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Carlos Soto is an award-winning reviewer and journalist with 20 years of experience covering technology and business within various sectors and industries.

Carlos Soto is an award-winning reviewer and journalist with 20 years of experience covering technology and business within various sectors and industries.

Well-built cameras originally designed for professional conference rooms can also make a significant impact when deployed in classrooms. They are perfect for enhancing presentations, making it easier for educators to bridge the gap between in-person and remote learning.

I recently reviewed the Legrand AV Vaddio RoboSHOT 12E USB HD PTZ Camera with an eye toward its ability to facilitate a hybrid teaching environment. I was most impressed by its ability to create clear and crisp images that enable real-time hybrid education. It was also incredibly easy to set up and use, a must for schools with limited IT support.

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The RoboSHOT 12E camera can produce simultaneous HDMI, IP (H.264) streaming and uncompressed USB 3.0 streaming for solid video performance. It can all be automatically controlled or adjusted using an easy-to-use web-based user interface.

Classroom illumination is often provided by overhead fluorescent lights, and the rooms are rarely optimized for video. The RoboSHOT 12E camera compensates for this with an enhanced wide dynamic range that automatically corrects uneven lighting.

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I reviewed this feature in a large room with vaulted ceilings and large windows. At all times of day, the camera perfectly compensated for the varying lighting conditions, and I was able to see all images clearly through a laptop positioned in a separate room.

Unlike fixed cameras whose focus can drift over time, the RoboSHOT 12E is equipped with tri-synchronous motion technology. That allows it to smoothly pan, tilt and rotate along all three axes of motion while the onboard software tracks presenters in real time.

As instructors walk around the room, those watching the feed remotely can easily follow the action. The camera keeps everything in focus, while the software ensures that any poor lighting is compensated for, even if a presenter only briefly wanders through a bad spot.

If automatic control is not precise enough, the web-based user interface enables a professional level of control over the camera. The 12E can be controlled from any location with an IP connection, and students can view a feed by entering the URL of the presentation into any standard media player.

LEARN MORE: Using Power over Ethernet to support connected devices.

In addition to being extremely portable, the RoboSHOT also comes with all the hardware needed for mounting the device in a more permanent location. Because it can rotate on three axes, it can be attached to a desk, a wall or even a ceiling. It also has Power over Ethernet, so no power cable is needed. Simply string a network cable to it and it’s ready to go.

Professional cameras rarely come in such small, easy-to-use packages. The RoboSHOT 12E takes the kind of technology normally only found in the most upscale boardrooms and makes it available to support remote learning in any classroom.

Zoom: 12x optical zoom Sensor: 1/2.5-type Exmor R CMOS sensor Field of view: 70.2 degrees horizontal Connection: USB 3.0, HDMI and IP H.264 streaming Management: Remote IP management

The genie is out of the bottle: Hybrid learning environments where both in-person and remote students attend classes together can be highly effective and are here to stay. In today’s classroom settings, professors and university IT teams need to remain agile by choosing the best technology for hybrid learning that scales with the demands of the student body and university staff.

Cameras can play a significant role in this effort by empowering professors with the ability to teach students regardless of their location, or to record lectures so that they can be viewed again as needed. But classrooms are not television studios, so the cameras need to be high quality, easy to use and have many automatic features. They need to become a part of the fabric of learning without pulling focus away from the lecture itself.

A camera like the RoboSHOT 12E USB HD PTZ is perfectly designed for this environment. Cameras like the RoboSHOT should, at a minimum, have the following features:

The right camera needs to be mobile, reliable and keep its data safe. The RoboSHOT easily passed my string of reliability tests. At a measurement of 7.1 by 6.8 by 6.9 inches and weight of 4.85 pounds, the camera is ideal for any setting. It’s portable, but also mountable for more static placements.

The right camera has to offer multiple features, like Power over Ethernet, so that it can be used anywhere that a network cable can reach without being dependent on a lengthy and potentially dangerous power cable.

An infrared remote should make it easier to control all aspects of the device to better improve the performance of the camera without disrupting class. The RoboSHOT does this, in addition to being fully controllable using a web browser interface.

As much as possible, cameras in the classroom should be easy to use. Most of the RoboSHOT’s abilities are automatic, including correcting the lighting and tracking presenters in real time.

Finally, and most important, a good camera offers amazing image quality. The RoboSHOT has this with 720-pixel or 1080p resolutions and up to 60 frames per second when recording.

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