Category Archives: Conferencing

Product Review: Sennheiser TeamConnect Wireless

21 Monday May 2018

Posted by in Audio Conferencing, Conferencing, Microsoft Teams, Product Review, Sennheiser, Skype for Business

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In my ongoing quest for finding new and shiny things, I came across the Sennheiser TeamConnect Wireless product range.

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Overview

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Product Review – ConferenceCam Connect by Logitech

09 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by in Conferencing, Product Review, Product Review

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I must say its rather exciting to see products evolving in the “huddle room” space. Its been one of those areas that has been catered for by DIYers for some time now. Of course its difficult to justify spending thousands of dollars on gear for the huddle rooms especially when many organizations have so many of them.

Thats why we have seen devices such as the Jabra Speak 510 and the Plantronics Calisto 620. To prove the point just look at the sudden birth of Polycoms RoundTable 100, its targeted at the huddle room space and that all for around $1000 (US).

Logitech ConferenceCamSo the stage is set for functional, easy to use, sub-$1000 huddle room solutions. Exciting!

The Logitech ConferenceCam falls into this space very well (at $499.99 (US). Its great for Huddle rooms (1-6 people).

Logitech have done a great job covering off the details in their  Datasheet found here. Also you can view a YouTube video of it in action.

My first impression was that its aesthetically a beautiful product.

A quick overview of the product is as follows:-

It offers 3 connectivity modes:

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  1. USB – as a Cam, mic and speakers
  2. HDMI (& WiDi) – Screen extend\duplicate (and mic & speakers if present). Wirelessly stream content to the ConferenceCam
  3. Blue Tooth – mic and speakers

Switching between connectivity modes is done by simply touching the mode you want on the top of the ConferenceCam.

The camera is superb!

  • It supports HD Video 1080P
  • 90 degress field of view with both digital and mechanical tilt
    4x digital HD zoom
  • The Lens is Auto focusing

The Audio is great provided the room isn’t too large, it provides:-

  • Speaker phone has 360 degree sound with a 12foot range from the unit
  • Full Duplex sound
  • Acoustic echo and noise cancelling

What I really enjoyed is the inclusion of NFC. I paired my Nokia Lumina 920 (I know its older..) using the NFC and it worked very smoothly. Entering the huddle room while on an active mobile call, I was able to flick the call over to the ConferenceCam by simply placing my mobile phone next to the NFC tag, that is awesome!

Its also rather cool that you can connect to the unit over WiFi to stream content to the HDMI connected monitor. I used my Surface Pro running Windows 8.1 to test this functionality.

Once the HDMI monitor is connected, on screen prompts guide the user through the connect steps

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The Remote functionality includes:-

  • Camera – Pan tile Zoom
  • Volume control Mute Call answer
  • It also doubles as a privacy mode as it covers the cam lens and sits in place magnetically

The remote is also very responsive with little delay.

Caveats

  •  Unfortunately the ConferenceCam doesn’t do WiDi\Screen-cast (Transmitting screen to HDMI) and USB for AV at the same time.Lync meetings often have content as well so the only way to get content and audio is to split the audio off to Bluetooth, of course that leaves video out of the equation.
  • The WiDi\Screen-cast does see the HDMI monitor as a mic and speakers, the speaker component works but my test monitors don’t have mic inputs and yet the application seems to think its there (default HDMI behavior). This results in the plug and play behavior having no audible mic input. This confuses the user and in my experience, if its not plug-and-play its considered broken or too hard to use.

Overall I think this is a great idea and believe it will make a very positive impact in the huddle room space.

Lync Conferencing Region Profiles

22 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by in Conferencing, Lync Region Profiles, Quick Reference Guide

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Creation of Lync Regions (aka OCS Locations)

1. From Voice Routing create a Dial Plan for the Region you need to specify rules for. Remember to add rules to this Dial Plan.
NOTE
Keep in mind that users residing in this region may dial numbers differently than users from a foreign location.
E.g. a local 7 digit number dialled from a Christchurch user will need to normalize to a Christchurch E.164 number, whereas the same number dialled as a local number from an Auckland user needs to be normalized to an Auckland E.164 number.

 
2. From the Conferencing tab add a Dial-in Access number for your new region.
3. From the Associated Regions area click on Add to find the Region that was created during STEP 1


4. Confirm that your new conferencing Region is configured complete with its own DDI.

5. Now you are ready to associate the users to the new Region. This is done by changing the user to the Dial plan policy you created in STEP 1.

NOTE
As mentioned in STEP 1, users in this Dial plan will need Normalization rules matching their expected dialling behaviour. They will probably also have a DDI (Line URI) matching the Region.

6. All that remains is to close both Lync and Outlook and launch them again. This allows for the loading of the new profiles. Now your meeting invites should show location preference.

 

7. If for some reason the user needs to send a meeting request displaying a number other than their assigned region this can be done from Outlook as below. Select Meeting Options – Audio and Phone. Now select the required location for this meeting request.

Alternativly, you could show any\all of the Dial in numbers in the invite by simply adding the required region to the Conference

Your invite will then look similar to the image below