Kristy Leclerc:

Good morning everybody. We’ll just wait a few minutes to wait for some people to login and then we’ll get started, so just hold tight and we’ll get started shortly. For those still logging in, we’re just waiting a few minutes for everybody to login, so we’ll get this started very shortly.

Still just waiting a couple more, I reckon about 30 more seconds and we’ll get this started. I can see you guys are already using the chat icons. I love it. All right, let’s get this show started.

Good morning everybody. Thank you for joining today’s webinar, The Modern Meeting Space with Logitech and Extron. My name is Kristy. I’m the marketing specialist at Logitech, and I’ll be the moderator today for the duration of this webinar.

I just wanted to start with some quick housekeeping.

• If you have any questions, please use the Q&A button icon. You’ll see it down the bottom of your screen. It’s easier for us to keep track of all the questions coming through.
  Feel free to chat between yourselves, but any questions, make sure that comes through that icon.
• When you signed on this morning, it may have said this meeting is being recorded. This is for marketing purposes. We can’t see you, so your face won’t be visible in the recording, so don’t freak out too much.

Now, I will hand it over the speakers and get them to introduce themselves. We’ve got Ibby and Christian. Ibby, do you want to start us off?

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah. Why not? Coming live from the Extron office here in Brisbane. For the people who haven’t met me, my name is Ibrahim Kader. I’m the Business Development Manager here in Queensland. I work in the Logitech business team and we have a national team around the country that provide Logitech hardware and also room solutions in all segments of the market.

We first launched our one-touch join device in 2016, and it was a great success. And since then, a lot has changed in the meeting room space. In 2018, we launched or announced our Tap device, Logitech Tap device. And in 2019, we launched that in the Australian market, and that’s our latest one-touch join device. It also comes in three platforms, so Google, Teams or Microsoft and Zoom.

The great thing about the device, it’s versatile. It will fit many room sizes and shapes, can be mounted on walls, tables, etc.

The other benefit of the device – obviously the modern day room is ever changing. We have been working closely with Extron since 2018 and they’re a global partner of ours to provide room control for the device as well, which enhances the experience overall.

I guess while we’re here today, Christian is the man of the hour. We obviously want to know a bit more about Extron, who they are and how we work with them, and what benefit that is to clients and resellers.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah.

Ibrahim Kader:

Christian, who’s Extron and what do you do?

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. Probably just to introduce myself, my name is Christian Bighi. I’m the national sales manager for Extron Australia. Very similar to Logitech and, Ibby, we’ve got a national presence throughout the country. So, looking at sales and technical services and then we also have the logistical department sitting in Adelaide.

Yeah, our partnership has been running since early 2019 first meeting you in terms of understanding how the Logitech SmartDock and Tap devices work. Obviously, we’ve transitioned into the Tap device. I look at that partnership in terms of how we can better the experience for our clients from a control and automation aspect and how we facilitate these products.

If you’re not aware of really who Extron are, just a quick little overview on who Extron is. We’re an electronics manufacturer. We started in the early ’80s. We’ve been developing technology for the audiovisual industry since the early ’80s.

Anything from video distribution, audio products, digital signal processes, amplifiers, speakers, going into control and automation systems and really bringing control into a lot of our product sets. That’s really been a key focus for us in the last few years and integrating and partnerships with companies like yourself. That’s really what we’re all about is developing and bettering the experience for a lot of our customers in that range.

Yeah, global company. We’ve got around 5,000 owned products, so we really try and look after multiple verticals, whether you’re a government organization or education. The one real vertical we don’t look after is the consumer or residential market. A lot of our products or most all of our products are built for 24/7 operation.

We really sort of sit in that professional range. For us, we kind of see ourselves as the glue of the industry. I think some of the few things we don’t manufacture are source devices and displays, but we normally find is the in between product in terms of bettering the experience, trying to integrate more solutions or services within a meeting space. Yeah, that’s sort of just a quick little overview of who we are. Yeah, thanks for coming through [our office].

It’s quite an interesting space. We use this as our sort of training and demonstration space. I suppose one of the luxuries we have working for Extron is we can constantly change the space depending on the needs. Yeah, it’s great to sort of set up this webinar and have the ability to stream this out globally really.

Ibrahim Kader:

And we’re keeping the 1.5  [metres]. Yeah.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah, we’re keeping our distance.

Luckily, things are easing out here for us in Australia. Yeah, business as usual for us really.

Ibrahim Kader:

No, it’s fantastic. Look, the biggest question I get and a lot of discussion I get around is room design. Obviously, a lot of our products, Rally kits and Tap kits, we’ve got obviously turnkey solutions. Essentially, it’s really easy to get online and start a VC call. But then it’s all about cabling and how that runs from the front of the screen to the table. Where does room design come into play? Should we be considering that? Or should our clients be considering that early on? And then where do you come in and assist in that process?

