Hybrid in person & virtual meetings

As we move towards restrictions being eased, we are seeing a demand to hold hybrid ward council with half at the chapel and half at home.

Having attempted this with ordinary webcam, laptop and TV, it was quickly apparent that the technology was not up to scratch to adequately capture all of the participants in a room when they are socially distancing from each other and the microphone situation is even worse, especially with face masks being worn.

We've reverted back to everyone joining virtually for the mean time but I wonder if a 360 degree conference camera is a solution and may have several other applications such as hybrid seminary and classes.

Having looked into both the Meeting Owl Pro and the Kandao Meeting Pro, they both seem hassle free to set up and use. Essentially just place them in the middle of the room and let the smart algorithms do their job for speech and face tracking etc.

Initial cost is high just to test out whether it will resolve the issues previously faced. Has anyone else experimented with anything similar?

Kandao has the advantage that it doesn't need to be connected to a laptop to communicate with zoom, it has it's own android OS built in so it can just be connected to power, TV, ethernet or wifi and away it goes.

Meeting Owl seems to have more support and firmware updates seem to be improving the utilisation of the hardware as the months go by.

Any thoughts, experience or other input welcome.

Our new ward clerk complained about the poor audio quality during ward council. One of the problems is due to them positioning the webcam on one side of the Relief Society room, while those present are scattered around the other side of the Relief Society room. For some reason, those with the loudest voices sit closest to the webcam, while those with the softest voices sit in the far corners of the room.

When I was the ward clerk, I tried to position the webcam as close as possible to the people present. I also used Logi Capture to do a digital zoom as I pointed the webcam at whoever was talking. I still had problems picking up the soft voices in the far corners of the room.

A separate microphone on a long cable might work if those present sat in a circle, with the microphone in the center. However, we then must worry about the position of the camera and the TV/monitor. There is no perfect solution.

Some folks think we need a "more sensitive" microphone, but that just picks up more noise. Microphones must be placed as close as possible to the people speaking.

Yes, we've experienced exactly what you're talking about. Quietest people at the back!

We tried using the mevo start camera in webcam mode which has much better microphones than a typical webcam/laptop.
It was k but still not sufficient. A blue yeti USB condensor mic was borrowed from another member to see how that would cope.

Just as you say, adding a more sensitive mic just picked up every little bit of noise, including all the unwanted stuff. Turn the gain down and lose the voices. Really need something that has vocal noise cancelling algorithms built in to deal with the situation.

Most boardroom solutions are enterprise grade with those kind of prices. Unfeasible for a ward budget.

My stake bought a webcam and a USB speakerphone for each meetinghouse

On Amazon:
USB Speakerphone -M0 Conference Speaker for 4 People Business Conference Phone 360° Voice Pickup 4 AI Microphones USB Skype Speakerphone Conference Call Speaker Plug and Play

I told our STS that I didn't see a need for one of these speakerphones in my meetinghouse, but I may have been mistaken, judging from the poor audio quality in ward council meetings.

Since I declined the speakerphone for my ward, I've never seen one in action. It's just a microphone after all, with all the limitations we have previously discussed. The only advantage is that it is separate from the camera.

After a brief look at some YouTube reviews and sound comparisons, it seems that many of these devices perform similarly despite the wild variation in price.

One that stands out as having some magic DSP is the plantronic calisto 7200. Some of the samples from that are actually really great.

It's a big investment though relatively speaking.

Wattsuk wrote:It's a big investment though relatively speaking.

The question that has to be asked is how permanent are hybrid meetings going to be? It doesn't seem wise to spend a lot of money if the equipment is just going to sit on the shelf within 6 months.

That answer is going to be different for different wards. I'm sure some would like to continue hybrid meetings - even if their ward is one of those that are just 5 square blocks. But that may not be sufficient justification for the cost.

Agreed. When faced with the expense of a speakerphone, our bishop is favoring returning to in-person ward council meetings, and discontinuing the use of Zoom for them.

Some development that may interest others if this is an issue for their local unit.

Before investing in a new solution, I collected together equipment that is either owned by the local unit or personally owned.
I took everything to trial in the room that is most likely to be used for seminary and ward council.

The following video is the result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1BkaB0wNRY

Sorry that it's a bit long and not really concise.

My personal conclusion is that a wide angle USB camera such as a huddly go or something similar coupled with a USB boundary microphone is a decent solution without spending fortunes.

This could easily be replicated by others with virtually no technical know how.

As mentioned above, the issue we are facing here may not be an issue at all for many others.

Our stake spent a couple of hours looking at past solutions and narrowed down what we prefer. We've settled on an answer:

We're going to separate face-to-face and virtual into different meetings. For those wanting virtual 2nd hour meetings, we will have the stake offer these instead of the ward. For those wanting face-to-face 2nd hour meetings, those in the congregation for the 1st hour just stay and move to an appropriate room for their 2nd hour class.

If a ward does want to merge their face-to-face with virtual, we will put them in the chapel, re-use the same hardware, broadcast only via YouTube with very low latency, and have an assistant accept questions via text messaging.

That's an interesting solution for 2nd hour classes and similar to what we may end up with. I guess suitability for that approach will vary from stake to stake and even ward to ward.

Where we are, the law currently prohibits us from meeting in person for our 2nd hour classes but leadership meetings and sacrament meetings are allowed.

In about 6 weeks time we will have to cross that bridge of possible hybrid 2nd hour classes. The hope is that most members will return to in person meetings by that date and perhaps it will be a non issue.

The current strategy being developed is that primary and youth classes will be in person only and the adult classes will be live streamed, similar to what you have planned in your stake.

Leadership meetings and early morning seminary is likely to be an ongoing issue for us here. I don't expect that will change in the next few months or years. I think we are at a 'new normal' with this as travel does make things difficult.