#1 2008-09-29 21:29:40

**_adamsonm_**

IP cameras for classrooms and workshops

Hi all,

Apologies for the long post, but despite a fair bit of reasearch, I'm really sorta stuck and outside of my area of expertise!

I would be interested to know if anyone has had any success with a setup similar to, or that could be used in the following scenario:

We are about to commission a new building for vocational education - so there is a mix of classrooms (each with a celing mounted projector and teacher computer) and workshops (for welding, building etc.).  We are also about to buy a site-licence for Adobe Connect.

My naive vision is to have TPZ IP cameras placed in areas of educational or interesting activity - ie. over a trade workbench, in the cafeteria, etc.

I would also like to mount a camera(s) in the celing of the classrooms - one next to the data projector pointing at the teacher-space, and one at the front pointing at the class.

The vision would be that a Connect session could be run in a classroom where; the video from the trade area could be put into the Connect session; students could participate from other spaces and virtually be in the class; two classes could be joined together to collaborate.  Even mobile wireless IP cameras that could be carried around for demonstrating equipment back into the classroom would be great.

Basically, the issue I have is that all the testing and reading I have done focusses on USB webcams, which is limiting in these scenarios.  Ideally, being able to add an IP camera feed in the same way would give great flexibility and opportunities.  If this is not possible, perhaps we may have to look at cameras with RGB feed to a tuner card in the teacher PC.

I expect some IP cameras may have software that can virtualise a local windows video device which could then be used in Connect?

Unfortunately, I've been unable to uncover much on this, even from our Connect supplier.  I suspect we're taking Connect out of it's intended use?

Any advice, ideas, comments, reality checks, etc would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

Mike

**_jameslloyd_**

Re: IP cameras for classrooms and workshops

Wow, I think it is unlikely that there is a way to take the IP video and 'localize' it as a video source for the Camera pod.  However, I wonder if you could use screenshare  for multiple web browsers windows that were pointed to your IP cams.  No audio, but you could get the video.

Ah, I just tested this and using 1 computer I can only share one thing at a time - ie. I opened 2 share pods and tried to point them to two different instances of Internet Explorer, but both share pods show the same browser. 

Ok - so you would need to have a separate computer logged-in to screenshare for each IP camera, but it would be a way to do this without any custom programming.