Christian Bighi:

I mean, I personally always say that room design starts from outside the boardroom or outside of that space. It’s really understanding what your client requirements are. We’ll generally talk to end users about approaching a consultant for instance, getting someone in to really look at the scope and understand what the facility requires.

Every business is different in how they operate as a business and how they collaborate with their employees. That’s one thing we find with this Logitech partnership is really trying to build a solution starting from outside that meeting space and looking at things like room scheduling panels is a great example.

How can we carry that experience of users approaching a room, understanding whether rooms [are] available or not and bring that in? I think once you step into the meeting room, it’s that science of understanding good room acoustics. Lighting is really important. And then understanding I suppose physical distancing between where our users are sitting based on the display, etc. There’s quite a lot to take into consideration, and I think that’s one of the strengths that Extron has is we have the ability to provide so many different options in how we build these solutions.

One of the beauty – or one of the beautiful – sort of relationship structures that we have with Logitech is the fact that we have this piece of glass called the Logitech Tap, and it’s really just furthering the experience of your MTR or Zoom Room experience and sort of facilitating more functionality out of this device.

We’re seeing more and more customers looking for a one-touch device in a room that can sort of manage all of the experience for them in the rooms that they’re not sort of communicating to multiple different panels within a room to provide AV control or their lighting control, blinds, etc.

We actually run a very similar setup in our office. We use a Logitech Tap as well internally. Just do a couple of presets. I can sort of go through how we sort of set it up in our environments. Yeah, our approach to the modern meeting space is really identifying the customer and understanding what their requirements are.

I think from a Logitech partnership perspective, you’ve got a really good solution for the general huddle rooms, large conference rooms. We’re just trying to better that experience and looking at that sort of customization of what our clients are requiring.

Ibrahim Kader:

It’s great that obviously you brought up the synchronization with the MTR or the Zoom Room interface as well. That’s key, because the last thing we want is a whole bunch of remote controls when we’re trying to turn things on and off. So, that seamless synchronization with the Tap device, whether it be placed on the table or wall, is fantastic.

A couple of the other things I get, and we probably run into this a lot, is cable lengths. I’ve been to a couple of sites when we’ve had USB cables installed, and they’re either not the right type of cable or the length, HDMI cables, Ethernet cable, all that sort of stuff. Are there standards that … Obviously, you’re the AV expert, so obviously, there’s standards over cable and runtime.

Christian Bighi:

Well, it’s quite interesting. If you look at HDMI, it’s a great example. There’s not really an industry standard. It’s more of a specification. We all conform to the HDMI specification. You ask anybody what is the furthest run that they can get out of an HDMI cable, that number always changes because technically there is no standard. There’s actually no format of how long we can run a cable.

I mean, Extron, we’ve got cabling that exceeds 20 odd metres high. However, we’ve got to look at bandwidth rates, resolutions, frame rates that we’re trying to achieve. We design these amazing rooms and there’s a cost associated to all of this equipment. We generally see the biggest failure is coming out of the cabling, because that’s sort of something that gets … It’s sort of an afterthought. The guys are going in, laying down the cabling, and we sort of see that’s generally the issue that we find on site is cabling.

One thing we always try and tell our customers is go through on the Extron website. We’ve got a whole lot of online training that we offer through the website. It sort of goes through …

Ibrahim Kader:

That’s for both seller and end users, clients?

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. Whether resellers, end users, consultants, so anybody that wants to join as an Extron insider, Extron takes a lot of time and effort to build a really informative website. Anything from product information, training videos, white papers, understanding the difference between HDMI specification to other cabling technology. USBC is another very great example as well.

Ibrahim Kader:

You obviously got extenders that can help assist with requirements and requirements.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. There definitely obviously comes a certain point where your typical copper cable or HDMI or USB cable needs to exceed a certain length based on the size of the room as a great example. That’s where we can start utilizing some of our chipsets to actually extend the length of that cable. We pretty much do a digital conversion to Ethernet and we can extend that to 100 metres.

We also do a whole range of fibre extension solutions as well. If you’re trying to exceed that 100 metre rule of thumb for HDBaseT or Ethernet, we can definitely achieve that. Yeah.

Ibrahim Kader:

No, it’s fantastic. One of the other big questions I sort of come across as well, and I’m sure the rest of the team – national team – come across is BYO. Obviously, the Tap is a dedicated room device, whether it’s an MTR, it’s a Teams Room device, or a Skype Room device, or a Zoom Room device.

And then obviously, there’s a client that wants to use another UC another platform. They’re walking in with their notebook, but then they want to connect to all the camera and the interface. Obviously, we’re presenting here on our Rally system today. We’ve got the 4K Rally Camera with the mic pods and hubs.

