The Meeting Owl is an in one 360 degree camera and microphone for web conferencing meetings and small class meetings. It connects to your computer with a usb input and it requires a separate A/C power connection. As you can see when powered on it physically looks like an Owl, hence the name. It is designed for live recordings for meetings and video conferencing and it is compatible with both Panopto and Zoom.
Ideally you would position the Owl in the middle of a conference table to capture all of the subjects using it’s 360 wide angle camera lens. The nice thing about the Owl is that if you have more than one person talking around a table it will automatically change the view to show who is speaking at that moment. There is a volume control built into the body of the Owl, but otherwise all other settings are handled internally. The newest version of the Meeting Owl Pro requires an app to be downloaded to your phone in order to use it with Zoom and Panopto. After plugging in the usb cable and power cable you’ll just need to remember to change the video and audio settings to the Owl in the software you are using for the video conference.
To learn more about the Owl conference kits and how to integrate them into your teaching , please contact us at inmediad@lehigh.edu.
| Meeting Owl App Instructions: | |
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| 1) When you first connect the Owl to Zoom, the video won't display. Instead it will tell you that you need to download the Owl Meeting app to get started. Download the app from either the Apple Store or the Google play store depending on your device. |
| 2) Launch the app and click ok to allow the Meeting Owl to use bluetooth to scan for nearby devices. |
| 3) Optional: You can also allow to the Owl to send you notifications to your phone if you'd like. |
| 4) The bluetooth scan should find the Meeting Owl Pro called DMS #2. |
| 5) Once connected you will be presented with two Meeting Control options. One is for Camera Controls and the other the Pro Connect feature to pair two Owl Pros together. |
| 6) Before looking at the Meeting Control options please makes sure that the Meeting Owl Pro is selected for the Zoom video. |
| 7) Also select the Meeting Owl Pro for the speaker and microphone if you would like to use the device for each of these functions. |
| 8) From the app select Camera Controls. |
| 9) Next choose Camera Lock and Zoom. |
| 10) Click take control to enter the manual camera controls. |
| 11) Swipe and drag the framing box to change the camera position. The slider on the bottom controls the level of zoom on the camera. Clicking reset to Auto Focus will return the settings back to normal. Click back when done.
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| 12) Note that in Zoom there will be a flattened view of the entire 360 video at the top of your video. If you wish to remove this you can toggle off the switch for 360 degree Pano. Click back when done.
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| 13) Other app features include the Pro Connect option which allows you to connect multiple Owl Pro's together for use in a single meeting.
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| 14) Finally, in the Features & Settings menu the Owl offers Meeting Analytics and software updates and WiFi setting changes under About Your Owl. Analytics are shared to the Owl servers for help in making improvements to the software for future releases. |
