steveg

That sounds like it may be the wrong console cable for that switch - I believe the hp 2524 switches have a serial port on the front of the switch? In which case you want a serial to serial cable, and a serial to usb converter if you don't have a serial port on the laptop. The cable you have, you would connect the serial port end to a laptop, and the rj45 plug would go into the console port on a switch (not one of the network ports). Steve

https://www.2simple.com/2buildaprofile Is what we use here for early years tracking, and parental engagement. Steve

How much are you looking for for it? How big is the case, and do you have a picture of it? Steve

One of the teachers at work has a mac at home for their work, but would like to play some games, the mac is quite old and not up to it, and they only have an old windows laptop. The main game they are interested in at the moment is Planet Coaster. - requirements are here https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/planet-coaster/13269 A desktop pc is the way to go - they can get a monitor and keyboard / mouse for free, so only need to get the base unit. Here's the challenge - for less than £200! I think refurb is the only slight chance of doing this, so it will already have the windows licence, otherwise this would take half the budget on its own. I may also have a spare 120gb ssd which they can have, which should help. Is it possible to get anything close to a gaming pc for that sort of money these days? They aren't expecting it to run at high end resolution, just to be playable. Steve

Ours has been virtualised for years, no issues. Lots of benefits of it being virtual, being able to restore the whole server in half an hour has been a huge benefit in the past! Can't really see any reason to keep it physical now? Steve

I'm pretty sure they don't connect to a computer, all the programming is done just using the buttons on top. You can put a pen in the middle if you want draw lines all over the carpet when the kids program it wrong and it goes off the paper :-) Steve

We are currently 1 large flat network, which they run across as well. We only have 6 ip cameras at the moment, all older cameras are wired direct to a recorder - as these fail we move them across to network cameras. Haven't had any bandwidth issues at all - we have a fairly modern network, 10gig backbone including to servers and gig to desktop. I do plan to vlan it off this summer however, as with more cameras it may become an issue, and the network has grown considerably in the last 2 years. The 6 cameras I have currently have 2.8tb of storage allocated. Just checked the archive, we have 52 days of footage available, all recorded in full hd. This means it is copying around 2.2gb an hour so not that much of a load. Steve

Hikvision and Luxriot here too. Less impressed with luxriot than I am with the Hikvision cameras, but it does the job.

We have ricoh copiers here, and printing was getting more and more expensive, they were printing way too much, especially in colour. I added codes to each of the copiers that only allowed printing in black and white, and we had a complete ban on printing in colour for a whole term, unless they sent it to me with an explanation of why it was needed in colour. I think I printed about 100 pages in total over a term, vs around 15000 normally! We have now created more codes on the copiers, 1 per year group (Primary School) that do allow them to print in colour. I then check how much they have printed at the end of a term. Any year group which has printed excessive amounts in colour will then have the colour option restricted for the following term. So far, I have seen around a 90% drop in colour printing. I never expected it to be as effective as it has! I did look at using impero for it, but it obviously wouldn't record photcopying, and any software that does include copying was too expensive once all the modules had been purchased. Steve

I have just set up a site with mediawiki mentioned above. I've done it on an internal server, it only needs to be edited by 2 classes. I can't comment how easy it is to use for children just yet, they should be using it for the first time this Friday! Steve

What are you using to make the usb media? I had some trouble with some new hp laptops recently, i used the latest version of rufus, gpt partition scheme for UEFI and fat32 file system and then they recognised them and booted OK. (this was for a pe boot stick, but should be the same) Steve

I have done this before with an old pc, webcam and netcam studio Netcam Studio - Network Camera Monitoring Software I'm pretty sure they offer a free licence to schools if you contact them. I just opened up a couple of ports on the firewall so it could be accessed from outside the school. Steve

Could you get the socket you are plugging it in to changed to something like this? There are lots of others available, first one I came across, so not sure what it's like. LAP 13A 2G SP Socket + 4.2A 4G USB Charger White | Switches & Sockets | Screwfix.com Steve

If that going to be a wide enough field of view for inside a small room? I'd recommend Hikvision, but maybe look at one of the ones with a 2.8mm lens? Steve

Got a bit further with this, it isn't actually a wireless issue as far as I can tell, but a proxy issue. Our pupil ipads are configured to use a manual proxy server. All staff devices just use a transparent one. It would seem any device which has a proxy set will not connect to the lead expedition ipad. If there any thing i can configure on the smoothwall device, to make this work? Long term I can move all pupil wireless devices to their own vlan, and then they can have a transparent proxy which doesn't require authentication, but for now i need them to connect to a specific proxy. Steve

We are trying to use google expeditions, initially with ipads, and then with some phones in the new financial year. I have 2 wireless ssid's which we currently use, a general one which all the student ipads are connected to, and a staff one, with radius authentication for staff, so they authenticate to the smoothwall box. If I connect the staff ipad to the main wireless network temporarily, they can lead an expedition and all works fine. If they are on the staff wireless, the pupils can see the expedition, connect and then can't get any further. I know the devices need to be able to talk to each other (wireless client isolation is off) and assume they cannot do this between different ssid's. Is there any way to enable them to do this? The network is 1 flat network - there are no vlans, so all ssid's are attached to the default vlan. Any ideas? Thanks Steve

If you want solid and robust, then Loxit are really good, but they really are ugly. We now buy zioxi trolleys - we have 7 ipad trolleys and 3 laptop trolleys from them at the moment, about to get another couple of laptop trolleys very soon. So far we haven't had anything break on them, and they look nice, our oldest trolley is a bit over 2 years old, in a Primary School. Steve

We are getting captures of random words with a completely blank screenshot attached. I reported this previously and was advised it would be fixed in this release. Deployed it earlier in the week, and the problem continues. Steve

It wont detect faults or work as a circuit breaker, but this might be useful to at least see how much current it is using? Energenie ENER007 Energy Saving Power Meter Socket | Plugs | Screwfix.com Steve

They do a soft start option for their trolleys, although i'm not sure if you can get one and retro fit it, or if you have to buy it when you buy the trolley. https://loxit.com/shop/laptop-charging-security/laptop-charging-trolleys-15-6/lapbank-laptop-charging-kit-inc-soft-start-surge-for-16-laptops/ Have all the power adaptors been individually PAT tested? Steve

I come from a fairly anti-apple past, and would have to say I'd lean towards ipads! They are easy to manage these days, easy to lock down, very very rarely break and just work. We've had learnpads - we found them slow, poor quality, not as good apps and weren't popular with teachers. We have a set of 64 linx 10 tablets and they really are very poor. I think the newer 1010 or later ones are better, but the first generation ones we have are bad! I'm currently setting up a new set of 75 ipads here, purchased because of staff demand - not because they are shiny and apple, but because the ones we had were always out being used by pupils and there just weren't enough available. Steve

It is now safe to turn off your computer..... I do miss the big switches that did actually just cut the power.

I've used fix-it sales for a number of years now, they used to be based fairly local, but moved. They can arrange a courier to collect and return items, all on account. Email [email protected] if you want a quote from them. I tried using a local computer shop once, never again! Steve

Would be worth looking at j2bloggy - we tried it last year, and although we had a few issues using it through rm unify, the product itself looked fairly good. Steve

I have set this up previously using VNC, which on the pc side can be set to view only, so no control from the tablet. As mentioned above make sure there is nothing confidential being displayed on the teachers pc. Steve