Mix match of IWB's in school + Promethean Software

[Kyle]

One of the schools I visit has had some funding to put in a lot of Promethean boards in. They currently have a mix of Hitachi and Smartboards. The person in charge of the funding has put together a package which involves quite a lot of Promethean kit.

The school has been advised that all of their current boards (smart and Cambridge Hitachi) will work with the Promethean software?????? Is this true.

I have read about these Active Hubs that are liek a USB dongle that lets the staff laptop connect with the Actvie Vote and Active Expression but is laso supposed to let the Promethean hand writing software recognition work on none Promethean boards???

To be honest i don't know much about mix and match boards as most of the schools i visit are either Smart or Promethean.

Can some one in the know advise me on the above? Does the Prom software work on other boards?

[tjb]

We have 50+ Promethean IWBs at our school and I would be pretty sure that most of the Promethean software would work with other IWBs as they are just large tablets, although I haven't tested this theory! However you would be breaching the Promethean Software Licence Agreement with states that you can't install the software on any PC that is not connected to a Promethean IWB! This is a grey area too as two different suppliers have told us we can install the software on up to 5 non IWB connected PCs for each IWB we own. So the info from the suppliers seems to contradict the software agreement!

[andy]

Not sure about with the dongle, but without - you are going to get the "Hardware not detected" watermark - and as you mention - no handwriting recognition. Everything else should work I'd have thought. Hope so anyway - we are going to be in a similar position soon!!



Andy

[SYSMAN_MK]

The software is Activprimary and yes it is designed to work with any IWB.

As you said it comes with a USB add-on that allows hand writing recognition. but this is not needed for normal use.

[richard.thomas]

The Promethean software will work on any IWB. The license (well certainly what we have) allows you to have the software on as many computers as you want in the school but you're not allowed to use it on another board without prior written permission. Well at least thats what the promethean man told me when we have a nice ActivBoard 2 installed at one of my primary schools!

[steve]

What you need is the Activstudio Community Licence

This allows you to run the software on any number of PCs in the school.

For each non-promethean board you want to use handwriting recognition, voting and gesture tools within the software you'll also need an activhub at £50 each

[mortstar]

What you need is the Activstudio Community Licence

This allows you to run the software on any number of PCs in the school.

For each non-promethean board you want to use handwriting recognition, voting and gesture tools within the software you'll also need an activhub at £50 each

Any chance you could give me more information on how to get this to work?

We've just purchased the community licence and trying to get the ActivStudio working with some older Cambridge/Hitachi boards. What's the best way to get the Cambridge/Hitachi pen working with the ActivStudio software?

Many thanks for any help, as always!

[steve]

You'll need to install the Hitachi board drivers and the ActivStudio software.

Sorry can't be much more specific as we don't have any Hitachi boards.

[Kyle]

Where can i get the lastest drivers from for the Cambridge/Hitachi boards?
Is it a msi deployable and is it free?