALI M001 Single Monitor Desk Mount -- including the desk-top mounting clamp, single-height pole, and two-part monitor arm with cable clips and removable VESA monitor mount.
• WALI Single Fully Adjustable Arm - a second two-part monitor arm, with some handy cable attachment clips you'll want and a VESA monitor mount you won't need (but can easily remove with the included hex wrench). Out of stock at the time of this posting, but check both WALI and Amazon sites.
• WALI XL Pole for Mounting System - which replaces the single-height pole that comes with the desk mount kit with one twice as tall. You can't just stack two single-height poles atop each other and need the double (XL) pole. You'll have a single-height pole left over, which is avoidable if you can find the WALI Extra Tall mount in stock (alas, I couldn't). The separate XL pole is out of stock at the time of this posting, but check both WALI and Amazon sites.
• SIOTI mini ball-head camera mount - to allow easy aiming of the camera once its mounted on the end of the arm. It's sturdy and easily adjustable, but also inexpensive.
• Viltrox LED light panel, to provide fill lighting that I can easily adjust in both brightness and color temperature. Includes a flexible mounting bracket and AC power adapter.
• Star knobs that fit the standard camera tripod socket on the bottom of my Sony camera as well as the adjustable mount for the Viltrox fill light, and so can be used to secure them to the end of the arms. You'll need to cut these down with a hacksaw to be the right length for your gear and brackets, all of which in my case were less than the 2" length of these particular knobs. Knobs instead of bolts or screws make it easy to install and adjust the camera and light without needing any tools.

You likely will wnt aother components for your set-up, so I suggest browsing both the WALI Electric web site and Amazon.com. Look for the various combination kits as some include multiple arms, the double-height pole, and additional brackets that might prove useful.

As your assembly will almost certainly be different, rather than try providing assembly instructions I'll just suggest you lay everything out, take the monitor arms apart, and experiment with arm length and placement to best fit your setup. I do have a few tips, though:

• When you remove the VESA monitor mounts or any of the arm segments keep the black plastic inserts in place at the end of the arms so they close up the tubular arm frames. You'll see these plastic inserts at the end of each arm in the close-up photo above.
• Think about how you want the arms to pivot left and right given your desired camera and light placement, and how you might want to be able to adjust the arms. Obviously the arm clamps can be oriented a full 360 degrees around the vertical pole, but they can also be mounted right-side up or upside down to make it easier to get to the hex screw used to adjust arm position up and down the central pole. One of my arms is "upside down" so both hex adjustment screws are easily accessible from the front.
• Check range of motion of the arms before you finalize the installation. Depending on placement and how the arms pivot you may need a fair amount of clearance behind the central pole, so if your desk is right up against a wall you might not have as much space to swing arms, cameras, and lights as you'd like.
• Think about what's in the background behind you when you settle on arm and camera placement so you can control what other see when you're streaming.