[AG-TECH] Only one computer

[Allan Spale]

Hello,

EVL is doing a setup with our second node with only one camera and mic. 
However, we have Windows 2000 installed.  The computer is a Pentium
III/850 MHz with about 768 MB of RAM; although having a more powerful
computer would enable us to view more video streams simultaneously.  We
have a self-contained non-Gentner echo-canceller unit, but that could
probably be substituted with something from Polycom for audio conferencing
(SoundStation?...there was some mail about that a few weeks ago).  We have
a dual-head video card for a "console" monitor display and a larger
display screen. 

There is some software called PIG that was recently released for Windows
(http://www.accessgrid.org/release_docs/1.1/PIG-Hardware.html) to permit
the web interface to be used from a single machine and start VIC and RAT
with the appropriate addresses as well as move your MUD character to the
correct room.  I vaguely remember someone saying the source code was
available for this, so if it is Java (which the event listener and server
seems to be written in), then it may port well to Linux.  Unfortunately,
you will lose Distributed PowerPoint capabilities unless StarOffice can
somehow be tied to DPPT.  Actually, AGiB already has the arm-eventlistener
and vrm-eventlistener on the Linux machines regardless of how the machine
is used (audio or video), so if you could get the event-listener ported to
Linux, the MIME types registered for Netscape in Linux, and install tk-MOO
(which runs on UNIX), you may be able to get this to work.

What we did at EVL for awhile was create our own web interface like ANL
had in order to minimize the disparity of navigation between our nodes.
Clicking on the audio link in a room for a venue would run a batch file
(this was still Windows) to start RAT (and clicking on a video link would
run VIC).  On our main node, we have scripts ready to go for multicast
bridge in case our multicast runs into trouble, and native multicast
scripts for directly launching VIC and RAT sessions (of course these have
to be started on each machine along with configuring each VIC session
properly...but with one capture card, this will certainly be less work).

Good luck.


Allan
EVL at UIC
node-op

On Fri, 19 Jul 2002, Kyle Balling wrote:

> For demo purposes, I have been trying to introduce the accessgrid stuff to
> a small group of beginner users far off in small town Utah. It is a long
> drive to this tiny group so I am trying to set it all up on one computer,
> a couple monitors, one camera,  and a headset. Is there any reading on how
> to set up the whole thing on one linux only machine?  So far I can live
> with point to point vic and rat sessions but I would like to take it a
> step further.
> 
> I will also need a single computer setup for a huge important demo super
> deluxe crucial demo this fall. That should give me enough time to figure
> it out myself, but in the meantime all information is appreciated.
> 
> -- 
> from,
> Kyle
>