• Macquarie Home »
• Faculty of Science and Engineering »
• Intranet »
• Room booking »
• Videoconference

Access Grid Room - Video Conferencing

The Access Grid Room is a meeting room, fitted out with high quality audio and visual equipment, designed for video conferencing. The facility is located in E7B G.85.

The main purpose of the facility is to provide distance teaching to students of the university; however the room is also available for hire and can be used to participate in, or host, access grid events. Technicians will be available to support you during a booked event.

Technical Information

The main display area is 1.25m by 5m providing a large canvas to view remote site video streams. There are 4 video cameras active within the room to capture the presenter and audience, and a array of 6 microphones fitted within the room allows all participants the opportunity to hold a discussion with remote sites. Echo cancelling hardware actively cleans audio and cuts down on echo and feedback.

• Seats approximately 30 in rows, or 10 around conference table.
• 1.25m by 5m primary video display area
• Rear projection video whiteboard (can be used with accessgrid / tigerboard to create a shared drawing space)
• 4 remotely operated video cameras
• Unobtrusive ceiling miked room
• Broadband internet access

Access Grid Events

Access Grid is a video conferencing software application this facility was designed for. It provides a many to many relationship between geographically distant sites, allowing them to share a video conferencing environment. Each site can send audio and multiple video streams, while simultaneously receiving many audio and video streams from remote sites.

Additional information about the Access Grid software can be obtained from www.accessgrid.org

Our Access Grid node listing can be viewed here http://www.accessgrid.org/node/1196

One to One Video Interviews - Skype Events

On a smaller scale we can set up a Skype video conference. This might be more appropriate for an interview and is easier for the remote site to setup. Skype uses voip (voice over ip) technology for audio calls, and now supports webcams. www.skype.com

Hardware H.323 - IP Conferencing

H.323 is a protocol for video conferencing that is generally used by hardware devices, manufacturers such as polycom, Tandberg, and VCON. We can connect to these video calls although it is not our preferred technology.

Other software

Various other software packages can be used, for example we have used to varying levels applications such as: VNC, ooVoo, evo, and more. If you would like to use these or another application, let us know and we will do our best to arrange it for you

How to get started

The Calendar can be used as a guide to find available timeslots. However, it is only a guide so please do not assume the room will be available based solely on the calendar. The following form can be used to provide us with some information about the proposed event. Please contact John Porte or Nanette Bertoldo for booking details.

[Edit page]