Web based video conferencing was designed to be easy. Turn on the laptop or pick up the smartphone, make sure there is internet access, open the calendar app, go to the calendar event, and click the “Join Meeting” button. The device starts up the needed application, asks you what camera and audio devices you are using, and just like that, the meeting starts up with audio and video. The audio, video, and even the content intended to be shared at the meeting is integrated and accessible by a single device. As discussed in previous installations of this article, in larger.

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Back in my early days of college there would be those classes that were requirements for all the freshmen. You would inevitably find yourself in a big hall of perhaps a hundred other students. In those days (and I am dating myself here) you were straining to hear a professor who had no microphone. Fortunately, that scenario is mostly a thing of the past. Lecture halls have, for the most part, microphones and speakers to help the teachers convey their message more clearly. What is a newer phenomenon is that not all class attendees are there in person. The proliferation.

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In your typical online meeting, you sit down in front of an open laptop. The camera and a microphone are pretty close and pointed right at you. In fact, it’s about the best setup you can get – the other folks in the meeting can see and hear you fairly well. Now imagine setting that laptop at the end of long board room table or, even worse, at the front of a training room and trying to see and hear everyone in the room from just that little built-in microphone and camera. Anyone watching remotely would quickly get frustrated trying.

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So, you’ve got a camera (or multiple), maybe some presentation inputs and a data link between your locations. Now, you’ve got to get this information up for viewing. There are myriad display options for flat panel monitors and projection systems, but which one suits your environment? That’s a loaded question! There are lots of things to consider when choosing the right display technology for your project. Room Size: Room size drives the overall display size. The viewers in the room will need to be able to view the content (whether local or far-end) comfortably. For an example, a ‘huddle room’.

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It is always a fun experience to stand on a large hillside or canyon and yell a single word at the top of your voice to hear it come back to you a second later. We call this an echo, but what is really happening? Sound travels, or propagates, through air at about 340 meters per second (1115 feet per second). If you are yelling toward an object that is about 500 feet away and the surface is hard enough to reflect the sound back to you, you will hear it about a second after you initially yelled. Understanding this.

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Over the last year most of us have become quite accustomed to attending online meetings with video. Usually these have involved multiple attendees signing in on their devices and using the device’s built-in camera. This type of video conferencing system requires virtually no control of the camera by the user. Many of us have also attended other streaming events where there were multiple cameras in operation, such as church services or large conferences. The systems that handle this type of video control and switching are vastly more complicated than what we have experienced on our home systems in many ways..

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For the those working remotely, everything you need to accomplish your Zoom/Teams/Google meetings is right there on your laptop. Microphones, speakers, camera –it’s all right there. Sure, occasionally you have to deal with noisy lawn mowers, barking dogs or some other outside interference, so you go get yourself a headset and you are good to go. But people are starting to get back to conference rooms, board rooms and training rooms. In these types of spaces all of the pieces that make the conferencing system work are separated by some distance. You have a camera mounted above a display on.

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Most of us listen to some sort of media in our vehicle. It could be broadcast radio, your favorite Podcast, or your own mix of eclectic music. As you start driving down your neighborhood street, you are listening at a fairly, moderate level but as you enter the highway toward your destination, you notice you are not able to make out what is being said anymore so you turn up the volume. As you get to your destination, you slow down and now it to seems too loud. As the ambient noise level goes up, intelligibility goes down. To compensate,.

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We live in an age where video conferencing is a fact of life for work, school, or even just keeping in touch with family and friends. Although many of us are working from home, there are many businesses that have on site staff that rely on video conferencing from larger sized conference or board rooms, often to those very people working remotely. As the cost of web-based conferencing has plummeted this type of system has become ubiquitous. But trying to make a system designed for your laptop work in a big room poses many challenges. In this series we will.

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