Month: March 2021

Logitech Rightsight

Which camera is right for your conference room

March 31, 2021 /

There are a lot of factors that go into choosing the right camera (or cameras) setup for your conference room. One of the most common factors is the table.

Table Shape

The most common table I run into is the rectangle.

Rectangular table for 16

Setups like this can be captured from a single camera. Longer tables like the one in the picture would need a pan/tilt/zoom (ptz) camera mostly for the optical zoom aspect. Another technology that would help with this setup is auto framing. Auto framing uses artificial intelligence to see where people are sitting at the table and will zoom in to frame them.

Auto Frame Off
Auto Frame On

The U

This is one I sometimes run into for boardrooms. the U shaped table spreads people out while still allowing them to see each other.

While one camera set in the middle of the room can capture the entire space you will either need somebody driving it or leave it zoomed all the way out. There are two better options:

Camera Tracking

Cisco Speaker Track

The first one is through camera tracking. There are several manufacturers making camera tracking tech but the better ones for this type of setup use two cameras. One is focused on the active speaker and the other is looking for the next speaker. The benefit of this is when the system switches from one speaker to the other you don’t see the refocusing as the other camera has already found the speaker and zoomed into them before switching over.

Triggers

U with discussion system

While camera tracking generally uses sound to determine who to focus on you can also use triggers like a mic being unmuted. Large U shaped setups also lend themselves to discussion systems, mics with built in speakers for each seat at the table. With multiple cameras covering the room the view is determined by which microphones are unmuted. Ideally the system will be setup to only allow a small number of mics to be active at any one time.

This table has me triggered!

Vaddio makes a reliable trigger called the StepVIEW that works great in classroom settings. Its a rubberized mat that triggers a camera preset when stepped on. Place one at the podium and the camera will automatically zoom into the teacher standing at the lectern. When they step off the mat the camera zooms out to a wider view. There are a lot of creative uses for triggers.

Everybody is turning on their camera these days, make sure you have the right one!

You need a cable path to your conference table.

March 16, 2021 /

Often one of the first questions I have on a site visit is ‘what’s the cable path to your table’. The move to bring video and audio conferencing to more spaces is creating a need to put more equipment on the table. Things like microphones, control surfaces, video inputs and even power all require wires. Wire paths generally go from the table to the walls where they can find their way to the ceiling for speakers, behind displays or other parts of the room for cameras.

In new construction customers can have holes poked through the floor or trenches cut into the slab.

Poke Through
Trench

Unfortunately in existing rooms it can be very costly to create a poke through or a trench. So how do you bring cables to the table without creating a trip hazard. The simplest (though not recommend) way is to tape them down.

Cable-Path tape

The trip hazard is fixed and the new tape lets everybody know where your cable path is! Not only is this an ugly solution it also does nothing to protect your cables. It will only take a couple roll overs from a conference room chair to kill the cables under this tape.

My go to solution for these situations is Connectrac. They make a terrific floor raceway that can either go over the carpet or under it if your lucky enough to be in a room where they are replacing the flooring. There are built in channels allowing us to run both power and low voltage cabling through it.

cross section of Connectrac over carpet solution

The over carpet raceway is about 10″ wide and ADA compliant. You can walk and run chairs over it all day long and the cables will remain protected. If your working in a a space where they are putting down new floors they make one that can go under the carpet as well, though its really more IN the carpet.

This solution creates a gentle slope with the raceway built into the floor and the top cap slides off to give you access to the wirepath. It does require coordination between us and the flooring installer but the finished product is clean, safe and secure.

Off to the next project!

Zoom Rooms added benefit: Wireless presenting

March 1, 2021 /

A lot of my customers have brought Zoom into their enterprise as a web conferencing option. Its easy to use and priced fairly so its not surprising to me. Where I have been surprised though is how the Zoom Room app has changed how people use their conference rooms for in person meetings. Specifically around video presentations.

I’ll use a recent project with Swisher International as an example. We were tasked with putting in some new conference spaces.

Obligatory before picture

Based on their old standard that would have involved a Cisco codec, Mersive wireless and an HDMI connection at the table. Since switching to Zoom I figured we would replace the Cisco codec with a Zoom Room PC and everything else would be the same. WRONG. What Swisher had figured out was in spaces where they deployed a Zoom Room solution their users were presenting locally through Zooms wireless screen share option.

Ok, so no Mersive. Got it, everything else stays the same. WRONG AGAIN! Because of how how well Zooms wireless sharing worked they ditched the HDMI too. And taking the HDMI out also takes some of the backend video switching equipment out. No extenders, no cable runs, no conduit.

Rooms are now simplified from:

to

Of course you still have microphones and cameras to work with but just focusing on the video presentation portion it really does simplify things. Users also have the same experience in either local meetings or Zoom calls as it comes to presenting video.

Zoom Rooms also have the ability to ultrasonically detect a PC running their app and enable one touch sharing. Walk in, run Zoom, share screen. It really is hard to beat that kind of simplicity! Throw in some ceiling microphones and you end up with a super clean looking meeting room.

We used Sennheiser Teamconnect mics in this room. You can hardly see them but if you look close two of the ceiling tiles have an X on them. I’ll talk more about microphone arrays in an upcoming blog post.

On to the next project!

© 2024 904AV

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