How do we tap into that and do that seamlessly without having to disconnect cabling from the Tap device, it’s already installed in the room? The last thing you want to do is have cables everywhere and then it gets left like that for the next meeting. What are some solutions that Extron could provide?

Christian Bighi:

Exactly. When we look at the design ethos, we generally look at the cable connectivity. And looking at BYOD connectivity as a great example. Connecting to the Tap device to present to your MTR space. You’re getting your video contents through or what you’re presenting through the MTR system.

And how do we actually allow other users that aren’t familiar with MTR? Or they’re potentially using Zoom or WebEx or any other sort of UC ecosystem? How can they bring in their own device and not have to rely on the MTR or Zoom Room setup that you have running through the Logitech Tap?

We can quite easily achieve this using a range of our USB switches. And we’ve got a lot of little smarts running in the backend that sort of monitors their input status. So, it’s just a matter of bringing in your own device, plugging in a USB cable from our cable boxes, and then this will make that automatic transition from your MTR computer device in the room and switches that over to what you’re actually running on your BYOD device.

They’re running something very similar in our room currently. We’re quite lucky working for Extron that we run Microsoft Teams and Zoom Room. And we’ve got two computer devices that manage MTR and Zoom Room, but we only have one Tap device. We also do that sort of similar type of transitioning in the room.

It’s definitely achievable. I think one of the benefits we have is we can customize it and tailor it based on our client’s needs. If you’re sitting in a large boardroom where you potentially have multiple areas of where people are sitting or trying to collaborate, we can provide multiple connection points for people or users to bypass the MTR system, and potentially use their rally system or meetup system and bypass the whole Tap solution, and allow them to use their own device.

Ibrahim Kader:

I obviously have seen this in action. The great thing about it is it’s just easy to just connect that BYO device. It automatically then connects back to a room. So, one-touch room console device.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. It’s one of the luxuries of – I suppose – Extron products is there’s a lot happening within the boxes. Even though it’s a gray box, there’s a lot happening within that box and we can detect presence happening in that device.

The minute you connect your USB device, we can actually monitor that input and make that switch across. You have it disconnect, and we lose that sort of firewall going through, we can actually reconnect back to your Tap system.

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah, that’s great, and it’s seamless, right? That’s the big thing. A lot of our clients – obviously the C-level executives that are using boardrooms – they just want to walk in, be able to connect the cable, and automatically then presents as a secondary platform.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. I think if you haven’t seen the sort of excellent control interface within the Tap, we’ve actually set up a second camera in this room. Happy to sort of show the audience what that sort of looks like in terms of how you go from your traditional MTR sort of UI control space.

Ibrahim Kader:

That’s another one, right? How do we have the one Tap device that we can run a Zoom Room and also an MTR or Teams Room platform without bringing a device into the room? We’ve got a perfect scenario set up here. We’ve got a few cameras that are behind the scenes that show you that.

Christian Bighi:

I’m going to go –

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah. Do you want to do the demo? The demo is being done on the Tap device. Apologies if there’s any glare on the Tap device that’s coming through. We’ll try and turn the lighting off, but Christian will actually show some of the room control features on the actual device. So, I’ll just switch video to the BRIO.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. This is currently the Tap device we have connected. It’s actually currently running on the wall mount version as well.

You’ll notice it’s an MTR system. As usual, you jump straight into your team’s device. Once you load up the Extron MSI [that is] installed onto the device, it actually enables this little settings tab.

The minute you select that – the first thing I’m actually going to do, because you’ll probably notice there’s a bit of a glare coming through from the lighting in the room, is I’ll just go into the lighting and pretty much just disable all of the lighting through our Tap device. This is where we see a lot of benefit for our customers. We’re not saying remove the light switch out of an environment, but we can start creating presets. Again, just simplifying the whole process and aligning.

Ibrahim Kader:

That’s right. And is that a map of this room? Is that the lights in this room?

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. This is actually just the little floorplan of our whole office. We’ve got some LED strip lighting, which are sort of squiggly lines you can see in the centre, and then we’ve just zoned it out, so we actually have different lighting zones that we’ve created.

Notice at the bottom as well, we’ve got full control of our access control into the building. We’ve integrated that into the Tap as well. If I start going into room mode – so we use this space for training purposes, demonstrations, and then for video conferencing as well. We’ve created these sort of three presets within the device. You’ll notice we’ve got our basic demonstration set up where we can switch between whether it’s free to air, wireless presenting or DVD player, etc.

Training just gives a little bit more flexibility in terms of how we switch devices through the system.

Ibrahim Kader:

We just got someone commenting on the text – “I can’t read the text on the screen”.

Christian Bighi:

Oh, yeah. I apologise for that. I think it’s – obviously the cameras aren’t the biggest fans of trying to focus in … Maybe if I switch on one of the lights.

