DIY/Budget conference room solutions, need help!

[SuicideARG]

Hi, I'm posting here looking for some general advice + hopefully inspire a future video. 

 

I need to setup a small conference room solution for videocalls. This is for a small startup, where two people work remote and need to join some meetings.  Our company is small with no real budget, we just moved into a small office and our current setup is a dining room table, 8 chairs and a cheap smart TV connected to a laptop via HDMI. I am looking to improve the experience with a webcam overlooking the room and a better microphone. 

 

The intention is that everyone to comes into the room with their laptop, the presenter can plug in, share screen and start the meeting. Having to select input devices before starting is not a dealbreker, some setup is expected as this is very DIY. 

 

I expected to be able to sort this out in an afternoon, buying a webcam / microphone / usb hub and be done with it, but found no real advice, and a pretty negative response on reddit when someone else asked for the same thing. Any suggestions on what to look for? The main challange for me is the microphone. A cheap consumer webcam is currently good enough for us, but the microphone sounds awful. Also, managing longer usb cable runs from the webcam on top of the TV to the table with the laptop is not a given.   

I think this could be a really good video idea, comparing solutions at multiple budgets and trying some weird consumer products, like that facebook portal thing and prosumer solutions like what logitech is offering. For context, even that is out of budget for us right now.  

 

Thanks!

[Agall]

15 minutes ago, SuicideARG said:

Hi, I'm posting here looking for some general advice + hopefully inspire a future video. 

 

I need to setup a small conference room solution for videocalls. This is for a small startup, where two people work remote and need to join some meetings.  Our company is small with no real budget, we just moved into a small office and our current setup is a dining room table, 8 chairs and a cheap smart TV connected to a laptop via HDMI. I am looking to improve the experience with a webcam overlooking the room and a better microphone. 

 

The intention is that everyone to comes into the room with their laptop, the presenter can plug in, share screen and start the meeting. Having to select input devices before starting is not a dealbreker, some setup is expected as this is very DIY. 

 

I expected to be able to sort this out in an afternoon, buying a webcam / microphone / usb hub and be done with it, but found no real advice, and a pretty negative response on reddit when someone else asked for the same thing. Any suggestions on what to look for? The main challange for me is the microphone. A cheap consumer webcam is currently good enough for us, but the microphone sounds awful. Also, managing longer usb cable runs from the webcam on top of the TV to the table with the laptop is not a given.   

I think this could be a really good video idea, comparing solutions at multiple budgets and trying some weird consumer products, like that facebook portal thing and prosumer solutions like what logitech is offering. For context, even that is out of budget for us right now.  

 

Thanks!

The conference room at my company just has a TV mounted on the wall and a webcam with a computer behind it with a wireless M+K. I routed a long HDMI cable under the floor to allow people to hookup to it, but that's not going to connect the webcam (its also got an extension to mitigate the wear on the cable's actual HDMI port, since I really don't want to have to route that again).

 

The computer behind the TV is domain enabled, so for the most part with conferences, people simply login to that machine and have their laptops available. They could always RDP into their laptop if they need to present something that way.

 

Its also possible that the microphone in whoever's laptop is hooked up to the TV is more than capable of picking up audio for the whole conference room. If everyone in the office has a type-c port, its possible to route USB and HDMI from a TV that has audio in+out hooked up to it, then use a single type-c hub to connect it. That would allow anyone to use the webcam as well, but that's a lot of extra complexity.

 

Surprisingly, the webcam mounted on top of a TV like 8' away from the closest person does a good job at picking up audio. Its a cheap Logitech one too, like $25, but you could always route a desk microphone as an audio device.

 

Either way, if you're expecting a display, webcam, and microphone to be available for anyone to hook up to, you'll have to prematurely hook up everyone's laptop to tune them. Not that big of a deal if its only a handful of people, but it'll require some setup to mitigate issues before a conference.

[jaslion]

We got an owl meeting room 3 as a all in one solution and its been amazing. Actual plug and play just set the desired in/out and go.

 

Else we also have a logitech c920 on a cheap tv with a jabra usb room mic thingy. Pretty cheap and works ok ish.

[LogicalDrm]

You may not like it, but almost all our meetings are done (city urban planning office) with one of these small Jabra spakers. If you need camera, as noted, any webcam on a stick will do. You could also have each participant using their own laptop webcam while still using same speaker for audio.