Back about two years ago when we were fully in the swing of installing projectors in our classrooms, I had to come up with a scheme for getting wall plates in for the VGA cables that connect projectors and laptops. Up until now all that has been available or easy to find has been a PDL or HPM plastic wallplate that can have a butchered plug screwed to it (see the series of articles here: parts 1, 2, 3, 4). There are some other brands of wallplate becoming available with different combinations of VGA adaptor and other connectors, but they are still hard to find, and some of them require the cable to be connected as bare wire ends (which is very fiddly to do with a wallplate, because you need some way of securing the cable to the plate to stop from breaking the wires off).
Switchcraft is a US manufacturer well known in the professional audio industry for their high quality connectors (XLR and others) and their approach to this market has been to develop the EH Series, which is a range of different types of audio, video and data connectors. Most of the audio/video connectors are of the feedthrough type, which is designed to be connected with a plug on both sides. They are very easy to install like this because there is no need to strip and solder wires onto terminals. As we prefer to install VGA cables that already have plugs fitted, the feedthrough suits our requirements perfectly as we just need to screw the plug directly onto the feedthrough and install it into a wall plate. The EH Series are particularly notable in that they are designed to fit within the profile of a standard panel mount XLR connector, and thus the inserts will fit into a wide existing range of panels already manufactured for the professional audio industry. Switchcraft product is now handled in New Zealand by Jansen Professional Audio, who can also supply the various panels and have recently begun to bring in small quantities of EH Series connectors; if there is not one listed on their website that you want, they may be able to order in other types. For a wall mount scenario have a look at this type of plate which is one of an extensive range they carry to handle various different situations. Jansen give substantial discounts to schools so these products are well worth looking into, particularly for control rooms and other situations where you may want to install these connectors into panels with other types.
