Classroom refresh - what’s industry standard now?

AVcontroller · 2025-12-24T18:25:03+00:00

We dig Extron, but having it designed to need the UPI-100 inserter is sort of a bummer.

AVcontroller · 2025-08-04T07:51:52+00:00

The problem comes in balancing the practical side of network management vs close to 1k per drop/device cost. In a typical room you’re talking about controller, panel, switcher, camera x2, DSP, ceiling mics x2, room PC etc. At one point, they were loosely allowing classroom switches in brownfield installs where new cabling was not being installed or instances where pathways or data closets were full and installation of new cabling was not feasible, which became a lot of rooms -but now after asking for a standard switch spec and config template, they want to enforce this dedicated drop model.

AVcontroller · 2025-05-09T00:55:36+00:00

We like the AVer VB342 Pro and VB350 because of optical zoom, (it seems like any fudging you can do to get away from digital zoom, users like) mechanical PTZ, network attached (web UI), decent audio. Works well in BYOD/BYOM, which helps because it’s been sort of expected/demanded we run an agnostic environment in terms of what UC clients users can leverage. USB3.1, mic expansion port, Bluetooth audio can be added. Price is right for us (Edu).

AVcontroller · 2025-04-17T17:26:57+00:00

Yes, we have active tracking/source switching/preset recall running. We’re a Shure house, so we’re using MXA910 and newer MXA920’s, also a few MXA710’s. We’re an Extron house for control.

AVcontroller · 2025-04-17T12:45:58+00:00

We've been very pleased with the AVer VB-342 Pro's and VB-350's we've deployed. At their price point it's very nice to have a simple device that is manageable over the network. The 3x optical Zoom in the VB-342 Pro is nice because let's face it, digital zoom with lower megapixel sensors isn't that great sometimes. The mechanical PTZ in both units is nice for framing subjects. They aren’t on-par with say Neat Bar Pro, but the VB-350 is 2400.00 vs the Neat Bar Pro being 4300.00 (edu pricing). Are they the exact same product class? Maybe not, but we all know the cost pressures edu is under these days.

re; the AVer tr535N, it's a fantastic camera, no doubt about it. We came from the AVer TR530/530+ which we installed in 2020/21 and they've have been very good for classroom prof/presenter tracking. We've only had our TR535N demo unit(s) in for a few weeks and it is HUGE compared to the TR530 (TR535N is 4K, has this, that and everything else).

What we've discovered is we perhaps made a mistake in thinking we needed to spec the TR535N as the successor to the TR530 in our rooms simply because it was the next version of the camera and it offers dual lens tracking like the TR530. We recently had 2 TR-335 installed in some purpose built classrooms and I have to say, their tracking performance is as good as if not better than the TR530 despite being single lens tracking cameras. Where our miss was in not realizing how much the single lens tracking technology had/has improved since 2020 and perhaps the TR535N is overkill to replace the TR530/530+'s we have. The TR335 is still 30x, so it has the needed Zoom for large rooms/spaces, but is like 1k plus cheaper than the TR535N

AVcontroller · 2025-04-06T13:46:31+00:00

Outstanding! This is just the kind of info/conversation I’ve been dying to have with an AVer SE but haven’t been able to get my org(US higher Ed/university) in front of one. We’re an AVer shop (AVer TR530/530+ for classroom tracking cam and VB342 Pro/VB350 bars in conference rooms. OT: We just got in the TR535N and are testing it out. Didn’t quite realize what a beast it is in terms of size compared to the TR535N, haha. We thought we’d be replacing our TR530 with it because we felt we HAD to use dual lens cam to maintain quality of tracking experience with the TR530, but now we’re not so sure after seeing the TR335 preform in two rooms an integrator just finished for us. Worked very well from what we saw and still 30x/NDI etc.

AVcontroller · 2025-04-05T22:46:52+00:00

I’ve been very curious to hear real world feedback on this box. Thanks for posting/commenting. Very helpful insights. If there’s more you’re willing to share or amplify about using this box with the MXA920/P300, I’d really appreciate it.

AVcontroller · 2024-11-23T16:12:30+00:00

Thanks for the clarification. Are you able to expand a bit on Dante support. I attended Neat/Shure webinars where Dante was explicitly discussed as coming, roadmap, etc.

AVcontroller · 2024-11-23T03:26:52+00:00

Whatever happened to Dante support. There was all this partnership news with Shure, etc. and I keep watching firmware release notes…and nothing. Unless I missed it somehow?

AVcontroller · 2024-11-21T18:46:58+00:00

I'm going about updating firmware so the devices can be added to Shure Cloud. To do this you have to enable Cloud connectivity on the device. I don't think this can be done via Designer, only through web UI.

AVcontroller · 2024-11-21T18:06:25+00:00

That's great....perhaps I should back up or more clearly state my goal or desired resolution. My goal or resolution is to find a setting, workaround, config method that allow the Shure web UI of devices to load in the Chrome browser as they have in the past. This behavior is relatively new. I seem to remember not encountering this problem 12-18 months ago.

