Showing from one machine on another.

[mpe]

We have a visually impared student arriving next term.

They apparently won't be able to see the board easily.

Whilst they have been supplied with a laptop we need a method of sending whatever is on the teacher's machine to their laptop.

This needs to be under the control of the teacher.

Typically software either works the wrong way around, needing a connection to be initiated from the viewing end. or comes with complex/expensive licencing structures more designed for one "teacher" to take control of several student machines.

 

What's needed for this situation is for an arbitrary number of machines to be able to send to one machine. If several try to send in turn the student's machine should display the most recent sender.

[pete]

Does the kid also need to work on the laptop during the lesson? Say alt-tab between what's on the board and a word document or whatever? Or is it purely being used as a "magnifier"?

[LeMarchand]

Had the same thing needed at one of my schools. Not there @ present, but I think I used UltraVNC, set to start with Windows. Not exactly what you want, but it's free! Not had any problems reported with it, but I have a feeling that the student (and the teacher!) was happier using the board...

 

Of course, there was only one teacher for the pupil to connect to, so it made things fairly easy to set up.

 

iTalc may be worth looking at - let me know if it's any good!

Edited June 18, 2010 by LeMarchand
Typos

[pete]

Another thought would be to connect one of the vga outs on the back of the room(s) projector to a wireless sender and equip the kid's laptop with a receiver.

[mpe]

Another thought would be to connect one of the vga outs on the back of the room(s) projector to a wireless sender and equip the kid's laptop with a receiver.

 

Can you get these to take VGA, which is effectivly RGB and separate syncs, or do they expect composite video (YUV+composite sync)?

 

Also the only way I could see to make sure that the reciever would only pick up the transmitter in the same room would be to use IR rather than RF.

[LeMarchand]

Can you get these to take VGA, which is effectivly RGB and separate syncs, or do they expect composite video (YUV+composite sync)?

 

Also the only way I could see to make sure that the reciever would only pick up the transmitter in the same room would be to use IR rather than RF.

 

Maplins do VGA senders w. USB receivers that they say are best as line-of-sight, but they're £100 each...

 

Looking at it properly, they may only work the other way - sorry!

Edited June 18, 2010 by LeMarchand
Doh!

[mpe]

Does the kid also need to work on the laptop during the lesson? Say alt-tab between what's on the board and a word document or whatever? Or is it purely being used as a "magnifier"?

 

Probably best if they can't do anything else with the machine whilst the teacher is showing the whatever on the board. Then they can "switch off" the sending. If they forget to do this at the end of the lesson then they need to get "bumped" by the next teacher.

[mpe]

Had the same thing needed at one of my schools. Not there @ present, but I think I used UltraVNC, set to start with Windows. Not exactly what you want, but it's free! Not had any problems reported with it, but I have a feeling that the student (and the teacher!) was happier using the board...

 

Of course, there was only one teacher for the pupil to connect to, so it made things fairly easy to set up.

 

That's never going to happen in a secondary school

 

iTalc may be worth looking at - let me know if it's any good!

 

Looking at the manual it appears to do lots of things which arn't really much use to the task in hand.

[localzuk]

ABTutor control could potentially do what you want, but it is £199 per teacher workstation.

[mpe]

ABTutor control could potentially do what you want, but it is £199 per teacher workstation.

Which would equate to something like two and a half grand for something which MAY do the job. At this kind of price paying someone to alter VNC might well be cheaper. But I don't have any idea how to get in contact with Windows developers.

[Chillibear]

I'd just use TightVNC and set the input handling on the server (teacher) to block all remote input events. That way the student (client/viewer vnc) can't control the teacher's (server) computer, just watch. You could also have the client set in listen mode then the teacher can initiate the connection.

 

However automating the whole process might be a hassle - although there are tools to script things on Windows pretty easily. Looking at the iTALC software suggested by LeMarchand it would seem to do everything you want - probably built on top of the VNC source

 

Final thought would be to stream the teacher's PC output as a video. Plenty of choices to do that, although I always found Unreal (Unreal Media Server download) to be good, they do a DirectShow desktop capture driver to get the desktop view which could then be streamed to the client.

[mac_shinobi]

Am sure impero can achieve this ?

 

Impero - Features

 

Great price and supports a lot of stuff.

[SYNACK]

Here's an idea that is kind of different from the above but may work quite well. Install Windows Media Player Encoder on the teacher workstations and Windows Media Server Services on one of your servers. Set up a profile for the encoder that points the output stream at the server when an icon is clicked and put this on the teacher workstations. Setup the server to take an input stream from any of these clients ans rebroadcast it on a specific URL.

 

Lastly setup the laptop to point to this URL and load media player in full screen when the laptop is logged in.

[caffrey]

this what you need ? - not tried it myself TightProjector: Broadcast Screen Over the Network

[torledo]

Here's an idea that is kind of different from the above but may work quite well. Install Windows Media Player Encoder on the teacher workstations and Windows Media Server Services on one of your servers. Set up a profile for the encoder that points the output stream at the server when an icon is clicked and put this on the teacher workstations. Setup the server to take an input stream from any of these clients ans rebroadcast it on a specific URL.

