How can co-located groups communicate without echo?

[Mira Vogel]

Dear all,

One of our courses at Goldsmiths has the following scenario for
students joining seminar groups in flexible ways.

There's a group of students who are together in the same room sharing
a single BBB connection (i.e. single mic and computer speaker). They
need to be joined by other participants, each connecting from a
distance using their own separate BBB connections, and they need to be
able to have a discussion together.

The separate distant individuals all have headsets so they don't pose
a problem. The problem resides in the co-located group's set-up. How
can they avoid their shared micphone picking up what comes out of
their shared speakers, with the resulting echo effect?

The solution needs to be very easy to set up at a desktop or laptio,
so we've narrowed things down to a dedicated conferencing mic with
integrated speaker and echo cancellation - mobile, and with a simple
USB connection.

This, for example:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jabra-Speak-410-Conference-Speakerphone/dp/B004FLIT6C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319192253&sr=8-1

Has anybody any experience of using this kind of equipment in this
kind of scenario? We're on BBB 0.7 at the moment, using the Blindside
Networks integration with Moodle 2.1.

And incidentally, we think BBB is great.

Yours,

Mira

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Mira,

We've enabled acoustic echo cancellation in BigBlueButton 0.8-beta-2
which may let you have students around a computer with microphone and
speakers without echo.

You can use the following BigBlueButton 0.8-beta-2 server to test with
your Moodle server

url: http://test-install.blindsidenetworks.com/bigbluebutton/
salt: 8cd8ef52e8e101574e400365b55e11a6

This is only a test server, and not meant for any heavy use, but try
it and let us know if it reduces your echo with an open microphone.

Regards,... Fred
--
http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/FAQ#BigBlueButton_Committer

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[Mira Vogel]

Hi Fred,

Thanks for that - we've tested it out on the demo server and it worked
very well - no echo at all and hardly any lag. Very promising.

We'll upgrade as soon as possible after it comes out of beta.
Meanwhile, we'll need to experiment in 0.7 - probably with
conferencing mic set-up. Any pointers gratefully received.

Yours,

Mira

PS we have a bit of documentation which the BBB community is welcome
to take and adapt. Contains a section on preparations and one on
groundrules and what to tell students. Feel free -
https://learn.gold.ac.uk/mod/page/view.php?id=120543 (log in as Guest
if prompted). I'm sure it could be improved - suggestions welcome.

On Oct 21, 1:24 pm, Fred Dixon <ffdi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Mira,
>
> We've enabled acoustic echo cancellation in BigBlueButton 0.8-beta-2
> which may let you have students around a computer with microphone and
> speakers without echo.
>
> You can use the following BigBlueButton 0.8-beta-2 server to test with
> your Moodle server
>
>    url:http://test-install.blindsidenetworks.com/bigbluebutton/
>    salt: 8cd8ef52e8e101574e400365b55e11a6
>
> This is only a test server, and not meant for any heavy use, but try
> it and let us know if it reduces your echo with an open microphone.
>
> Regards,... Fred

> --http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/FAQ#BigBlueButton_Committer

>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 7:32 AM, Mira Vogel <mira.vo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Dear all,
>
> > One of our courses at Goldsmiths has the following scenario for
> > students joining seminar groups in flexible ways.
>
> > There's a group of students who are together in the same room sharing
> > a single BBB connection (i.e. single mic and computer speaker). They
> > need to be joined by other participants, each connecting from a
> > distance using their own separate BBB connections, and they need to be
> > able to have a discussion together.
>
> > The separate distant individuals all have headsets so they don't pose
> > a problem. The problem resides in the co-located group's set-up. How
> > can they avoid their shared micphone picking up what comes out of
> > their shared speakers, with the resulting echo effect?
>
> > The solution needs to be very easy to set up at a desktop or laptio,
> > so we've narrowed things down to a dedicated conferencing mic with
> > integrated speaker and echo cancellation - mobile, and with a simple
> > USB connection.
>
> > This, for example:

> >http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jabra-Speak-410-Conference-Speakerphone/dp/B0...

[Séverin TERRIER]

Hello,

Thanks for this documentation (that covers whole parts of using BBB).
It can be useful :-)

I think i will translate it in french, and adapt it for our context.

Séverin

On 21 oct, 16:03, Mira Vogel <mira.vo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> PS we have a bit of documentation which the BBB community is welcome
> to take and adapt. Contains a section on preparations and one on

> groundrules and what to tell students. Feel free -https://learn.gold.ac.uk/mod/page/view.php?id=120543(log in as Guest