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So instead of resurrecting an old thread, I’ve been requested to add it here.

We have a small to Medium Conference room that can hold about 30 to 33 people (long table with chairs). Currently there are a few solutions in there to cover all the options. A old Cisco SX20, a Meeting Owl (because it was inexpensive), and a PC. This setup is complete with two 75 inch TV on the wall, External Speakers (when the audio doesn’t sound great, and enough cabling to anger even the most patient of us. The Owl seems to be an issue because it refuses to keep the blocked area and will show the 360 view, even when it’s been updated multiple times. The fact that the Phone App has to be used to make these changes also has raised some ire. So I’ve been trying to research what to do about this monstrosity and find out what lead to the Frankenstein configuration. My findings have basically come down to, Electricians doing what they could to make something work when they themselves didn’t understand what they were working with. I do have to commend them for getting everything to work, but the hodgepodge needs a serious tare down and restart for simplicity and ease of use.

I was going to pitch the Poly Station X52 with a Poly Touch (TC10 fancy remote) since most users like how the Cisco unit works and it would allow them to continue doing Zoom Calls, Teams Calls, and Chime Calls as needed from one device instead of two. The other option they need in the room is play Training Videos (Youtube and similar) when needed. We currently have Microphones hanging from the tiles, so I know those would have to be updated as well no matter what system we get. If it’s a Poly System, we’d have to convert (probably) to the Table Top Microphone with extenders.

So what’s my hang-up? I want to make sure my thoughts are logical and not overthinking this. I tend to overanalyze at times and can miss other solutions that could be better suited for the needs, as well as keeping it simple for our end users whom will be using this more than I will. There’s nothing worse than being called at an odd hour because no one can figure out how to use something that was supposed to be simple.

Thank you in advance.

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I had a request once to do that for a small conference room (10-15 people.) I looked at the Meeting Owl but wasn’t sure it was the correct solution.

Kandao makes a 360° conference camera that you can apparently expand by getting more cameras. Best Kandao meeting 360° all-in-one Conference camera | Kandaovr Store

Management decided to nix the camera idea, so I never got a chance to get experience with it. Due to that, I cannot say how well it works. I did check out several reviews on it and if interest renews, I will have this on my list to consider.

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I think 30-33 people is beyond small, and more on the medium to large conference rooms. You might want to look at Crestron systems and an integration firm (if that’s not who you work for already).

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Your plan sounds good, and I’m going to second the idea of bringing in an integration firm.

I’m not a fan of the 360 cameras in general. I would go for a multi-cam set up like Mevo - it can be run from an iPad. There are some out there that will auto-select based on which one is picking up the strongest audio signal at the moment.

I’m not sure if anyone from Legrand-AV is still on here, but they used to give some good tips.

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Proper sound handling is another reason why I suggest an integrator. With a number of mics not tied to specific cameras, DSP/mix-minus become an issue. And good sound engineers for conference rooms are a rare bread.

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Not necessarily going to help your problem, but you should be able to sign in and manage your meeting owl here: Nest — OwlLabs rather than using an app.

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So while I am not explicitly a conference room engineer… I have worked with/on Crestron and a variety of medium/large conference rooms tech setup and can offer some suggestions.

Even with some Crestron systems, they might be well planned but can quickly become overly-complex when adding ceiling mics and speakers (I’ve worked on some that had 20+ pages of blueprints and schematics just to describe all the components, their functions, and then to diagram how it is all supposed to connect together). Realistically, what I find are typically the best solutions in the end involve setting up a relatively simple, self-enclosed audio system that handles its’ own volume leveling as required (or simply doesn’t handle it at all) and that sends its complete audio feed directly to the digital conferencing controller so that all audio troubleshooting is basically one of two places - the Audio head-unit, or the connection from that to the conferencing controller.

Poly likes integrating and I personally have less issues with Poly gear than many other options for the networking aspects of most conference room setups I’ve worked with/on up to pretty large configurations. That said, I’m presuming you’re not planning to get super-fancy with large touch-screen smart-presenter screens or such, because those do add a whole additional wrinkle of complication to a lot of conferencing setups. The device you’re using to control inputs/outputs is the most important of course, and the part that I would suggest is most worth teaming up with an integration firm for if you’re not super confident on your cross-discipline system architecting skills, because for a 30+ attendee sized conference room, it will absolutely be a cross-discipline system integration project ^.^.

Lastly, for conferencing inputs - I’ve worked on some Crestron-designed conferencing systems that used the Poly screen/tablet among other options at scale and they worked OK but were sometimes finicky. While sometimes finicky though, they were usually fairly easy to troubleshoot.

That said, my favorite and I think the most user-friendly (both for users and IT) was adding Barco Clickshare devices for control so that all that was required was either the Barco app on a portable device running either iOS or Android, or a USB dongle that plugs in to any Windows device and was shockingly simple to pair/repair as well as for users to use (literally plug it in, wait for auto-install that takes ~15-30 seconds, then just select what window/screen you want to share).

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