As more and more school districts deploy or plan to deploy
Chromebooks, a stumbling-block has come up: How do you connect a document
camera to a Chromebook?
Traditional document cameras have VGA or HDMI output
connectors and can’t be connected to Chromebooks. Newer document cameras may have USB out which
can be connected to a Chromebook, but unless the document camera incorporates
the right kind of video interface and has a web-based version of its software
it won’t function with Chromebooks.
The HoverCam has a solution.
Our Solo 8 document camera has USB out and is engineered to
output an uncompressed YUV video signal which is Chromebook compatible. So, it’s easy to plug the HoverCam Solo 8 into
the USB port of a Chromebook and to have an image appear on the Chromebook
screen. Furthermore, we have released a
web-based version of our HoverCam Flex software called HoverCam FlexWeb, allowing users to control a HoverCam document
camera and its functions via a standard Internet web browser.
Functions supported via a web browser using FlexWeb include
taking snapshots, scanning, recording video, live zoom, panning, annotation and
more. To make the Chromebook and
HoverCam combination wireless, simply connect Google’s Chromecast dongle to the
HDMI input of a projector or large screen display. Using Chromecast, the HoverCam’s camera image
may be displayed without a cable from the Chromebook to the projector or flat screen.
HoverCam FlexWeb is available without charge to registered
HoverCam customers and may be accessed from http://hovercamflex.com/ For additional information about the HoverCam, please visit www.thehovercam.com