dhicks

We found there was some confusion about the "when a user changes their password" bit - the user needs to change their password in Windows / Active Directory for passwords to be synchronised, it does't pick up existing passwords. Over the summer might be a good point to reset user passwords to a known value that you can have teachers dish out at the start of term.

We're using Insync to mount our "Media" drive, with around 3.5TB of images and video: https://www.insynchq.com/ We run Insync on a Windows file server - the client machines mount the Windows file share as normal, and get I/O speeds as fast as our file server can manage, Insync takes care of syncing the fils to/from Google Drive. It cuts down on the bandwidth used for a shared drive (you just have one client accessing Google Drive), and you keep local network access to your files. This seems to be working well for our Media drive, I plan to move more shared drives and individual Documents / Desktop folders over the summer.

If you're handing over evidence to a police officer, they have a whole chain-of-evidence process which should keep the item safe / private - you can hand them an un-encrypted USB stick or DVD, they have a process in place to keep that evidence safe. If the police officer in question is able to deal with a shared Google Drive folder we share footage with them like that, it varies from officer to officer as to what they'll handle.

We've been looking at services like Jumpcloud - cloud-based Active Directory / LDAP. My aim is to go "all cloud based" at some point, the issue is in the detail of how we transition our setup and our users to that. My plan at the moment is to have all file areas (both shared folders and user's Windows / Mac Home and Desktop folders) mirrored to Google Drive. I've started doing this with some shared folders (our rather heafty Media drive, containing a decade's worth of photos and videos), mirroring with Insync, and it seems to be working well so far. Hopefully, I'll sort out more shared file areas and user folders over the summer. We'll still need a local file server for this at the moment, of course, but I figure it's the way to start - get people used to the idea that everything they do gets mirrored to Google Drive, then we can start moving functionality to cloud-based services.

Do this, but only if properly set up as a supplier to the school (30 days credit terms are pretty standard), with 5% commision added. When our server cupboard airconditioning conked out I went and bought a couple of Argos' own-brand "Challenge" units: Buy Challenge 5K Air Conditioning Unit | Air conditioning | Argos They sell the one model, which saves having to make a decision. They provide enough cooling, although they do need to be vented (and you'll need somewhere for the water to drain out, too), and seem to be okay running continuously - we had them going for a couple of weeks straight this time last year, and a couple of days so far this year. The "flexible hose" you get to attach to the back hasn't changed in design since about 1952, either falling off with the slightest movement or staying put no matter how much pulling and twisting you try. It's also always just too short to be useful - make sure you have lots of industrial-strength gaffer tape to hand for fixing. The other model that Argos sell, by the way, is a swamp cooler: Buy Challenge 5 Litre Air Cooler | Air conditioning | Argos Fine for comfort-cooling, but not suitible for a server cupboard.

I thought this was a feature in the latest version of PaperCut?

This is a handily relevant thread - we're having some air conditioning issues, so we've installed a Foobot air-quality monitoring device in the server cupboard. It's designed as a home IoT type device, but does sense temperature as well as CO2 and particulate matter. I set up an alert via IFTTT to text me if the temperature in the server cupboard rose, and was woken at 1:30 this morning to get a taxi accross London to go fix the aircon as it had stopped working. Not bad, and a nice home-user level easy set up, although it did have trouble connecting to our Ruckus wireless system (turns out it doesn't support 5Ghz connections, had to turn those off on one access point to get it to connect). Also, the first text alert from IFTTT worked really well, but it then proceeded to text me every 5 minutes (because that's how often the API goes and gets info from the device), using up all the available texts for that month. Not quite sure if the issue there is with IFTTT or Foobot's API. Their API does look very well desgined - they actually have proper documentation, auto-generated by the looks of it, complete with working examples. I discovered, when I tried to use it from PythonAnywhere's servers, that they limit access to their API by world region (The US, China, and Europe), so you need to be working from a server in the appropriate region your device is in (or use a proxy server, or have servers in each region). Does anyone know of anything that properly integrates with an aircon unit to tell me what is actually wrong with the unit when it stops working? About the best we can do at the moment is point a CCTV camera at the unit to record the pattern of blinking error lights. There has to be a proper solution to that these days, right? If we can't get a proper monitoring solution of some kind (or if those are just too expensive) we'll aim to add the facility to remotely power-cycle the unit with an IoT power switch. Anyone any recommendations?

Does it have to be pop up, or would a roll of backing paper mounted on a couple of weighted poles be suitible? It's what most photographers seem to use, big enough to do a whole class group at a time.

Ooh - would that work in an HP DL360p Gen8 as well? We're aiming to do the same, have one of our existing server be 10Gb capable.

We use a cheap wireless instrument link in our hall - the kind of thing you can use to hook up guitars and so forth to a sound system the same way as you would a wireless mic. I think ours cost around £30, although I can't find the details. Might be an option for you, depends on if there's any other free-to-air wireless mic equipment used in the area which would cause interference. If 20m is too long for Bluetooth, could you shorten that distance by running a USB extension part of the distance? Not sure of the details of what you're trying to do, of course - might be that you can't run any cables anywhere, but it might be an idea.

Just to mostly echo the posts above: yes, we use them a fair bit, and are very happy with the equipment and service. We have their snazzy all-in-ones in most of the classrooms, where they are capable of driving 4k touch screens, and we've just taken delivery of one of their Ultrabooks which we plan to start trying out as a portable solution for some users. We've also dealt with them in the past for server upgrades and AV installs, for which their help and advice was invaluable.

