Hello,
Steve, I would really like to know what you have in mind, because I confess
I don't understand all the details. You're saying that you have a low
budget for equipment and thus you don't want to set up a fixed installation
in the classrooms, but at the same time you are willing to spend almost
$2000 in a single transceiver.
I'm guessing that you'll still need a camera and a computer to send the
video stream to. You still need to connect the teacher's pc to get the VGA
feed, which I don't know how you want to accomplish, and also how you're
going to get the audio feed. Are you installing cameras in every classroom,
or are you using a mobile camera, too? What about the audio set up?
I can tell you that we are spending ca. €3000 in Vigo to equip one
classroom, and even though this is a high figure, it includes:
- An i7-based computer, with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of HD in a RAID-1, for
redundancy
- Please note that this computer is highly over-sized for a simple
capture unit, but we are using this computers at night as Matterhorn
workers. We could easily use much cheaper i3 computers if we were to use
them as capturers only.
- The Epiphan VGA2PCI framegrabber
- An HD Logitech c910 webcam
- A Behringer sound board
- A wearable Revolabs Solo microphone
- A set of two fixed stereo microphones, to work as backup
- An audio gate to control the microphone gain
- A tactile screen
- A VGA splitter
- All the cables and adapters needed for the installation
All that installed in the classroom in a non-obstructive way and ready to
use.
You can see that we are not installing the cheapest equipment and that we
could do with less (less powerful computers, no microphone array at all,
cheaper frame grabber and/or microphones...), so the price could be much
lower than that. The screen is required because we use Galicaster as our
reference capture agent, but you could spare the screen if you are using
the official Matterhorn Capture Agents. And still, all this stuff is
roughly half as much the cost of a single Cube.
As an alternative, you could think of having a pre-installation for audio
and video, so that all the cables are installed and conveniently "hidden"
from the public, and you'd only have to plug the VGA, audio, etc. from some
panel next to the teacher's desk. But, again, it depends largely on what is
your intended setup, if there are fixed cameras in each classroom, etc.
Re. the Galicaster, I'd like to say:
1. Olav, thanks for testing and using it. Making something useful for
ourselves, but also for others, was our final goal, and seeing people is
happy with it makes us proud.
2. You *can* manage Galicaster remotely via VNC. We currently manage all
our Galicaster equipments in such a way. Configuring Ubuntu for providing a
VNC signal without a physical screen attached may be a bit tricky, though,
but it can be done and it works perfectly.
3. That RTP feature seems very interesting. If you want to share your
developments or concerns regarding that, we are more than happy to hear
them and even contribute to get those functionality on board! There is a
mail list for Galicaster users [1] and you are welcome to subscribe and
share your experiences.
I'm willing to hear Stephen's comments on their "ideal" setup, because this
kind of discussions are good for adopters to make better decisions re.
their classroom equipment.
Best regards
Rubén
2012/3/27 Olav Bringedal <[email protected]>
> On 2012-03-22 16:47, Dr Leslaw Zieleznik wrote:
>
>> Steve,
>>
>> This is an interesting concept, but:
>>
>> 1. in my opinion the cost just for the transmitter is quite high
>> ($1690-$1990)
>> 2. you still need to run some wire between the camera/microphone and the
>> device
>> 3. the question is where you will keep your recordings? on the
>> decoder/receiver which will add another $1600-$1900 to the cost
>> 4. will you have access to recordings on the receiver, such that in a
>> case of lost connection with the core (or missed transmission) this can be
>> recovered.
>>
>>
> I think this might be an interesting product for capturing a screen
> together with an IP-camera. We UiB have looked into solutions where we can
> depend less on a stationary PC in the class room, and rather have a
> virtualised agent.
>
> We have seen that the Galicaster agent is much easier to configure for rtp
> streams than the native MH agent. We are currently working with two
> scenarios:
>
> 1: have a device (either epiphan vgabroadcaster or the epiphan MCD)
> capture the screen and stream it to rtp. It is here the Tcube can be a
> replacement. An ip-camera does the same. Then a galicaster agent takes
> these streams as an agent. The drawback here is that the output for the
> galicaster is native, and without a pc in the room, no feedback is provided
> for the lecturer. If galicaster had a web interface we would probably go
> for that right away.
>
> 2. Get the MCD to work and accept the (less than optimal) quality of the
> s-video input. We see that the firmware on the MCD is also quite buggy, and
> are very unsure if it is production worthy.
>
>
> In my only few months experience with the MH system, the best solution is
>> to have an autonomous capture device, permanently placed in the lecture
>> room.
>> And so in the case of any problem, recordings can always be uploaded at
>> any time 'by hand' to the core.
>>
>> You would probably be better of if you design a laptop based capture
>> device, but then there is unavoidable hazard when moving laptop around and
>> making every single time connections to the network and to video/audio
>> devices.
>> We did use such idea in the past with MiniMac based Podcast Capture
>> portable device, which we found very unpractical.
>>
>> Anyway, an interesting concept and I wonder what other peoples will say?
>>
>> Best,
>> Leslaw
>>
>>
> --
>
> Olav Bringedal
>
> Seksjon for integrasjon og applikasjonsutvikling
> IT-Avdelingen UIB
>
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