Zoom - Firming Up

After learning that the world shortage of webcams, caused by demand during lockdown, has put the prices through the ceiling, I've been pottering around to see what else we can do in the short term. My Windows laptop was a big disappointment - the internal camera is very basic; I think the processing power is fine, so it might work well with an external camera (if I had one), but there is another constraint anyway, in that Zoom will only permit one computer, one tablet and one smartphone to be enabled under a single account, and my desktop Mac is already the heart of operations.

Righto - I had a shot with the Android tablet. I didn't expect a lot, but I have to say I'm very pleased with the results. I constructed various experimental stands to hold the thing, and had a couple of brief sessions with Goya and with Stryker today to see how things looked from their end. Very promising. It would be better, of course, to have two cameras on the job, but if the stand for the tablet is rigid enough and stable enough then I can take the tablet down when necessary, and offer views from other angles, or close-ups, or whatever the generals want. The beauty of the stable stand is that I can put the tablet back in its main vantage point without fiddling around adjusting everything.

The best arrangement we achieved has the tablet about 7 feet from the floor, tipped forward (on a music stand, in fact), looking down over one corner of the table. We tried various combinations of lights, with the curtains open and closed - eventually the best arrangement was with curtains closed and all the room lights on, with the camera pointing in a direction which minimised reflected light. The photos were taken by Goya, at the far end of the conversation - there is a little loss of resolution in the pictures, compared with my original screen view, but it certainly looks as though it will do the job.

Remote generals should be provided with paper maps of the table, and we'll improvise some sort of unobtrusive grid reference system to clear up any ambiguities - maybe some form of unit roster arrangement might be a good idea, too. Whatever - I think we can now go ahead. We hope to have a smallish Napoleonic game ready to roll in a week or three.

I'll continue to keep an eye on the insane world of webcams, but the pressure is off for the moment.

The view from 7 feet up in the air - screen capture from the far end of the link. A little clarity is lost in transmission, but it is surely good enough to get us going. My son points out that if I buy an expensive 1080p streaming camera Zoom will detect our rural broadband service, and default to 730p anyway. That would be a shame (though I do fancy a decent camera for creating videos anyway). The mugs do not indicate a mighty consumption of coffee, by the way, I placed them there in case we couldn't find the corners through the camera view. Needn't have worried, I think.