ACCS 2012 – Enterprise Audiovisual: Moving Past Project by Project Thinking
Thank you to everyone who attended our session at ACCS 2012; and thank you to my co-presenters Jeremy Parker and Dwayne Smith. A copy of the presentation is attached to this post.
Episode 2: We’re Not Cancelled
Last December when Tim Albright approached about doing a podcast, I was a bit hesitant. I've done plenty of presentations and I'm definitely opinionated about the industry, but the podcast was a media format that had previously eluded me. We're now two episodes into EdTech has part of the AVNation family of podcasts hosted by rAVe Publications. The show has a lot of a lot of the flavor of The Green Room with Paul Provenza except with no cursing and more educational technology. This month's episode features the usual crew of Tim Albright, Lewis & Clark Community College, Scott Tiner, Bates College, and myself along with Tim Schnabel from Extron Electronics. Topics include: emergency notification, 3D in the classroom, how do you sell your administration on value of AV, Apple's new E-Textbook program, Video Conferencing security issues, the STEP program from InfoComm, Extron's Educational portal, how to spec projectors, and remote AV remote support tools.
Full info about the episode and links to the mentioned stories can be found here: EdTech Episode 2: Some Days You Gotta Fight for Your Meat
Remote Support AV Tools: Getting the Most Out of Your Xpanels
Last Thursday was InfoComm’s first Power of AV for Education event at the InfoComm Headquarters in Fairfax, VA. I participated as a speaker and gave a presentation on the evolution of George Mason’s design and integration process (more on that in a future post). Both during the presentation, Q&A and the informal discussion that followed there was a lot of talk about support tools. As a serendipitous moment, later that evening I received an email from a colleague at Claremont McKenna College asking post I made to a Crestron forum a couple of months back. I figured it was definitely time for a post on this topic.
George Mason has been using RoomView and Xpanels for remote AV support since 2003. Originally our Xpanels were just emulations of the faculty touch panel experience, but about 3 years ago when we started providing a much richer diagnostic set for our technical staff. What we had found was that Crestron tools (like Toolbox) didn’t always scale in a distributed enterprise environment like ours, but the hooks where built into their products to allow you to build your own tools.
The idea to provide these tools isn’t one I’ll lay claim to. Our fantastic in-house programmer had done something similar at a previous institution and suggested that we start adding this information and enhancement to our Xpanels. When we started our DigitalMedia classroom projects, I provided the very nebulous programming requirement of "if we can control it or hook to it, I want it shown on the Xpanel", and he delivered more than I expected.
The following screencast (I’m using Camtasia for the first time so please bear with me) provides a walkthrough for a typical panel in our DM-Baseline standard of classroom. Also a quick note on RoomView, we are still on RoomView express because the ActiveX web based Xpanels do not play well with Windows 7. We are currently working on about a six month project to convert our existing executable panels to either Flash based or Core3UI Xpanels which do play nicely with Windows 7. Parallel to that we are working on getting Fusion RV into production.
Wagging the Dog: Technologies ProAV Should Be Paying Attention to From CES
At one point you could count on innovations in the AV industry showing first at InfoComm, these days you are just as likely to see new technologies and products making their premier at CES. Here are a couple of the one I think the ProAV side should be watching:
WHDI -
I've been pretty bullish on WHDI as I think it's going to be a great technology for presentations. WHDI provides wireless HD video/audio at 100ft in the 5GHz unlicensed band. There were a couple of major WHDI developments at CES.
Galaxy WHDI Stick
- Lenovo demoed their Ideatab S2 Android Tablet with built in WHDI. Engadget has a great hands-on with a video. The model demoed was the 7" version which according the Lenovo site is only available in China when the S2 ships in the July. Given that the press release about this product was released by AMIMON (maker of WHDI chips) and not Lenovo, I'd bet this product never sees the light of day. That being said, I'm happy to finally see integrated WHDI product being shown, and I'm sure we'll see a shipping WHDI tablet/notebook before to long.
- While the tablet may never make it to market, some other great product will. Both Galaxy and HP showed WHDI stick product which plug into your HDMI and then draw power from your USB port. Galaxy's product is shipping now and HP will be shipping soon.
- Belkin also announced and is shipping their ScreenCast AV 4. This is their 4 input/1 output WHDI solution. I think this is great for do it yourself residential setups and also could be used in commercial setting for panels or collaboration.
WiDi -
While we are on the topic of wireless HD formats I figured it would be worthwhile to mention WiDi as the Intel juggernaut keeps rolling along. WiDi is and implementation of wirless video and audio over WiFi. With Intel's pull and market reach I have a feeling that WiDi may sneak up on all of us before we know what happens.
HP Envy 14 Spectre
- LG's new Smart TVs have WiDi built-in, as do Samsung's Series 7 Monitors.
- Lenovo demoed it's WiDi equipped K800 Android phone.
- Lenovo's IdeaPad U310, U410, Y480, Y580, Z380, Z480 & Z580 all have WiDi options and HP's new Envy 14 Spectre has it as a standard feature.
- Belkin, Netgear and D-Link are all making WiDi receivers if you happen to find yourself with a WiDi device without a monitor with a built in receiver.
MHL -
Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) is a connector agnostic communication standard which surprised me with a couple of announcements at this year's CES. This may turn out to be a dark horse technology that gain a lot of traction because of who adopts it. Gizmodo has a great MHL primer here.
- Roku announced it's Streaming Stick which provide current Roku and other Smart TV technology to any TV with MHL compatibility on it's HDMI ports. Insignia, Best Buy's house brand, was named as an MHL launch partner in Roku's press release.
- The same Samsung Series 7 Monitors that bring you WiDi also support MHL.
- HTC, LG and Samsung are all shipping smartphones that support MHL.
HDMI -
HDMI is everywhere, but I think the big announcement was the expanded membership of the HDMI forum which is the attempt to open up participation in developing future HDMI specifications. It was good to see participation by some of the display manufacturer such as Hitachi, LG, Panasonic, and Samsung and Sharp, as well as the chip manufacturers such as Analog Devices, AMIMON (WHDI chips), Silicon Image (MHL and WirelessHD), Texas Intrusments (DLP) and Valens (HDBaseT). Even Apple is participating. What is that none of the AV Glue companies, AMX, Crestron or Extron, are participating.
HDBaseT -
HDBaseT is a great technology that allows that provides video, audio, data, power and control (called 5Play) over a CAT5/6 cable at up to a 100ft. The core technology is Valens and is used both in interoperable products as well as in proprietary implementations from AMX and Crestron. I think this can be a game changing technology in the long run. I would have completely missed their CES news if not a for a piece in CEPro. Valens announced HDBaseT-Lite which provides video, audio, control and limited power.
Designing Classrooms in the Digital Age: The Missing Slides
On December 6th I did a webinar for InfoComm on Designing Classrooms in the Digital Age. It was very well received a great response to the presentation and I've gotten a number of questions about it. I've followed up with a number of people directly and I've put together another 15 minutes or so of content which I'm calling The Missing Slides. This covers topics which I received a number of questions on, and in retrospect, probably should have been part of the main presentation.
If you would like to view the original webinar, please visit this link: http://bit.ly/t21goz
Additionally the slides from the original webinar can be downloaded here: Designing Classrooms in the Digital Age
Welcome to NextEduTech!
This is probably my third or fourth attempt to start blogging, but this time it’s going to stick. This blog will generally focus of AV and IT as it relates to Learning Spaces primarily in Higher Education.