outfit classroom for webconferencing

[mlapushin]

So, topic says it all. We are considering going 'hybrid' with some students at home zooming in, some at school. What is the best way to make this happen that is cost-effective. We have about 50 classrooms.

 

Current plan:

 

Audio/Video: Logitech Conference Cam BCC950

External Monitor 23in so teacher can easily see kids.

Independent laptop to handle zoom session. Probably Dell 6420 that we have.

Originally, I thought to use a gopro with a mount since their pic quality is great. However, GoPro's don't have USB video, just HDMI and that may introduce some exciting complications. I'd have to get an hdmi capture USB and I'd be worried about the laptop's ability to handle that, in addition to zoom. We are a highschool and we'll have a student in each classroom that'll be in charge of moving the camera, etc...

 

Any advice is appreciated. Naturally, this is a completely non-professional set up and I realize there are vendors that can outfit classrooms for these things. Regardless, just trying to make something that is easily do-able for now.

 

Thanks y'all

[3s-gtech]

Currently, we have these sessions starting for sixth form.

 

The BCC950 is as good as you’ll get for the money, IME. We have loads. They don’t like being dropped, mind.

 

You need to work put how to pipe any projector output straight to the other end. Easy enough if it’s all running through Teams on one PC - the teacher just shares the presentation. Not sure if it can easily PiP but that would be necessary really, for any visual stuff like a whiteboard (I’d encourage inking onto the presentation though).

 

Sending the output of a projector through the camera stream is absolutely not going to work. I saw today just how awful that can look, and I’ll be making sure we don’t do that ourselves.

[dhicks]

Originally, I thought to use a gopro with a mount since their pic quality is great. However, GoPro's don't have USB video, just HDMI

 

It might be worth trying the new GoPro Hero 9 - seemingly both that and the Hero 8 haver a "USB webcam" mode, although it seems like you need a Mac or Windows driver of some kind, you can't just plug a GoPro in and have it discovored as a generic USB device. I'm not sure how well the new GoPro works when run of external power / batteries - they've tended to get quite hot when I've tried that in the past, although they might be better now.

 

I'm planning to try an existing low-end Panasonic camcorder with HDMI out and a cheap HDMI-to-USB converter. If that works out, that'll be about £200 for the hardware - I think we have the equivilent of the Panasonic HC-V260, which can be powered via 5v external output from a USB battery pack, so you can the camera up on a tripod or mic stand with no external power cables needed. If you have someone available per class to point the camera, a fluid head would be good for camera positioning.

 

If you can afford a bit more (around £750 in the UK), we have one Logitech PTZ Pro, which does plug in as a generic USB camera and has a remote for pan, tilt, zoom (10x optical zoom, I think). It can be ceiling-mounted, and you can set up pre-recorded angles, so you can have it set up to point at the teacher's desk with them seated, at the whiteboard zoomed in to show content, then maybe zoomed out to show a table for demonstrations or similar.

[dhicks]

Sending the output of a projector through the camera stream is absolutely not going to work. I saw today just how awful that can look, and I’ll be making sure we don’t do that ourselves.

 

Good to know - is this someone trying to take an HDMI output from a projector into a HDMI capture card / dongle of some sort?