Wednesday, August 6, 2014

At Last, a Document Camera Solution for Chromebooks

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

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