dhicks

We use the web hosted version of iSAMS, and I've found their API pretty good to work with - it's simple enough to pull pupil and parent data from iSAMS via a basic GET request, and you can have a script look at that data and trigger any actions you want from there. We have a couple of scripts that send out emails triggered by data in iSAMS, I think the ones that actually send emails were sending via GMail (using the GAM command-line tool). I also have a script that syncs data between iSAMS and an email list in Mailchimp (so using their mailing list API), and I've separatly used Mailchimp's transactional emails API to send individual emails. iSAMS itself uses SendGrid to deliver emails, we found it easier in the end to use a separate product (Mailchimp) rather than try and manage a second SendGrid account with the same origin domain. I don't know if the self-hosted version of iSAMS has a different API, I'm not familier with the self-hosted option. To confirm personal data, you're probably best sending out a blanket email to all parents pointing them at a link where they can check and update their data, rather than including any personal data in an email. For failed emails sent via iSAMS you should be able to to see those via SendGrid's dashboard - you might have to get iSAMS to give you access to the SendGrid account associated with your iSAMS setup.

Any indication how firm those plans are? A quick look at Wordshark's website suggests around 10,000 schools using the software, which is a pretty good sized market - a subscription of, say, £100 per year per school would be £1,000,000 total revenue. It's the sort of thing you'd think a small development team (2 or 3 people) could target for creating a nice up-to-date web-based version. Are Wordshark just lacking in expertise / motivation / developers to do so, or are there other factors?

And, at 0:18 on the video, what looks suspiciously like Robert Llewellyn as Kryten...

Certainly for WeVideo all the video storage is held server-side. There'll be a bit of caching client-side, but local storage shouldn't be an issue. I seem to remember you can even record from a laptop's webcam (or, indeed, any camera you can plug in via a USB adaptor) straight to a video project if you have a reasonable Internet connection. I think a good amount of processing is done server-side as well, so you don't need that powerful a device, although having something reasonably up-to-date is probably going to give you a smoother user experience.

Mains sockets: worth getting ones with decent-sized (3.2A) USB power built-in. I also rather like those little plastic shelves that you can fit to double sockets to hold tablets / phones, as it gives you somewhere to stand stuff while charging from the USB ports. Physical storage: it's a school, so you possibly already have a bunch of Gratnells trays and matching furniture around. I tend to get the clear plastic Gratnells trays with lids so we can see what's in a box. If you're not going to have something Gratnells-sized, have it 19" rackmount size so you can stack server / audio equipment in as needed. For your own desk / work area, it might be useful to consider the background for when you're using video conferencing. Either some reasonably neat-and-tidy or a proper clear / well lit background that works well with background-substituting software. Might also be worth adding sound treatment and/or a nice mic for clear audio.

My guess is that you'll need to tell the PBX the new IP address of the device so it knows where to route calls.

Yes - we have it set to receive broadcast data, it's used as a PA speaker alongside our phone system. I don't think we set it up with its own phone number, so I'm probably not going to be much help here. Things to maybe check: is there an "auto answer" option in the settings somewhere that needs selecting? Are you sure the device is on the same VLAN / network segment as the phones and/or controller?

Possibly neutral density film over the windows? You can get rolls of it cheap (search "neutral density film for windows" on Amazon / eBay / Google) designed to be used temporarily by photagraphers / filmographers, it might be a cheap enough solution you can try it to see if it works before putting something more permanant in.

We seem to have been having Nginx listen on port 443 (HTTPS) and forward to port 7080 (HTTP) of the Ubiquiti CCTV server, with seprate entries for "/" and "/ws/" locations. Traffic over the internal network would have been unencrypted, but that should be fine as all that traffic should all be contained within one core switch. For websockets, we were proxying port 7446 on the proxy directly to port 7446 on the Ubiquiti server. Sorry, I don't know what a STUN server / setup is.

Thanks for the warning - I've updated a couple of Server 2019 servers and several Windows 10 VMs / workstations with those updates today with no issues, but I think I'll leave off updating the Domain Controllers and VM hosts for the moment.

I'm currently building one to show: Today's child absences Today's cover details Which staff are currently in the building Current tube status The above is planned to be shown on a large screen in the staff room. The status page part of things can also be included as part of the default start screen for browsers, so teachers can load it up on their desktop machines (login required).

We were, but we've moved to UniFi's own controller hardware for network and CCTV. When we had a Debian host I had the UniFi applications behind a Nginx reverse proxy which handled the SSL part of thing, automatically updated via Let's Encrypt. It took a bit of fiddling to get HTTP sockets set up properly, I think I've still got the config file somewhere.

Agreed - maybe the first thing to get from the museum is what they plan to have pupils doing with the devices, and figure out if that's something that needs the pupils logged in to some account for. I'm guessing requiring pupil logins is going to be a bit much for the average museum / class teacher on a day trip to handle (what do you do with pupils who have login difficulties when you're away from school?). Are they maybe planning to use tablets as self-paced audio / visual guides pupils can take round with them? Or even as snazzy augmented reality viewers?

