Car Show HQ runs on the phone in your pocket. Nothing else is required. But a show day goes quicker with a few things on the table: a card reader, a tablet on a stand, power that lasts until the trophies. Gear and services is our list of those things, plus the people a show books, and it lives inside Manage where you set the show up. The September update left it out on purpose, because it deserved its own post.
Why a list at all
A first-time organizer asks the same three questions every year: which tablet, which card reader, how do I keep it all charged. We answered them once, in the order you set the table up, and put the answers under a Gear and services tab in Manage.
Two things to know before you read it. We only list what we would use: every item is one we have run a show with or would put on our own table, and there is no vendor paying to be on the list. And some links pay us. The product links are affiliate links, most of them Amazon, and when you buy through one Car Show HQ may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It says so at the top of the page, and Amazon’s own sentence is there because their program requires it.
Two tabs of gear
CSHQ Gear: for your check-in table and voting
This tab is the gear that makes the platform quicker on the day. Card readers that turn the registration tablet into a checkout, and a pocket-size one for the gate; for a show that takes payments through Square, the Square Stand and Square Handheld are the ones that work with the kiosk. The tablet the kiosk and the voting station run on, a locking floor stand, and an anti-glare protector, because a glossy screen is unreadable by ten in the morning. Power: a station big enough to run a table of tablets all day, an outdoor power strip, a power bank for the laptop. A mobile hotspot, because without a connection the kiosk is a very nice clipboard. And a screen and a stand for the live leaderboard and the giant voting QR code.
General Show Gear: for the show itself
None of it is about software. Shade and seating. A display easel for the voting code at eye height. The chisel-tip marker that writes car numbers readable across a hood. A locking cash box and a cash apron for the gate volunteer taking money from car windows. A portable PA for announcements and the ceremony, and walkie-talkies so nobody walks a message from the gate to the trophy tent.
Each item says why. Not a spec sheet: one line on what it does at a car show and a short note on why we picked it over the alternatives. Prices are not on the page, because they change too often to print; the link takes you to the current one.
Services: the people a show books
The Services tab is for vendors, not products: sound, trophies, tents, food. Every name on it comes from an organizer who used them and told us, and every listing says which states the vendor works in, so you know before you call whether they will come to you. The tab opens on your show’s state and lets you look at others.
There is a form on the tab for exactly that: a DJ who ran the ceremony, a trophy shop that delivered on time, a tent company that showed up at six. We review recommendations by hand and add the ones that check out. The list is new and grows one show at a time, so if you know who ran your show well, tell us.
Vendor links go to the vendor’s own website. Nobody pays to be listed, and nothing on that tab is an affiliate link.
Where it shows up
In Manage, under Gear and services, as three tabs: CSHQ Gear, General Show Gear, Services. And next to the setting it belongs with: a small card on the Payments page when you are thinking about a card reader for the kiosk, and one on Show day tools when you are setting up the tablets. Three items each, the ones that matter there, with a link to the full list. The same list is public in our docs at Gear and services, for anyone planning a show before they have an account.
What we count, and what we do not
We count clicks per item and per organization. That tells us which things organizers actually want and which we should drop. It does not tell us who clicked; there is no per-person tracking on any of it.
Nothing on the list is required
The platform runs on the phone in your pocket. This is the table we set up when we run a show ourselves, and now it is the table you can set up too. If you have not set up the show itself yet, start there; the gear can wait until the entries are coming in.
