New technologies improve long-distance conferencing
Howard Eglowstein
Teleconferencing isn't exactly a new idea. If you've got the camera equipment, satellites make it possible to bounce live video across the country or around the world. New PC-based videoconferencing hardware promises to provide similar benefits at less cost, letting you get your point across long distance over high-speed phone lines. The real low-cost solution, however, is so-called document conferencing or whiteboarding software (see the text box "Whiteboarding with Software"). Although they don't yet support video images, packages like Fujitsu's DeskTop Conferencing or Modus Software's Synconference let you collaborate on computer-generated images and documents over standard telephone lines using modems, through a LAN conne
ction, or both.
This review looks at two unique hardware products designed to augment conferencing software. Microfield Graphics' SoftBoard ($2995) gives you both a real whiteboard and the remote benefits of whiteboarding software. The SoftBoard is a high-quality porcelain whiteboard with an infrared laser scanning system that tracks every stroke, and even the color, of your pen. With the included software, you can record your drawing sessions stroke by stroke. There's also optional software available that lets you send the session live over a modem connection.
AT&T Paradyne's $535 DataPort 2001 modem simplifies your teleconferencing setup by merging voice and computer data over a single phone line--transparently to most software. By eliminating one phone connection, it also lets you share and discuss data with people who don't have the luxury of separate voice and data lines.
Microfield's SoftBoard
It's hard to find a conference room anywhere that doesn't have a whiteboard, and people
often have one in their private offices to stimulate their creative juices. There's something magical about having a huge surface that you can walk up to and draw on with a nice fat pen.
The biggest problem with whiteboards (besides figuring out how to clean the erasers) is that there's no easy way to record what you've drawn. Some people videotape their whiteboard presentations and play them back through video boards on their computers. Some whiteboards have scanners that can read in a finished drawing and print out a copy on thermal paper.
Microfield's solution, called SoftBoard, uses a pair of lasers and sensors to scan the surface of an otherwise ordinary whiteboard. When you connect the SoftBoard to a computer running Microfield software, you can record a presentation, print the resulting drawings, or send a blow-by-blow representation of your whiteboard session to a remote site.
The pens have special reflective collars near their tips, and the eraser has one, too. When the sensors
see the laser reflect from a pen's collar, software running on a 40-MHz Texas Instruments DSP (digital signal processor) uses triangulation to determine the position of the pen on the surface. The DSP can figure out not only the position but also the color of the pen you're using, because each pen has a different collar pattern.
The lasers scan the board 416 times each second and can discern 80 data points per second. Pen position is reported more accurately in the center of the board, although I found the results to be more than acceptable right up to the edges. The system can track only one pen or eraser at a time, and you must not block the coded collar with your finger while you're writing. The board measures 60 inches wide by 54 inches tall and has an active writing area of 54 inches by 40.5 inches.
Pen-stroke and color information is encoded into a 4800- or 9600-bps data stream and fed through a standard RS-232 connection. The data stream encapsulates your strokes as vectors, including al
l pen-up and pen-down motions. The scanning lasers are active up to about a quarter of an inch above the surface, so you must lift your pen deliberately between strokes.
Windows software (SBRECORD) interprets the data stream and re-creates the whiteboard drawing in real time on-screen. SBRECORD can save your drawing, along with the real-time information used to create it, in a file for later playback. The vector representations used to save the information are quite efficient--a drawing that took 5 or 10 minutes to draw and used about a hundred pen strokes took only 30 KB on disk.
A set of controls, similar to VCR controls, at the top of the playback window allows you to play the image forward or backward, at real time or high speed. If you give a sales presentation to a group and capture it via SBRECORD, you can send it along with a companion play-only package (SBVIEW) to anyone who wasn't able to attend your meeting. SBVIEW plays back the captured file exactly the way you presented it. SBVIEW
is also freely distributable, so you can use your SoftBoard to create a presentation and distribute it along with a copy of SBVIEW. (SBVIEW and a sample SoftBoard file can be downloaded from BIX or BYTE's BBS. See page 5 for details.)