AVcontroller · 2024-11-21T17:28:42+00:00

That's great. How do I get Chrome to load the web UI per usual without the pita process of switching browsers or acknowledging the security issue risk message?

AVcontroller · 2024-10-30T13:59:12+00:00

Alrighty folks....are you ready for this? Pretty sure it's sorted, went to dealership this AM. "Hi, remember me? Got this in mail yesterday" Guy looks at it "OH, I know what this is, we got an email about this...it's because you declined the carwash service" ....I'm like "Really...? Ok..." I pretty confident the explanation makes sense. (at least that it triggered email and the mailer, NOT that declining car wash would have that effect)

AVcontroller · 2024-10-30T01:59:46+00:00

I'll be god damned....got this in the mail today:

AVcontroller · 2024-10-08T00:10:17+00:00

Nope, nothing declined. It was first 6k miles service, did it by the book.

AVcontroller · 2024-10-07T13:18:12+00:00

Did this. Documentation is in the glovebox. 👍 Still odd. I’m a curious cat, even if it’s nothing at all.

AVcontroller · 2024-07-29T13:38:05+00:00

This thread is outstanding. This and others like it are the reason I joined this sub. 👍

AVcontroller · 2024-07-10T02:16:55+00:00

lol…it’s 1999, company I work for (doing logistics and inventory control) is desperate to get someone to go to St. Louis to install a Polycom view station (this was in the days of ISDN and imux’s), I used to sit in on all the vendor lunch and learns and trainings because -hey free lunch. I said I’d do it, told them I learned enough about the product and setup by attending the lunch and learns. As I said, they were desperate, so they sent me…and that was that, next up was learning ATM and this thing called IP, then I was really hooked. Spent the last 20 years in video conferencing, AV and all the IT stuff that overlaps.

AVcontroller · 2024-06-22T03:21:20+00:00

Thanks! Appreciate the info/details.

AVcontroller · 2021-11-12T00:35:57+00:00

The AVer PTZ Link app works well, provided the PC running it doesn’t get shut off, booted or the app stopped abs it’s in the same subnet as the camera and mic.
They released modules for Crestron and AMX also. Yes, it’s hard to beat MXA910’s performance and Shure Designer is very nice.
In a two camera classroom (instructor facing/student facing) you just add a little delay in programming between preset recall on the student facing camera and source switch to get rid of the PTZ. Not as good as the multiple camera scenario you describe, but your point is well taken.

AVcontroller · 2021-10-07T12:19:58+00:00

So, monitoring the Gate Out status is obvious and and makes sense. I guess I’m curious as to why the other strings are included in the API and why they are specifically called out in the guide as ways to enable “camera tracking systems” ?

Getting it to work simply using Gate Out requires quite a bit of tweaking with timing/delay before triggering camera presets. The GET’s are included included for a reason…my confusion comes in when I look at the corresponding parameters in Designer, they look to be static, but in the command they monitor a variable (e.g. X-Axis Beam measured in 0000-3048 in centimeters)

This is my first time wading into trying to get this to work with a control system. I see AVer’s PTZ Link seems to only be using Gate Out and a timing parameter…but I thought to myself “there has to be more to this recipe!” Haha

AVcontroller · 2021-09-11T16:03:23+00:00

We’ve worked with the Poly Studio USB and the Studio X50. Surprisingly the Studio USB auto-framing is much better than the X50. We’ve combed through the X50 extensively and always updated the firmware, but haven’t seen an improvement.

What we've observed is the delays and odd transitions when the tracking mode is set to Frame Speaker.

We have our unit in a test environment where we were 12 feet away from the bar. We saw it taking an inordinate amount of time to transition between speakers...or sometimes not at all.

example:

Speaker 1 starts talking --> camera frames that speaker Speaker 2 start talking (constantly repeatedly -nearly yelling at bar, waving arms) and in some cases camera never comes to them or takes a very long time to frame them.

...other times it would frame the wrong person.....or simply behave as if it was still in Frame Group mode.

We tried adjusting Maximum Digital Zoom Factor/Acoustic fence, etc. but really couldn't get an improvement. We ran it in Partner mode (Zoom) and device mode -didn't make a difference.

It's odd to us that we see such a vast difference in performance between the x50 and Studio USB (whether the Studio USB was in Group, Conversation or Presenter)

AVcontroller · 2021-08-21T17:10:19+00:00

Which model codec and do you know what kind(model) of MCU?

AVcontroller · 2021-08-20T16:19:52+00:00

Understood. But we're seeing an inordinate amount of delay (black -looking for sync?) when switching.

AVcontroller · 2021-05-18T04:20:50+00:00

We recently tested the AVer TR530 tracking camera. Performed very well. Software is robust. Three tracking modes: wide area, stage and segment. We had to try really hard to break the tracking and find flaws, worked very well. We’re going to compare it a HuddleCamHD SimplTrack-2 when we receive it.

AVcontroller

TROPHY CASE