For home access, pupils will need a device of some sort, an internet connection, and a place to sit and work. If all their remote school work can be accomplished through a web browser then the device part of things can be fairly simple / affordable to take care of - second-hand equipment is available in bulk, although brand-new Chromebooks and similar for home use really aren't much more (£150-ish). I've found that, for re-purposing second-hand equipment, CloudReady / ChromeOS installed on older devices works nicely if your pupils have Google accounts. If you want something that just boots into a web browser, no login needed, then I find that Raspberry Pi OS works well. If you have some available monitors, then a Raspberry Pi might be an option - they need a bit more elbow room to use than a laptop that can be put away after use, though. If a noisy home workspace is an issue, then a cheaper pair of noise-cancelling headphones (£30) might be an idea. How you go about dealing with internet access for households currently without is a whole other issue. I'm not sure if some of the access arrangements set up over lockdown are still in place, although I suspect not.

We had this thread a little while ago discussing hosting costs for a video library: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/221377-video-player-most-used-uk-secondary-schools.html I'm working on a solution that could be used for the kind of thing you describe, but it's nowhere near release-ready yet.

Ah - so these units need to go in the consumer unit next to each MCB, is that right? Doesn't that reduce (well, halve) the amount of circuits you can run from one consumer unit?

You mean we can swap out any existing MCB module for a 45A module? Doesn't that mean the circuit breaker would only trip out at 45A, or can the MCBs be set to trip out at a custom level? Looking at the image of the MCB on Eastron's website, there's no little manual swtch on the front like you'd normally use to reset an MCB. Is there a simple push-button reset process, or do you have to use some web or mobile app to reset a tripped MCB?

What sort of thing would that power? Am I right in thinking that's around 400W - enough to supply one server, maybe? We have no outside space (central London), but could possibly think about putting solar panels on the roof.

Most hosts (that I've used, anyway) will allow you to specify the geographic location of your data and/or processing these days - I think AWS does, I know OVH does. Positive Internet, a smaller provider, seem to be making a point of emphasising that they provide UK-based, renewable-powered hosts, so if that's a requirement there's some good options available. I would guess that as, in general, the server hosting market is very global, unless you have some very specific requirements, prices will hover around the global average.

It'll be interesting to see by how much, exactly - data processing / CPU cycles are potentially things that can be shifted around the globe to wherever is cheapest, and the larger providers (Amazon / Microsoft / Google) have a lot of their own renewable power generation / supply infrastructure these days.

Good point, you might want to consider how you go about switching cloud providers if you wanted, whether that be for server hosting (renting VMs to install your own software on from Amazon, OVH, etc) or for as-a-service providers (how easy is it to switch between Google and Microsoft if you wanted?). I get the impresion this is where your modern DevOps-style management techniques come in - servers and the services they run should be able to be built on any suitible hardware provider, ideally you shouldn't be repliant on a specific bit of hardware to keep running. Of course, on-site savings for moving your infrastructure to the cloud might be about more than just power consumption - you might be able to fire your network manager if they're no longer needed to maintain on-site hardware :-) For power consumption monitoring, it's something I'd like to be able to do, and not neccesarily just for the immediate (potential) monetary savings. It's the sort of thing that you could build into the curriculum quite nicely (how much power do we use in our classroom?), and it gives children a nice, practical, hands-on idea of what power is, how it works and what sort of scale we are using it at. I'd like people to be able to see the difference in scale in usage for a lightbulb compard to a heater / oven, and then see how even small usage can be large if run all the time (lightbulb left on all day).

Does that mean we would get an electrician to swap out the mini circuit breakers (the MCBs) in a consumer unit for Eastron SDM120M MCBs, then there is some way we can connect those MCBs to something via wireless to start logging power usage data? Would we just need the one wireless connection per consumer unit, or one per MCB? Looking at Eastron's website: https://www.eastroneurope.com/products/view/sdm120modbus they only seem to do a 45A version - I think most of our mains circuits are 32A, with some lower-rated lighting circuits.

Is anyone using a per-circuit power monitoring system of some sort? It sounds like a good idea - is this something you can install on current electricity infrastructure without having to re-cable anything, or is this something you need to get an electrician in to sort out? I'd hope we could simply buy wireless-enabled circuit breakers to swap in for the current modules in consumer units, is it that simple?

You can, seemingly, use Avahi to enable service discovery over multiple subnets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avahi_(software) I would add that, even with a small number of devices per network segment, you need to make sure your devices / AirPlay setups have sensible names that match the room names / numbers people will be looking for. Our equipment tends to get moved around a fair bit, a lot of the PC names don't match the room numbers, which isn't helpful - bluetooth might well be a better option.

Their newer GX models seem to be priced more in line with other manufacturers - I think we paid around £1,700 for a 75" screen around a year ago (that price includes VAT). We generally use Windows PCs in classrooms, but the couple of times we've plugged a Smart board into a Mac in they seem to have worked just fine with no drivers needed. For all manufacturers, I'd ignore their software and use something you can use across all devices / platforms - we use Kami. I've not seen anyone use any features or gestures that make use of more than two touch points (click, drag, swipe, pinch-to-zoom, maybe rotate, that's about it), so I wouldn't worry too much about the number of touch points supported. The same goes for snazzy features like being able to use two pens simultaneously, which I think some of the Smart boards could support - I don't think anyone actually used that. If you're using third-party software and not relying on the special pens that come with the board for particular features you can use generic styluses, too - the 50p-each ones from Amazon work well on a large display (although they are rather clunky to use on smaller laptop touch screens), so you don't have to worry about people loosing the pens.