SBRECORD can also export a drawing as a Windows metafile (WMF format) or as a bit map. A number of Windows applications support these formats. Using CorelDraw and Illustrator, I moved a drawing off the whiteboard into EPS format without difficulty.
If all you need is a hard copy of your artistry, attach any Windows-compatible (or, for the Mac version, Macintosh-compatible) printer. I found a Hewlett-Packard 1200C/PS color ink-jet printer to be a perfect match for the SoftBoard. I set the printer to run in PCL 5c (color PCL) mode using HP's drivers. Attached to a 33-MHz 486 PC, it typically took less than 15 seconds after selecting SBRECORD's print function before the printer started churning out copies.
Teleconferencing capability comes through the optional
SBREMOTE software, which was in a beta version when I tested it. This is a remote-access version of SBRECORD. Using SBRE-MOTE, you connect a modem to the PC controlling the SoftBoard and dial up another PC at a remote site. Anything you draw on your SoftBoard appears simultaneously on the remote PC. If that remote machine happens to have a SoftBoard, too, the folks at that end can draw on their board, and their drawing appears in a window on your PC.
The remote software requires a high-speed modem. The beta version was set up for a limited selection of modems, but it worked amazingly well with a Practical Peripherals PM14400FXMT 14.4-Kbps modem. To connect the modem and serial SoftBoard at the same time, however, you'll need a PS/2 or bus mouse; three serial devices is one too many. Since a large number of clones ship with serial mice, check your machine configuration if you plan on running the remote software.
I also looked at a pre-beta copy of SBRECORD for the Mac. It works the same way as S
BRECORD does under Windows. The interface has many of the same control elements as the Windows version and should be able to interchange files with its Windows cousin. The beta version I used didn't have the file interchange working yet. Microfield wasn't ready to announce any plans for other platforms or other Macintosh support.
Although the product is shipping, Microfield is still tuning a few details. Mounting the board requires a delicate touch. The drawing surface has to be held nearly flat and against a good, steady surface. A standard gypsum-board wall will do fine, and that's what the company expects you to have. My review unit came with four carefully machined mounting studs, one for each corner. Two simply attach to the wall with supplied wall mounts (molly bolts for hollow wallboard), and the other two have adjustable screws that let the mount move in and out. You use a template supplied with the board, drill holes for the molly bolts, attach the mounts, and slip the board's four keyhole slo
ts over the mounts. Once you get the board mounted, a simple alignment procedure helps you adjust the two lower mounts in and out until the board is as flat as possible.
I had two significant problems trying to get the board mounted. First, the wall I needed to use was solid concrete, and there was no way to get Microfield's molly bolts into it. I ended up using masonry slugs and lag bolts to attach the board. The lag bolts were fatter than the recommended bolts, and the precision board mounts wouldn't fit over them. It took some trial and error, but two of us managed to maneuver the 60-pound (27 kg) board onto the four bolts. Without the fancy mounts, however, it took some doing to adjust the corners so that the surface was flat. I made those adjustments by turning the lag bolts to move the heads farther from or closer to the wall.
Microfield's alignment software bounces the laser beams off special reflectors at the corners of the board, measures the error, and suggests how to turn the adjustab
le mounts. The numbers change radically with even small adjustments, and the software makes the tiniest error look like you've just killed your best friend. (Microfield is planning to change the software to be more forgiving.) The board had to go on and off the wall several times before I got the bolt heads at exactly the right height. Microfield is working on a new mounting design that should make the entire process easier and more flexible.
If your conference-room wall is made of anything other than standard wall board, plan on using a bit of creativity to get the SoftBoard mounted, or check with Microfield for suggestions. But even with the mounting difficulty, I had the board out of the box, mounted, and connected to a computer in less than an hour.