Ibrahim Kader:

Is that better, whoever that person brought up that comment?

Christian Bighi:

Cameras always struggle with because it’s technically light emitting out of the display into the camera, so it’s better.

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah, it’s better. Yeah, the guy just said it’s better. Great. Okay.

Christian Bighi:

And then you get into video conference, so like I mentioned earlier, we run Microsoft Teams and Zoom into this environment.

Ibrahim Kader:

So we’re running Teams Room right now?

Christian Bighi:

Right now, actually, we are bypassing it. The reason we’re bypassing it is … we can actually show the demo and it doesn’t affect the webinar.

Okay, go into Zoom and then all of a sudden, I’ve got my full Zoom user interface. What’s happening in the backend is we’re making all of that USB switching available to the Zoom Room PC. We’ve got all of that available, goes through the meeting lists, etc. Nothing changes, it’s the same one panel within the room. Yeah, it’s just a nice little demonstration in terms of showing you guys how we use Tap internally.

Ibrahim Kader:

That’s fantastic. All right, we’ll bring the video back onto us. Chris, we might pause there. If you got any questions on things so far we’ve discussed and obviously, we’ve gone through quite a bit and we’ve only got an hour, so we’re trying to sort of cram in a lot of topics that we obviously have on the agenda.

Kristy Leclerc:

Yeah, no, definitely. We’ll go through some of the questions.

“Hi, any update on Ethernet options for connectivity between Tap and not?”

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah. Okay. Great question. So today, obviously, the Tap connects via the PC through a Logitech strong cable. Essentially, it’s an optical cable; maximum distance at this present time is 10 metres. There is some future development on Tap, and there will be some announcements this year regarding connectivity between PC and Tap. That’s all I can really say at this stage, but look … we’re a company that does a lot of R&D around meeting spaces, devices, how that interacts with other devices in the room. We’re always evolving our devices and increasing the functionality of our devices in most meeting rooms, so yeah.

Kristy Leclerc:

Perfect. Also, I’ll take this opportunity – please use the Q&A button just for questions, not the comments. If you have comments, please put it in the chat icon just so we can clearly get through all of the questions.

Some more questions.

“Is Extron Queensland Government approved? Do you know?”

Christian Bighi:

Well, Extron sort of sits more as a manufacturer. I think when you start looking at those sort of questions, it’s sort of more directed towards integrators and resellers that are approved to work with Queensland Government.

For instance, with Department of Defense, we have a whole range of products that are different defense-approved and sit on the defense-approved hardware list. Yeah, we comply to – from an international standards, we comply to pretty much most requirements set out by whether it’s government organisations or defense. Yeah, we do quite a bit of business with Queensland governments and Queensland Health. Yeah, no issues there.

Kristy Leclerc:

No, perfect. This is from Andrew Phillips.

“What is the solution for the meeting room in use external to the meeting room?”

Ibrahim Kader:

[Do you want to] answer the question?

What are we using currently? Maybe?

Kristy Leclerc:

What is the solution for the meeting/room in use, external to the meeting room?

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah, I can’t – I’m not sure about the question. I don’t know. Christian, can you …

Christian Bighi:

No.

Ibrahim Kader:

So, what we’re using currently today is we’re using a Rally system. A medium kit – or a large kit I should say. We’ve got speakers in front of the room, dual mics. We had a mic set up obviously on the right hand side where the Tap was set up.

We did originally have the Tap connected to this meeting webinar, but Christian couldn’t then show the switching between the Zoom and Teams Room meeting.

Essentially, we’ve got a Tap setup in here with a Rally, etc, if that’s what we’re being asked. We’re currently using Christian’s notebook to drive the meeting, if that’s the question. Yeah.

Christian Bighi:

We generally send … With a space like this, because we’re doing so many live demonstrations for our customers, we do a lot of pilot examples. So, customers will come to us and tell us this is their sort of requirement, and we’ll try and assist them as far as possible to try and build a pilot room within the space as well, so that they can at least experience what they’re trying to get out of their solution.

Going back to that earlier question in terms of the meeting room outside of the meeting room, I don’t know if it may have pointed towards–

Kristy Leclerc:

Yeah. He’s just come back with, “The panel mentioned at the start of the meeting to determine what the upcoming meetings–”

Christian Bighi:

Ah yes. Yeah, so that’s looking at room scheduling.

Ibrahim Kader:

Oh, right. Yeah.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. So from a room scheduling perspective …

Ibrahim Kader:

There’s two ways, right? One is through the actual panel itself in the room, so [it will] obviously show you the meetings through the Teams Room device through the Tap. The Tap will actually show the schedule of meetings that have been booked to the Tap device directly, whether it’s a Zoom meeting or a Teams meeting. And then, outside your room so you don’t have to knock on the door to see if anyone is actually using the room, Extron can provide a solution which will work in with the Tap solution.

