The Design

Considerations for a
Room Based
Access Grid Node
Jason Bell
j.bell@cqu.edu.au

Jason Bell
16th May 2007 j.bell@cqu.edu.au Page 1 of 20
 Design Issues
• Decide on how you think you would use the
room, before building it!!!

– Small group collaboration

– Research seminars

– Large lecture teachings

Jason Bell
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 Room Design
• Microphones

• Speaker Placement

• Camera Options and Placement

• Lighting

• Computers

• Multiple Purpose Room Issues

• Other considerations

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 Microphones
• Ceiling mounted
– Great for picking up audience participants and allows everyone to be
heard.
– Ceiling microphones require more tuning.
– Gain levels need to be set at a higher level, which can also introduce
complications such as additional ambient noise.
– Due to distance from microphone, voices may sound distant or hollow.

• Desktop mounted
– Provides greater depth to the quality of the speaker’s voice.
– Limited pickup range.
– Due to limited range, people may continually slide microphones from
one speaker to the next.
– Desktop mic’s tend to hear all table related noise, such as paper
shuffling, typing on laptops, laptops fan noise, etc.

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 Microphones
• Wireless
– Lapel radio microphone are good for presenters who require greater
mobility.
– Wireless microphones can be passed to participants at the back where
desktop or ceiling microphones cannot hear the conversation.
– Good for adhoc room setup configuration.
– Requires passing a microphone from speaker to speaker.
– Requires battery charging or replacements.

• The use of multiple types of microphones can provide the greatest

flexibility and results.

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 Speaker Placement
• Front wall mounted
– Wall mounted speakers provide the feeling that the audio is coming from the
direction of the Grid Wall/Display.
– A disadvantage is that you can sometimes have audio reflection off the walls.

• Ceiling mounted
– Good as the audio is directed down which, in a carpeted room, absorbs a lot of
the audio.
– Provides audio evenly through out the room.

• Placing speakers too close to microphones also poses difficulties for the echo
canceller

Jason Bell
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Camera Options and Placement
• Presenter (front)
– Main camera should have the ability to
capture a "head and shoulders" shot of
the presenters
• Room
– Vision should include the entire audience
– Provides the ability to see people walking
in and out of the room
• Rear
– Captures what the audience views on
projection/display screen

Jason Bell
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 Lighting Considerations
• Ensure sufficient lighting to highlight speakers
– Special consideration for highlighting participants faces.
• Poor lighting can effect projection quality and viewing ability
• Room lighting should cover entire audience and presenters
• External lighting can effect both image quality and projection
quality

Jason Bell
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 Computers
• Single Node – Display, Capture and Audio all in one
– Less machines to configure
– May struggle to run very large AG sessions
– May not have the power to use many capture devices
– May not have the power for DV and HDV encoding and decoding
– Multiple “vic’s” cause difficulties

• Multi-Node – Display Machine, Audio Machine and Capture

Machine
– Provides more computational power and computer resources to
run very large sessions
– More computers to configure and manage

Jason Bell
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 Room Design
• Other design
considerations:

– Data Points

– Power Points

– Video Patch
Points

– Microphone
Patch Points

Jason Bell
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Example of a Room Node

Jason Bell
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Example of a Room Node

Jason Bell
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Example of a Room Node

Jason Bell
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Example of a Room Node

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 Rooms and Hardware
Information
• Visit the Access Grid node listings, as
there are many images of various Access
Grids from all over the world
http://www.accessgrid.org/nodes

• Visit the Hardware section

http://www.accessgrid.org/hardware

Jason Bell
16th May 2007 j.bell@cqu.edu.au Page 15 of 20
 Multiple Purpose Room Issues

• A lot of Room Based Nodes are more than

an Access Grid Room. They can also be a
H323, Conference and/or a General
Purpose Meeting Room

• Multiple purpose rooms may require

different lights and lighting switches
specifically for the AG

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 Multiple Purpose Room Issues
• Facilities Sharing

– General Equipment: Multi purpose rooms allow the sharing

of equipment that already exists within a room (such as
projectors) and may assist to reduce costs

– AV Equipment: The sharing of AV equipment may be

problematic, initial cost savings may be outweighed by long
start-up times. For example: audio gain levels and speaker
outputs may have been changed since the last time there
was an Access Grid session in the room

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 Handy Tips and Tricks
• Wireless Mouse and Keyboard
– Enables presenters / participants, to be able to control
audio, presentations or simply rearrange video streams
away from the node operators station

• Wireless Network
– Allows a laptop to control VNC and Shared
Presentations. This can be good as it leaves the AGs
mouse and keyboard available for the node operator to
use for back channel text chat

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 Handy tips and tricks
• Projector Calculator [most types listed]
– http://www.projectorcentral.com/projection-
calculator.cfm
– Great for determining the projectors required
by a room based upon throw lengths and
screen width requirements

Jason Bell
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 Thankyou
• Special thanks to Mike Miller for Access Grid
Images

• Questions????

Jason Bell
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