 

Lastly setup the laptop to point to this URL and load media player in full screen when the laptop is logged in.

 

would you be using a directshow capture filter similar to the one as detailed in an above post for capturing/encoding what has happening on the desktop of the teacher workstation. sorry not familiar with how WME captures screen activity.

Edited June 18, 2010 by torledo

[ChrisH]

AB tutor costs go down depending on the amount you buy and you don't have to buy that many to start seeing a discount.

[SYNACK]

would you be using a directshow capture filter similar to the one as detailed in an above post for capturing/encoding what has happening on the desktop of the teacher workstation. sorry not familiar with how WME captures screen activity.

 

Yes something like that, it encodes what is on the screen to a asx type stream and would fire that up to the server for rebroadcasting out to howver many clients were 'tuned' into it. The use of the server just makes for a consistant endpoint for any clients to point to. It is all in the windows media streaming format. If you have used the screen recording feature on the Mimio software then it uses the same technology just pointed at a file rather than a server.

 

You're still looking at needing an alright dual core pc to handle the encode and a second or two delay in the video stream but you'd probably need a hardware solution for real time mirroring. I think that the laptop may actually be one of the limiting factors here as something like a 2.4ghz signal rebroadcaster and one of the portable security cammera monitering portable tvs that can tune into them may be a simpler solution.

[p858snake]

I would go with something like one of the classroom management tools such as Abtutor, Lanschool, iTalc, etc. Although they do provide more tools then needed the teacher(s) may find uses for them else where and might like the flexability they get (for example if they were also set up in say a computer lab)

 

* From memory Lanschool has a mode where you (the student) can select what teaching unit (aka teachers computer) you want to listen to which is handy if they want to change classrooms and such.

* Abtutor has a licensing scheme where you only pay for the teaching installs (and i believe if you talk to them they do have a USB setup for the teachers so they can move around) and a system where the more you buy it goes down as well. From memory they also have a feature where you can draw on the screen like in powerpoint (for example if they want to highlight something)

* iTalc from memory is powered by VNC and has a controller made up so its easier for the teachers to use and is free.

[torledo]

Yes something like that, it encodes what is on the screen to a asx type stream and would fire that up to the server for rebroadcasting out to howver many clients were 'tuned' into it. The use of the server just makes for a consistant endpoint for any clients to point to. It is all in the windows media streaming format. If you have used the screen recording feature on the Mimio software then it uses the same technology just pointed at a file rather than a server.

 

You're still looking at needing an alright dual core pc to handle the encode and a second or two delay in the video stream but you'd probably need a hardware solution for real time mirroring. I think that the laptop may actually be one of the limiting factors here as something like a 2.4ghz signal rebroadcaster and one of the portable security cammera monitering portable tvs that can tune into them may be a simpler solution.

 

that sounds like the ideal solution. although i'm sure those little security camera monitoring tv's don't come cheap. when you say a 2.4ghz signal rebroadcaster, are you thinking a generic AV sender. so you'd have vga to s-video/composite from the presentation pc to a sender and then a receiver unit connected to the s-video on a the portable ?

 

inspite of the tv cost probably still cheaper than an arbitrary number of licenses for classroom mgmt software teacher licenses. just sounds like the OP wants a software solution....but as you say a small delay would be inevitable. and there's still a certain amount of complexity.

[jsnetman]

Which would equate to something like two and a half grand for something which MAY do the job

No the £199 is for the teacher machine but includes unlimited clients and the tutor control can work from USB memory stick so is highly flexible.

[torledo]

No the £199 is for the teacher machine but includes unlimited clients and the tutor control can work from USB memory stick so is highly flexible.

 

i think the OP would need multiple teacher licenses, hence the K's in price. Well, atleast that's what i took it to mean, that the screen of an arbitrary number of teacher pc's would need to be displayed/broadcast.

[p858snake]

two and a half would by 20 teacher licenses (@ 125.00ea) based on their quote pages

[jsnetman]

i think the OP would need multiple teacher licenses, hence the K's in price

I might be off the mark here but would the teacher licence on the pupils laptop not fulfill the OP's requirement. The pupil can then look at any screen of any teacher for £199 as all the clients are free. From a security standpoint ABTutor is highly configurable in terms of what the pupil may do.

[mpe]

Here's an idea that is kind of different from the above but may work quite well. Install Windows Media Player Encoder on the teacher workstations and Windows Media Server Services on one of your servers. Set up a profile for the encoder that points the output stream at the server when an icon is clicked and put this on the teacher workstations. Setup the server to take an input stream from any of these clients ans rebroadcast it on a specific URL.

 

Presumably "Windows Media Server Services" requires some kind of Windows server. I don't have many of these available. Has anyone actually done this, if so what happens in the case of multiple "senders"?

 

Lastly setup the laptop to point to this URL and load media player in full screen when the laptop is logged in.

 

The obvious problems here are

a) the user can exit media player or easily make it display a different media.

b) AFAIK there is no way for media player to only go into full screen mode when something is being sent to it.

[mpe]

this what you need ? - not tried it myself TightProjector: Broadcast Screen Over the Network

 

I'll contact them. The obvious issue with it being UDP based is how it handles multiple senders.