Christian Bighi:

What happens from outside the room? We’ve got a range of panels whether you’re looking at a five, seven or 10-inch panel that you mount outside the meeting room. It’s got all your different little indication lights whether the room is available or not. But the idea around that is that’s just looking at your MTR experience in the backend. They’ve got a bit of smarts built into them as well; we can actually hook up occupancy sensors within the room. So, if someone does end up booking a meeting space and no one actually enters that space and that space is left available and someone has pretty much just double booked it, or were not using the space at all, we can set timers on that. If there’s no activity happening in the room for, let’s say, five or 10 minutes, that will actually send a signal back to your calendar interface to say, “Well, no one’s actually entered the room – cancel the meeting.” So there’s a certain customization level available with room scheduling panels as well. Yeah, definitely –

Ibrahim Kader:

I did notice that there was a room that we did together, and there was a sign, and it lit up red or green to say the room is occupied or unoccupied.

Christian Bighi:

That’s the idea. With your general workplace, you’ve got at least – sort of – five to 10 meeting spaces on every floor. If you want to see if a meeting room is available, you don’t want to have to walk to each room to see the rooms available. You can kind of just look down the corridor and see if there’s a green light available and sort of approach it. You can actually book those meetings directly from the panel as well. Or generally, users will actually book it from their own device.

Ibrahim Kader:

There’s obviously a lot of buildings getting built in Brisbane. I’m based up here, so I know there’s a lot of skyscrapers going up. Obviously, a lot of green buildings. Now, you talked about rooms that aren’t being used, and talked about a proximity sensor. Obviously, air conditioning and lightning can be turned on and off, so that you’re not consuming energy in that space. Obviously, in the long term, that could be a saving for an organization in costs.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. If you look over the new buildings coming up, they’re all sort of focused on the ‘smart’ building. We always have this discussion about ‘should we have lighting control on our Tap devices?’ as an example. The answer really is that if you look at it, there are a lot of buildings coming out currently, all of that integration is already built in. You’ve got building management systems that already have the interfacing capabilities for us to control and manage, whether we’re talking about lighting, HVAC systems, blinds, etc.

I don’t think the idea is that the Tap replaces a light switch on the wall, but we can actually start automating processes. Just like you saw on our Tap earlier, we had different presets based on what I was going to sort of facilitate in the room for the day, and if you’re in a corporate space and you press presentation, the idea is that you could potentially dim the lights by 60%, bring the blinds down, and set the HVAC to 23 degrees.

Ibrahim Kader:

Wow, that’s great.

Christian Bighi:

And then for video conferencing, potentially, lights on 100%.

It’s more about the automation process. And if you look at all of the sort of newer buildings coming up, and if you start talking about smart buildings, all of that interfacing capabilities are already there.

We’re literally just adding value to this Tap device if you purchased [it] as your MTR or your Zoom Room function, and we’re just enhancing that experience and allowing users to get more flexibility out of those systems.

Ibrahim Kader:

Right, man. It’s good.

Kristy Leclerc:

Another question.

To use Tap with Extron, do you use the Logitech NUC as part of the system? Or can you use another PC/Extron hardware instead?

Ibrahim Kader:

Okay. You want to …

Christian Bighi:

Good question. I suppose I’ll let Logitech answer the computer side of things in terms of what computer that you can use as options.

From our perspective, there’s quite a few options. A lot of that control integration is actually built in on our switching devices.

We’ve got so many different options. What actually happens in terms of how you purchase the license, we call it a ‘link license’. That’s actually embedded on our control processes. We have a whole range of different control processes. It’s actually the link license that talks to that computer device in the room to make the solution work, so we don’t really care. Yeah, there’s no issue in terms of the computer device as long as it’s part of the Logitech package, I suppose.

Ibrahim Kader:

They run independent, right, so that’s the key thing. You touched on licensing. Obviously, our devices come with either a Teams Room or a Zoom Room license. Essentially, that’s allocated to the PC, the PC comes pre-configured, ready to go. So, where we come, where Extron … where we come into it in terms of the computer, we come from a platform or a UC point of view. And then you guys have, I guess, your own control ecosystem, which then plugs into that.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah.

Ibrahim Kader:

And then Tap then becomes the interface to glue it all together.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. And to note, the license, it’s a one-off license, so it’s not a per annum cost associated to the organization. It’s just a one-off license to enable those additional features on the Tap device.

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah. And we answered that question.

Kristy Leclerc:

I know that we outlined this on things that we’re going to discuss. I may have missed you guys discuss it, but some people have asked about the hearing impaired and what tools that you guys can use for that.

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah, we’re about to … Obviously, that was our next topic that we’re going to bring up, hearing augmentation.

