Documentation on how to use Classroom Presenter has been somewhat limited. This is an attempt to address the problem. I am
trying for something quick and useful, as opposed to something more polished. Send comments to anderson@cs.washington.edu.
There are a number of UI issues still to be addressed before the 2.0, so some of this will change.
Creating CSD files
Using Presenter in Multimon mode
Connecting to a network There are multiple options for connecting machines together, these cover a number of different
situations. We are planning to clean up the connection menu before the 2.0 release so some of these will go away.
Multicast ConnectionsThis is the prefered mechanism. Connecting to a multicast address causes the application to listen
to messages at that address, and send messages to that address. The Classrooms (1-5) and the dynamic venues are just multicast
addresses. The dynamic venues are present for compatibility with video conferencing and should be ignored. Choose one of the
Classroom Addresses that is not in use.
TCP/IP Server This is not available, and will disappear from the connect menu soon. Please ignore.
Unicast This provides a point to point connection between a pair of machines. The two scenarios that it makes sense
for are two site video conferencing, and using just a free standing tablet with a secondary display machine.
ConferenceXPClassroom Presenter is available as a capability of conference XP. If you have a version of Conference
XP that has presenter installed you can launch Presenter as a capability (from Actions->Start Other Capabilities). This should
Multicast Connection Sequence
Machine 1:
Role->Instructor
Connect->Classroom 1
Machine 2:
Role->Student
Connect->Classroom 1
Machine 1:
File->Open (select CSD File)
(Machine 1 should show the slides, Machine 2 should
show "Slide Missing")
File->Broadcast->Entire Deck
Network issues There are big challenges in working with broadcast networking in a wireless environment. We have
made significant progress - but it is not going to be painless. Broadcast networking does not guarantee that messages
will get through - this means that sometimes the information displayed on the viewer will differ from the information displayed
on the presenter. Two types of loss you will observe are slide loss, where some of the broadcast slides don't get through,
and ink loss, where occasional ink strokes are dropped. The standard benchmark we run is to write 100 strokes on the presenter
machine and count how many make it to the viewer machine (or an equivalent test is to then erase the 100 strokes, and count
how many of the erase messages get through!). We like to operate in an environment where we are getting at least 99 percent
of the ink strokes.
Deck size Currently, the broadcast rate for slides is fairly slow - we may be able to address this before the
2.0 release - but if you have a slide deck that is several megabytes, it will take a long time. (Individual slides are limited
to about 600K). It is recommended that you use slides with simple backgrounds and avoid large images.
Dealing with large slide decksIf you must use large slide decks, and are using just a few machines, then the
simple work around is to load the slides independently on each machine. Transporting the slides with a USB key is much
quicker than sending them through the air! File->Open is available on the student side as well. It may be necessary to manually
sync the slides that have been loaded with the slides from the instructor. To do this, use Tools->Deckmatcher. Cleck on a
pair of decks under the Matched decks and remove the association, then create a pair of associations.
Feedback This is a feature that we experimented with in the early days of the presenter work, but have not been
working with recently. In deckbuilder, you can select a feedback menu - this will allow viewers to leave feedback on the slide that
is then sent to the instructor. (Unless you are interested in using this feature, it should be ignored.)
Wireless Network PerformanceThere is a high variability in the performance of wireless networking equipment. We have
discovered that using Ad Hoc networking often works better than using an access point. A colleague has reported that she has
had most success using a three year old linksys access point, while the newer ones have given miserable performance. It turns
out there is an issue with the power saving feature on machines using a centrino chip that degrades wireless performance.
Performance can be improved significantly by turning power saving off.
Turning off power save on wireless cards Starting at the window control panel, got to System->Hardware and open
device manager. Under the network adapters, select the wireless adapter and open it. Under the advanced tab, select power management,
uncheck use default value, and move the slider to highest.