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April 25, 2008 3:20 PM

We are building a low-cost video confernecing system in out conference room, and I am looking for recommendations for iChat/Skype webcams and microphones.

My company is building a low-cost video conferencing system in our conference room that will use a Mac Mini running iChat and/or Skype. We've run some tests, and there are two things that we need to make it work better:

- a wide-angle webcam; the system will be at the end of the conference table, and we'd like the person at the other end to be able to see most of the people at the table. So we need a 70-80% angle of view if possible.

- a decent microphone that can pick up conversation in the room. The microphones built into most laptops suck for picking up conversation, and we want to make the connection sound as good as possible when there are several people in the room. Having soemthign in the middle of the conference table would be fine.

The basic details are that the room is about 10 feet wide by 20 feet long, with a big conference table in the middle that seats about 8. Most meetings are groups of 3-4, though.

Anybody got any suggestions for specific products that might work? Has anybody built a system like this?

posted by baggers to computers & internet (2 comments total)

At my company we do this with a basic Quickcam which you can see balanced on top of the display, and its built-in microphone does a good job of picking up voices from all around that bar which is 6'-8' away.
posted by nicwolff at 4:44 PM on April 25

nicwolff, thanks for the photo. I don't know if that would work for us; our experience of the microphones built into webcams has not been good so far.
posted by baggers at 10:43 AM on April 26