I was thinking of a similar setup - we're aiming for a setup where users can come along and use a simple interface to turn the lights on and set them up how they want without having to clamber around on ladders and so forth. Are all-motorised lights practical in terms of cost and usability these days?

Okay, which printing / cashless catering systems do you use? Does either one have any sort of API /data export facility available? Do the two systems share data at the moment, or does each card need to be separately registered on each system? If you wind up implementing your own system, the underlying database used isn't going to matter - you'd probably aim to have something server-side to get data from your existing systems and manage data, with multiple client-side devices in locations where you want users to sign in. A Raspberry Pi might well work nicely as the client-side device, but other devices are available.

What system are the existing cards used with? That's the place to start, if you can - there'll be a database of some sort with cards matched to students. Ideally, that system would already have the sign-in feature you want (you'd think it'd be a pretty obvious feature for that sort of system), but if not then hopefully it'll have an API to let you implement the functionality yourself. You are a sixth form college, and this would make a perfect A-level type project, plus you can pretty much see Raspberry Pi HQ from your building, so maybe getting students to implement this for you might be an idea.

Hmm, interesting point to bear in mind as we look at multi-projector systems - how easy is custom-size media going to be to produce (or, can the system scale existing content)? Wikipieda has a pretty good list as a starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_editing_software Is GoPro's video editing software still free? It used to be both free and remarkably high quality, even for non GoPro footage, that might be worth a try.

Me, too - we're refurbishing the church hall next door to be used as more of an events / assembly space for the school, and I'm wondering what sort of projector system to put in there. Projection area's going to be about the same size, maybe 8m wide. Similar to the above, there'll be a lighting grid of some sort on the ceiling, but that will only extend maybe 3 metres from the wall we plan to use as a projection surface. I'm getting quotes for a 4-projector system, with the idea that two projected images next to each other should cover the 8 metres, and two projectors projecting on the same area should double the brightness. I've not got any extperience with multi-projector setups, and I imagine the quote is going to be fairly expensive, but this is part of a larger building project so the funds might be available. Does anyone have such a setup, are they reasonably simple to run, and does the whole multi-image stitching thing actually work?

Hmm - just saw this, via Hacker News (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17256524): https://www.helprange.com/ Might be something along the lines of what you were looking for - probably a couple of months late now, but maybe for next time.

We've moved to web-based clients, converting older machines to use ChromeOS using CloudReady, which despite being installable on older standard-PC hardware still makes a ChromeOS device that can be managed via the GSuite control panel, so you can set up a device to load a web page in kiosk mode. For web-based remote access we use AccessNow, although if I understand correctly newer versions of Windows Server do web-based remote access themselves now.

Do you have any more details? I tried having a login script running as the current user remove the folders, but got permission errors - is there some particular way I needed to go about things? Do you know why Apple regard replacing folders with symbolic links to mounted drives bad practice?

Just in case something goes wrong, you might want to have that script move said folders into a hidden / temp folder somewhere on the harddrive, just so you've got somewhere you can restore them from if needed. Not that I could figure out: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mac/173154-mac-os-network-login-script.html The answer seemed to be to create a launchd Global Daemon that runs as root that starts at boot time, then have a launchd Global Agent run at each user login to signal that Global Daemon in some way to go and sort folders out. My startup script did the signalling bit by writing files into a folder which the root daemon then checked.

Our pupil reports are simply PDF documents (produced by School Manager MIS, which isn't directly supported by Firefly). As far as the plugin is concerned, it's just showing a PDF document to the user - by the sound of things, pretty much what you are aiming to do. This assumes the documents you want to show to the parents are available somehow via a database query or similar (in the case of School Manager, pupil reports (and other documents associated with a pupil's record) are stored on the filesystem on the MIS server, which we can expose as a share to the Firefly plugin to read from). Not sure how WCBS stores / accesses documents, but that's probably the first bit to figure out, followed by how you match a given document (assigned to a pupil) with a parent account.

Firefly has a plugin feature that allows you to add functionality - we use it to display reports (PDF documents) to parents, which sounds very similar to what you're aiming to do. We are using a locally-hosted install of Firefly without using the Parent Portal module, so linking parents to pupil accounts is a bit on the clunky side, I'd hope things would be a bit simpler if you're using the Firefly parent portal.

As others have pointed out, there's no need to start a new backend completly from scratch, there are existing systems that people already use and have time / money / data invested in. I would be inclined to look at cloud integration platforms as a basis for building further functionality on top of - Kloudless or similar for cross-platform access to GSuite / O365, and Clever.com / Wonde / GroupCall / SalamaderSoft / etc for support for multiple MIS systems. I can possibly help build single-page apps with a combination of Javascript, JQuery, Page.js and Bootstrap, if you have any more details on what modules you have planned.

We've rolled out around 250 Asus Chromebook Flip C100PA Chromebook / tablet devices - the screen bends all the way back against the keyboard to turn it into a tablet. Around £200 each when we bought them, and they've lasted okay - we get a broken screen every now and then, and have found it simpler and quicker to replace those ourselves in-house. Extra costs are the one-off ChromeOS management fee (currently about £18 I think) and installation of secure charging cabinets in each form classroom. That's the bit that's probably made them reasonably succesful - having the devices charging in the classroom, ready for children to pick up in the morning, definatly helps.

Eh? Compatability mode I could understand, but why incognito mode? Thanks - might come in useful to know.