The SoftBoard sells for $2995 with a mounting kit, eight coded pens (two each of red, green, blue, and black), an eraser, a cable, and SBRECORD/SBVIEW software either for the PC under Windows or for the Mac. That price is high only when compared
to a standard mute whiteboard or a software whiteboarding package--it compares favorably to whiteboards with built-in copiers and is far more versatile.
The Windows SBREMOTE software will sell for an additional $290. If you want the standard software for both PC and Mac platforms, the second platform will cost you $190. Supply costs are reasonable. A box of four pens goes for $7.95, and 12 boxes for $90. Erasers are either $9.95 or $4.95, depending on whether you replace the whole eraser or just the felt pad.
AT&T Paradyne's DataPort 2001
The DataPort 2001 Multimedia Communicator isn't the first 14.4-Kbps data/fax modem in AT&T's family of DataPort modems. But it is the first to use AT&T's VoiceSpan technology, which lets you simultaneously talk and transfer data over the same phone line. VoiceSpan employs a single DSP to encode both voice and data signals.
Putting both signals on one line has benefits for almost any type of person-to-person communications session. Say, for example, th
at you're talking with a sales manager across the country and she requests a current copy of your product price list. If you both have a computer and modem attached to second phone lines, you can continue your conversation while the computers move the data. If a second line is not available, you have to hang up the phone and then set up the data connection, and if one of you isn't familiar with your communications package, the other can't help.
With phones connected through two DataPort 2001 modems, it's another story. Anytime during a voice call, you can set up communications software to dial out on one computer and answer calls on the other. At the calling end, the DataPort modem pretends to dial out, returning the signals necessary to keep the communications program satisfied. At the answering end, the other DataPort modem pretends to answer the call, also providing any necessary signals to the software. Even though you have been talking on the line the whole time, the two software packages think th
ey have established a connection on an idle line.
In cases where you have established the data call first, you simply pick up a phone at one end to talk. This causes the DataPort 2001 modem on the other end to make ringing sounds, prompting the other person to pick up the phone. The modems maintain the data connection while you talk. The DataPort 2001's ability to make both voice and data connections will work transparently with most software and on any computing platform. I tried it with PCs, Macs, and a dedicated Canon word processor, with no problems.
The only catch is that you can't send data at 14.4 Kbps and talk at the same time. Data transfers at 14.4 Kbps require most of the available bandwidth on a standard telephone line. Adding a simultaneous voice channel eats into that bandwidth, so when a full-duplex voice channel is active, the maximum data rate drops to 4800 bps.
In some situations, you don't need a full-duplex phone connection. If, for example, you're using the DataPort t
o transmit a sales presentation to a remote site, the presenter will need to talk, but the person on the other end of the line will only be listening. If you want full 14.4-Kbps speed for a data transfer, you can disable voice transmission from your end with a hook flash (i.e., a quick press of your phone's hook switch). The other person can continue both to talk and to transmit data at full speed. You can reestablish your ability to talk with another hook flash.
The only problems you may encounter with combined voice and data communications are a little bit of echo in the voice channel and configuring your application to talk to the modem. Like other high-speed modems, the DataPort 2001 can generate some unusual status messages that communications software may not understand without configuration.
AT&T bundles the DataPort 2001 with a version of DataBeam's FarSite for Windows, a typical electronic whiteboard program. In a nutshell, an electronic whiteboard connects two machines by modem, or two
or more machines over a LAN. (The bundled FarSite doesn't provide LAN support.) Using the simple drawing tools provided, you can pen a flowchart, sketch a design on-screen, or annotate a preexisting image. The other participant in the "meeting" can see the drawing happen in real time and make additions, too.
FarSite tools consist of predrawn bit maps (called slides) and line, circle, rectangle, and text tools that work in many colors and sizes. Slides can come from just about anywhere, and the program supports a dozen different import formats, including PCX, TIFF, Windows or OS/2 BMP, EPS, and GIF. Either end of the connection can load a slide, grab an annotation tool, and point out salient features.
