Hi all, this is very much in the “idle speculation” phase. We have a typical living room setup in our house; TV at one end of the room, sofa at the other. We do regular video calls with family. These are done on an iPad propped up on the coffee table in front of the sofa.
This works OK, but it would be a much nicer experience if we could see the other end on our big screen. We’ve got an LG Smart TV, but it doesn’t support direct connection of webcams for video calls. This means that I’d need some device to act as intermediary, with a webcam plugged in and pointed at the sofa.
I’m thinking “small and low cost” if this is going to work - something like a Raspberry Pi or a Chromebox, with a webcam (and the webcam’s built-in mic) plugged in via USB, and the computer plugged into the TV through HDMI. I’d need a wireless keyboard and mouse as well.
Software wise, this would need to support conference calls on Zoom and Google Meet.
Portal by Facebook would be perfect, but is a non-starter because it doesn’t support Zoom or Google (and I’m not wild on inviting a FB camera into my living room either) - but that kind of “all in one” option would be welcome if such a thing exists.
Has anyone gone down this route before? I suspect that I’ll end up carrying on as is, but all thoughts are welcome! Another factor is that my 2014 Mac Mini will be replaced at some point in the future (it’s approaching end of support), so I could repurpose that, maybe with Linux installed.
3, set tv to use laptop screen via this HDMI port.
4, launch zoom call on laptop.
5, adjust laptop camera to cover our couch.
6, conduct call with family enjoying big screen.
We also tried this with an add-on webcam connected to the laptop, but other than control over the angle, it didn’t provide much benefit.
The fact that you’re using an ipad means you don’t have an HDMI plug option. You could try casting your screen to the smart tv, but in our experience this created a distracting delay that disrupted smooth conversation.
If you have a laptop you can use for this, maybe you try it out before getting into a more complex solution.
I did look into casting from the iPad to the TV a while ago, but it seemed to involve routing the video through a third party server somewhere, which I wasn’t wild on. I’m interested in how you did it.
It’s a good thought - I might cobble together something with a spare laptop to see if it works well. I’m not sure what the picture will be like for the user at the other end - if the webcam is designed to be fairly close to the subject, it might too wide a shot to be useful.
During the Pandemic I did Tenement Museum virtual tours using the laptop next to the TV method, and when we weren’t near my kids on New Year’s Eve we set up a similar Zoom call. If you have a long enough htmi cable (or a small enough living room) what you can get on the webcam looks okay. The other side looks great on our big tv.
I use a wireless keyboard and mouse and that works well.
If you have an iPad, you can use a Lightning to HDMI cable. This is the simplest solution.
Alternatively you can share the screen on the iPad with the TV over your Wifi network if you have an Apple TV gadget plugged into one of the HDMI ports on the TV. Apples version of screen sharing over a network is called Airplay and it works very well.
I had a go at configuring an Raspberry Pi to use Airplay, but gave up. The Apple TV is not cheap, but it works seamlessly.