Government, perfect example. I’ve got a number of government departments we’re dealing with currently, and they’ve got a variety of users that come in, obviously, users that are hearing impaired. How do we tie in a solution to cater for those types of –

Christian Bighi:

Yeah, scenarios.

Yeah. Again, you know, certain organizations, it’s part of building practice that you have to incorporate hearing aid facilities within some of those meeting spaces.

Again, we’ve got a whole range of products that can cater for those solutions. We don’t manufacture hearing augmentation receivers at all, but we allow that bridging between your typical Logitech Rally or Tap solution, and we can actually strip that audio out and provide variable out to your speakers so that you can at least still adjust your speaker volume in the room, but then provide a secondary fixed output. Because that’s the whole trick around hearing aug, is that the audio going to hearing receiver needs to be fixed, but then you as a user in the room still want to have the flexibility of changing the audio levels within the room.

We’ve got great little products – like the MVC 121 is a great example. But yeah, we can incorporate that in all of our DSPs. We’ve got a whole range of products.

It’s definitely, again, one of those things that I’ve seen it too many times on a site that it’s sort of an afterthought. And that’s where I generally really recommend if you’re looking at a new project, potentially look at getting a consultant on board. This is what AV consultants do in our industry. They look at all sort of certain building code practices that you need to adhere to.

Again, just dependent on the application. We can get the right people in the room, I suppose, from whether it’s consultancy or reseller to be part of that process.

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah. No, that’s great. That works seamlessly, obviously, with the device Tap.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. The idea that the end user doesn’t notice it. Mostly all Extron equipment is hidden under a table. It’s sitting in an –

Ibrahim Kader:

In the shadows.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. It’s all sitting in the shadows. The idea is that a user walks in and doesn’t have to worry about: ‘how do other users connect to the system in terms of hearing impairments?’ If I’ve got other users outside of the organization, they need to try and ‘tap’ in. That’s one of the luxuries we have in terms of manufacturing over 5,000 products, I suppose, is that we can really sit with clients and understand what the requirements are.

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah.

Kristy Leclerc:

Perfect. Got a question here from Gavin.

“Can the Extron control page be used as the main screen and the Zoom, Teams page be the page flip screen?”

Christian Bighi:

I think I know where you’re getting at with that question. What happens is, you need a primary. The way we set it up in our room, because we’re all sort of semi-technical in our environments and we like the flexibility of how we use the system, I potentially wouldn’t recommend the way we set up our control environments to any other end user because we provide so much customization.

The whole idea of building control into a user interface is to simplify the process for our end users. What’s happening in our scenario is we’re running it as a primary to a Microsoft Teams Room solution. But then what we’re doing is on the backend, from our control side, is we’re incorporating the Zoom API into the control side.

The Zoom user interface that you saw that I’ve demonstrated was actually a Zoom user interface created by us internally. That UI is actually created by us, and we dump that in. Then we’re actually communicating to the Zoom Room itself. There’s a bit of science around that. That’s just how we like to use the flexibility out of it.

Again, practically, a workplace environment. I don’t know how practical it is for an end user because you’re going to have one MTR PC sitting in the room and you’re going to have one Zoom Room PC sitting in the room and interfacing.

Personally, I feel that I would rather just have either an MTR system with Zoom Room system or Google Hangouts, and then provide that BYOD connectivity that if I come in with my own device – and I’m from outside of the organization, and I use WebEx or whatever – I can actually sit down, connect. It doesn’t really matter what platform I’m using. I can just revert all of my cameras and microphones to my device.

Ibrahim Kader:

To the device. Yeah. Okay.

Kristy Leclerc:

Another question.

“Where can we see a live demonstration of this Logitech Extron solution? And also, can we bring along end user clients?”

Christian Bighi:

Yeah.

Ibrahim Kader:

Great question.

Christian Bighi:

Yes.

Ibrahim Kader:

The answer is yes. In Queensland, we’ve got one in Newstead, in the office here.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. If you look at it nationally, we’ve got offices in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth. All of those offices nationally have Logitech Tap incorporated in those offices. If you definitely want to see a live demonstration, we’re obviously based in Newstead, Brisbane. Yeah. We’ll leave our contact information.

Ibrahim Kader:

No problems with clients, obviously, showing clients. We do that today. So we use this space to show clients our cameras and how Tap integrates with the Extron control.

Kristy Leclerc:

Perfect. Question from Matt –

Christian Bighi:

Oh, Canberra as well. Sorry. Sorry, Kris.

Ibrahim Kader:

There’s an office there.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah.

Ibrahim Kader:

There’s an office there. Don’t forget the Canberrians.

Kristy Leclerc:

No, you can’t. All right.

“How do we know if we need to sell the Logi Tap with an Extron HD CTL 100 for HDMI CEC support? The Tap should work without this, but have seen displays – particularly consumer ones – fail to work without an adapter.

