mhundley Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 (edited) Hi Guys and Girls, I have been handed a TTS Easi-View visualiser installation CD and asked to put the software on every staff laptop. No problem I thought, i'll copy the installation MSi to the serve and off we go. But no, in their wisdom TTS have chosen to sell a cheap webcam on a stick and bundle it with software which only comes as an exe and which demands that the camera is connected at time of installation. Unfortunately the Aver+ software which is already installed on the laptops will not see the camera and the school are unlikely to buy more of these as the cheapest seems to come in at around two and a half times the price. I was wondering if anyone had managed to package this up as an MSI, and if they did could give me a few hints on how to actually do it. I would like to actually do it myself so I have the experience in case anything else of this type comes my way. I did notice there was a file extracted to %temp% which seems to list the deviceid of the usb camera, I was wondering if this could be edited to look for a device which exists in all of the laptops. I am fairly experienced in making and editing MSI's and due to the fact that the installation runs a dpinst to add some drivers I am not keen to just do a discover image as I have had major issues with discovers and driver packages before. Similarly I am not keen to do an AutoIT or startup script unless absolutely necessary as this will be the start of a slippery slope whereby apps are installed via one of many methods and no-one really knows how or why a particular type was chosen. Unfortunately appdeploy.com does not list the software so I could not get a start from there. Thanks in advance Marc Edit: Domain is 2K8R2 in 2003 functional mode and clients are XPSP3 Edited February 3, 2011 by mhundley Added Domain details
jamin100 Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 yup ive done this but nothing fancy. Just created the MSI using WININSTALLLE. Snapshot on a clean machine, installed the software, snapshoft after and then it compiled the MSI for me. I changed nothing. I have it deployed to staff laptops through group policy. The only ones I had trouble with is the laptops with built in webcams. 1
mhundley Posted February 8, 2011 Author Posted February 8, 2011 Jamin100, thanks for the advice, I have given it a go today and following a test deployment it doesnt appear to break anything, have rolled out to staff machines so hopefully this will be the end of it. It just annoys me that companies providing software/hardware for education fail to look beyond the great concept (which I do believe visualisers are) and pick the first/cheapest thing they can find. The software actually installs a systray icon which has a popup saying "Right Click On Me" after all the time ive spent training people not to follow instructions like that if they didnt instigate it beggars belief from an educational supplier. [/rant] Right onto something more entertaining, thanks again.
sparkeh Posted March 8, 2011 Posted March 8, 2011 I am having a real problem getting this to work satisfactorily on Vista. XP was ok except the tray icon never removing the red cross when the camera is plugged in. Made the Vista msi in many way (ie starting the first scan then plugging the camera in, plugging the camera in then starting the first scan, capturing the reboot, not capturing etc) but always have issue with the install. Everytime a user logs in they get dialog and Easi-View is configuring something. Any ideas as this is doing my nut in.
RobFuller Posted January 3, 2012 Posted January 3, 2012 Did anyone manage to find a way of capturing an msi or even commanding the exe in some way? Any help appreciated, Rob
plexer Posted January 3, 2012 Posted January 3, 2012 Could you use this to do it? Windows Installer Wrapper Wizard | AdminPost.com Ben
RobFuller Posted January 5, 2012 Posted January 5, 2012 Looks like that software isnt around anymore...
RobFuller Posted January 12, 2012 Posted January 12, 2012 Done it, ok well not exactly an MSI but I found how to script the install silently. Install the software on a machine with the camera attached, you need to be very quick because as soon as the desktop shortcut is shown, copy the directory C:\Program Files (x86)\USB2.0 UVC WebCam\ (change appropriate drive letters, program files directory) to somewhere safe, desktop will do. I found if you waited two long, the driver installers get deleted! Within that directory you'll have the camera Easi-View software (Easi-View.exe) and then below that another folder called DriverPackage, within here are two driver installers called DPInst32.exe and DPInst64.exe. These two executables will install the drivers needed for the camera, what we done was copy using a script the folder back into program files on each machine and then run the DPInst64.exe to install the drivers, that’s it! The software will run nice without being installed and bonus you lose that stupid red cross program in the taskbar!! Hope that’s of help to anyone, Rob 1
Chrish5 Posted October 14, 2014 Posted October 14, 2014 First of all sorry for dragging up such an old thread but does anyone have a copy of the Easi-View software they could send to me? A teacher has just presented me with one of these from a bygone era (obviously without the installation cd) and expects me to make it work. I've spoken to someone at TTS who said they'd send me a link but that has yet to come to fruition so thought I would try here.
sted Posted October 14, 2014 Posted October 14, 2014 I have a version of it on my pendrive its ~ 16mb zipped up if you want me to try and email it 1
LeMarchand Posted October 14, 2014 Posted October 14, 2014 TTS Easi-View Primary Visualiser EL00052 - buy at Primary ICT for Primary Schools & Education Scroll down; not sure if that's the whole thing or just an update, but IIRC it's the whole thing. 1
Chrish5 Posted October 14, 2014 Posted October 14, 2014 Thanks both, yes the update looks like the full package, annoyingly Google led me to that site this morning but to a different visualiser without the software links.
hallb15 Posted October 14, 2014 Posted October 14, 2014 Good luck - we have those in school and they are pretty awful. They serve a purpose for some teachers, but are nothing more than a webcam on a stick with a poor driver implementation that requires you to have the device plugged in before you can successfully install them.
sted Posted October 14, 2014 Posted October 14, 2014 Good luck - we have those in school and they are pretty awful. They serve a purpose for some teachers, but are nothing more than a webcam on a stick with a poor driver implementation that requires you to have the device plugged in before you can successfully install them. let me quess some randomly depending on what pc they are plugged into wont focus?
Chrish5 Posted October 14, 2014 Posted October 14, 2014 I enjoyed reading the Amazon reviews earlier, sounded very similar to your comment hallb. I'm guessing this camera on a stick has been in a cupboard for a while for a reason but this teacher came across it and would like to use it, seems to be working 'ok' at the moment.
hallb15 Posted October 14, 2014 Posted October 14, 2014 Ha - not just ours then Why is it that TTS stuff is liked by teachers and hated by techs?
hallb15 Posted October 14, 2014 Posted October 14, 2014 I enjoyed reading the Amazon reviews earlier, sounded very similar to your comment hallb. I'm guessing this camera on a stick has been in a cupboard for a while for a reason but this teacher came across it and would like to use it, seems to be working 'ok' at the moment. Just one, used by one teacher, on one PC is fine. Wait 'til a different teacher logs into the same PC and see what happens! One of our teachers uses his as a USB desk lamp and its not even very good at that either
Dan_ATR Posted February 3, 2015 Posted February 3, 2015 Im after help with this software too. I need to deploy it as an MSI Help...
ellsandell Posted February 3, 2015 Posted February 3, 2015 I think when we did it for a couple of departments - we had to do it manually as it wouldn't install without the device plugged in? (havent read the full thread btw )
Dan_ATR Posted February 3, 2015 Posted February 3, 2015 This might be of interest... https://www.ergo.co.uk/document/webdocument.asp?Document=DPU3379 Iv emailed them to see if they have an MSI.
witch Posted February 3, 2015 Posted February 3, 2015 I asked before and got nowhere. Had to do them manually with device plugged in
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