You can, for example, create a graph in Excel, grab the screen, paste it into a slide, and then save it as part of a FarSite slide tray. Later, when you establish the connection to another FarSite machine, a click or two on the mouse transmits the slide across the connection. You can then draw a c
ircle around an important data point, or indicate it with the pointer tool. Coupled with the simultaneous voice capability of the DataPort 2001, FarSite is a very effective application.
Drawing to a Close
Microfield's SoftBoard is a sophisticated input device that lets you make presentations to large groups or brainstorm ideas and then print them out, play them back, or send them electronically to colleagues who can't physically attend a meeting. I find a whiteboard pen to be an incredibly empowering drawing device, letting me think much better than I can when trying to sketch with a mouse.
Using whiteboard software is an effective way to teleconference without wasting the bandwidth (and expense) of a video connection. Two sites can effectively develop ideas cooperatively on an inexpensive voice-grade phone line. AT&T's DataPort 2001 allows you to establish this connection between any two asynchronous computers, regardless of platform, without sacrificing voice communication or using two phon
e connections.
With the combination of the SoftBoard and a voice/data modem like AT&T's DataPort 2001, you can connect your remote offices to in-house meetings with no more trouble than simply calling from a speakerphone.
The Facts
DataPort 2001 $535
(includes DataBeam's FarSite software)
AT&T Paradyne
8545 126th Ave. N
Largo, FL 34643
(813) 530-2000
fax: (813) 530-2875
SoftBoard $2995
(includes SBRECORD and SBVIEW software; SBREMOTE remote-access software for Windows is a $290 option)
Microfield Graphics, Inc.
9825 Southwest Sunshine Court
Beaverton, OR 97005
(800) 334-4922
(503) 626-9393
fax: (503) 641-9333
Photograph: Each of the SoftBoard's pens has a specially encoded reflective collar so the laser can identify the pen and determine its color. The larger eraser uses a similar reflective surface.
Photograph: Microfield Graphics' SoftBoard, a porcelain/steel whiteboar
d, uses lasers to scan the surface and report any pen activity to an attached computer. Included Windows or Macintosh software converts your drawings into viewable images.
Illustration: Infrared lasers in the two upper corners of the SoftBoard each emit a beam onto a five-faceted mirror spinning at 5000 rpm. The reflected beams effectively scan the entire surface of the board 416 times each second. Any beam hitting a special reflective surface on one of the erasable marking pens or on the felt eraser bounces back and is picked up by a photodiode. A 40-MHz DSP notes the rotation angle of the mirror and uses that information to determine the beam deflection angle. Comparing the angles from both laser/mirror/diode systems, the DSP triangulates the object's position. Bar-coded patterns on the pen tips let the DSP figure out the pen color.
Illustration: Microfield supplies software (Windows version shown) that captures the data from the SoftBoard, displays it on-screen, and
saves it for future playback. The software controls simulate a VCR and allow the drawing to be played back at any speed, forward or backward, and let you print the image to any Windows-compatible printer. With SBREMOTE, an optional program, you can transmit an image as it's drawn to a remote site over any high-speed asynchronous modem.
Illustration: A version of DataBeam's FarSite, a whiteboard application, comes bundled with AT&T's DataPort 2001 and complements the DataPort's voice/data capability. FarSite allows two computers to share a simulated whiteboard, transferring drawn graphics and pre-made slides over a modem connection.
Photograph: AT&T Paradyne's DataPort 2001 is a 14.4-Kbps fax/data modem that can combine voice and data into one simultaneous connection. It allows you to send someone a file or a remote presentation and talk with him or her at the same time.
Howard Eglowstein is a BYTE testing editor. You can reach him through the Int
ernet or on BIX at
heglowstein@bix.com
.
Almost as Good as Being There