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah, good question.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. That’s something that’s actually been brought up in a Microsoft forum as well in terms of, I suppose, hot topics, in terms of …

Ibrahim Kader:

From a tech bulletin?

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. In terms of fault finding, etc. If you want your Tap to wake up the system and switch your display on, because it does have a sensor built in on the Tap device, if you want that capability, what’s actually happening in the backend is there’s a CEC comms taking place from your compute device to your display to wake that up, however you need CEC support from your display.

If you’re blind, a display that doesn’t support it or even a projector, we forget that projectors are still utilized in a lot of workplaces and most projectors don’t actually support CEC. That’s where you may want to use an Extron HD CTL, because what we’re doing is we’re actually bringing in that CEC command and then we’re making that available either via uni-directional serial, or – if the display actually supported CEC, because what we actually do is we can write our own firmware on the device to push our own commands.

Ibrahim Kader:

Wow. Okay.

Christian Bighi:

It’s a smart little box. It’s really handy. I always recommend resellers to try and keep it in their tool bag [and] if they do see any issues on site with screens flickering, etc. because what they do as well, is they do the EDID management as well. I don’t want to get …

Ibrahim Kader:

Too technical?

Christian Bighi:

Too technical on it, but the EDID management side of things is obviously how we can communicate from our display to our source device and send the right resolution. There’s a lot happening within a Tap system because you’re connecting your notebook device through a tap system, and then from your PC on the other side of the Tap system that’s communicating to your display. There’s actually a lot of information.

What our little devices do is just lock and provide a single EDID format to our source devices. Sometimes if you’re seeing some of those issues, we generally say put in either an equalizer or like an HD CTL 100. But the question regarding the CEC matter, that’s definitely an HD CTL.

Kristy Leclerc:

Yes, perfect. Christian, you’re talking about AV consultants before, so this has come from Andrew.

“Do Extron work with resellers in recommending AV consultants to use reseller’s design and deliver solutions?”

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. That’s a global thing. We obviously have an array of customers that we deal with, whether it’s end users, consultants or resellers. If we are busy talking to an end user and they’re looking at a new potential build and it’s not just a one-room solution, they’re trying to follow a standard. We definitely work with consultants and we sort of look at their requirements and put them in touch. It’s really the end user’s decision to decide who they want to use as a consultant.

Yeah, it’s really working in partnership, because we deal with a lot of consultants in terms of understanding what their requirements are in engineering solutions. We’re only a part of that solution – it’s understanding what’s happening with your building management systems, what’s happening with your display architecture, microphones, etc. That’s really why you want to engage on a consultant level if you’re a large organization, and you’re trying to follow a standard.

Kristy Leclerc:

Ibby, I think this one is in regards to when you were discussing the setup that you have in the room now. They want to know:

“Is this solution scalable? I.e., can it service small huddle spaces to large meeting room/boardroom spaces?”

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah, great question. Obviously, we’re in a medium sort of size room today with a Rally system. Obviously, this system is designed to be scaled for a large room format as well. The microphones can be expanded – today, we’ve got two mics, we’ve got, obviously, two in different locations.

We have a big long boardroom in here, and we could go up to seven mic pods on the table. They’re all beamforming microphones, so they’re very clear, crisp. They cut out any background noise that might be happening.

But if you were looking at a huddle room space, we do have a solution for huddle room space, and that’s our meet up camera. It’s our all in one camera.

Kristy Leclerc:

What I have here today?

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah, you’re using one. Essentially, it’s got all of that technology built into the camera. It’s designed for a smaller room – a huddle room space up to six to eight people. Again, that will interface with the Tap as well. So, you can actually have the same hardware in different room sizes. That’s the great thing about Logitech – we’ve got solutions for every room size an organization would have right down to the desktop with the webcam.

Kristy Leclerc:

Perfect.

“Can Extron Logitech recommend third-party companies to assist in the control coding commissioning to the added room control through the Tap? Or can we receive training from Extron or Logitech?”

Christian Bighi:

Yes, actually a good question. There’s, again, different options. A lot of organizations have programmers in-house that are already trained as Extron certified programmers.

From an Extron perspective, we actually have two different software sets in terms of programming our systems: we have GCP, which is our global configurator tool. It’s a great tool, because if you have an understanding of room deployments, and you sort of come from a technical background, it’s actually fairly easy to pick up because we write all the drivers and modules internally. We try and simplify the experience that you’re actually not writing lines of code yourself. So we have that GCP portion, which we actually have a lot of end users, whether it’s schools or government organizations, that actually do that training themselves internally, because they want to be able to have the ability to do custom changes on the fly, potentially rooms change. They want to incorporate some of that code. That’s really where GCP is a great advantage.

