All posts by Fermin Romero

SUNY Geneseo’s Synchronous Video Conference Classroom

Cool Builds,

Recently, SUNY Geneseo was tasked to renovate an existing classroom with equipment for web based video conferencing in the Summer of 2017.

Specifically there would be Foreign Language classes shared between Brockport, MCC and Geneseo (as part of the Critical Language Consortium). MCC had Pro licensing for Zoom, and the first version of the equipment list was based on the “recommended hardware” page on the Zoom web site.

Here is an equipment list for what we installed to add the “Zoom” functionality (this room already had a projector and control system in place):

HP Micro PC $700.00

Sharp 20 inch Touch Screen Monitor $634.00

Logitech Wireless Combo Keyboard $33.00

Logitech Connect Conference Camera $499.00

Shure Lavalier Wireless Microphone $295.00

Shure MX202W/C Hanging Microphone (2) $384.00

Tascam US 4×4Â 4 Input USB Audio Mixer $183.00

Total= $2728.00

The touch screen monitor was selected as the other sites had SmartTech Smart Boards installed in their rooms, and the organizers wanted to have similar capabilities at each campus. We get asked about the Node chairs and Thread electric distribution system a lot. Those are Steelcase products, and was far & away the most expensive part of this installation. That amounted to over $19000.00 spent for this $35000 project! If I had to do this again, I would use a different conference camera. The Logitech Connect is not easily point-able, and is better suited for individual use (not in a classroom setting).

Hands on with the Logitech Meetup

Members, What's On Your Bench,

We installed this Logitech camera in two of our conference rooms and found it to be generally pretty fantastic. Included are a handful of photos to show its quality, positioning, and capabilities. Of course I can’t show everything with a photo (like its microphone and control options) so I’ll do my best to do it justice with words. The camera can be mounted on the top or bottom of the TV with the simple mounting kit available for it. We placed ours on top of the camera as such:

It gives a complete view of the conference room and records in a 1920×1080 resolution. The image is clear and concise, which can be seen from the following two photos:

Clearly the top photo was taken from my phone, but the second one was a direct screen capture from the camera itself. In the second picture you can see a water bottle in the center of the table, which I’ll use to show the zoom capabilities in the following photo:

So, not only does it have enough zoom to get that much closer to the bottle, the quality doesn’t suffer much, and it has control options to aim the camera where it needs to be, with a full range that could reach nearly every point in the room, all of which is controlled with this remote:

The remote is easy to use and controls every aspect of the camera, including the built in microphone and speakers. The remote allows for camera position presets to be programmed to the two bottom buttons, but can always be returned to its initial position by hitting the Home button. The microphone can pick up speech from at least 25 feet, and the speakers are noise cancelling so there will never be an echo. Frankly I was amazed at two things from this device:

1. The overall quality of every part of it; the sturdiness, the video and sound quality, the peripherals, all of it is top notch.

2. How easy it is to use. Setup is quick and easy, and all of the controls are intuitive and linear. There’s no hassle in making it work with Zoom or Skype.