But then we also have GS, which is our global scripter, which provides a lot more fine tuning. It’s more programming, and we’re actually using Python in the backend. And that’s sort of how we’ve set up this room internally. This is all done through from our technical resource in Brisbane, Nick Graham, he wrote this all in Python. That’s how we’re able to control this room environment. That’s how we’re able to talk to our access control system as well. So, we’re using Python in the backend to do all that communication.

We’ve got an array of certified programmers, resellers, etc., and all of that training is available online. And then if you want to get certified … Once, obviously, the lockdown goes away, we do in-classroom based training, so it’s okay.

Ibrahim Kader:

You’ve got a national team of programmers.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. Again, we can recommend programmers if you’re an organization or potentially want to learn it yourself. That training is open to anyone.

Ibrahim Kader:

Or you still might work from home.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. We’re just training you.

Kristy Leclerc:

All right. I’m not sure if you’ve just answered this in that question then, but:

“What software do you use to adjust the Tap GUI in Extron systems?”

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. That’s pretty much in terms of the customization of the software. We’re using GCP, Global Configurator Professional or GS, the two different platforms to do that.

Kristy Leclerc:

Perfect.

“Can I use the Tapping conjunction with an Extron touch panel for a larger space?”

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah.

Christian Bighi:

Yes. Yeah.

Ibrahim Kader:

Most definitely.

Christian Bighi:

We did a project recently actually like that where we did all this sort of basic preset controls through the Logitech tab, and then the client actually wanted their sort of BMS control – so their lighting control, etc .– because the architect and the interior designers really didn’t want to have buttons on the walls, so we added an additional touch panel to the wall. Aesthetically, that’s sort of what the architect was after.

Yeah, we can definitely mirror across. Note, one thing though is you can’t mirror the Microsoft Teams page across, because that’s actually locked within the computer device and that’s running through the Tap. So from a control aspect, yeah, we can copy.

One of the benefits as well is if you download the Extron control app and that control process is actually sitting on a network that you’ve got wireless access to, you can download the app and you can actually do it from your own device. I can actually control this room through my phone as well, because I’ve got the app available.

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah. In terms of managing the room, you can do that. If there’s an administrator for instance or an IT manager, they can monitor the rooms in the organization. Fantastic.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah.

Ibrahim Kader:

I mean, we’ve got something similar called Sync on our devices. Essentially, it’s free, you can download it, and you load it on the Tap device, and you can monitor right down to the microphone in the room. For an IT manager, they’ve got full control and visibility of whether the room is up and running, pushing down scheduled updates, and all that sort of stuff. It makes it so much easier for organizations to manage their rooms.

Christian Bighi:

We use them internally ourselves. And actually, it’s a great little software. Yeah.

Kristy Leclerc:

Perfect.

“Is it possible to run Zoom Rooms with touch capability on the room’s main touchscreen as well as the Tap? So two-touch –”

Ibrahim Kader:

You can answer that. Zoom Room on your panel and then our panel?

Christian Bighi:

Yeah.

Ibrahim Kader:

You can run that?

Christian Bighi:

Yeah.

Ibrahim Kader:

Okay.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah.

Ibrahim Kader:

Yep.

Christian Bighi:

Nice and easy. Yes. There’s a bit of technicality in the background. What we normally do – is happy to – feel free to contact us and we can go through the process with you. It’s just understanding what happens from a configuration file aspect and what devices you need to make that happen, but it’s definitely doable. Yeah.

Kristy Leclerc:

Perfect. This is going back to demonstrations, and when you forgot about Canberra,

“What about New Zealand? What options are over there for Logi, Extron demos?”

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah. Well, we’ve got an office in New Zealand. We do have Colin based in New Zealand, so more than happy to assist with demonstrations and evaluation devices, etc. Similar with Extron.

Christian Bighi:

Extron, we’ve got an office with AVW. They’re the sole distributor of Extron in New Zealand. Lloyd Freeman is actually your guy in New Zealand. If you need a contact or information, feel free to contact us, but AVW is …

Ibrahim Kader:

Otherwise, we’re both happy to fly over when we can and we’ll take our ski gear as well. Hopefully it’s winter time, go for a ski.

Kristy Leclerc:

Perfect. I’m getting to some of the last of the questions. “[inaudible 00:50:30] around CEC and screens not honoring turn off. I understand the computer doesn’t send a signal properly.”

Christian Bighi:

I’m happy to answer that. CEC is … If you think of where CEC comes from – so it was really developed for the consumer market – it was the ability that if you switched on your Blu-ray player, it would switch on your device. That’s sort of how we’re getting the communication through.

We know certain panel manufacturers or certain devices, some of them work well together, some of them don’t. Again, CEC is just a specification, there’s no real standard that we’re all conforming to. If you send this command, it needs to react with this command.

Ibrahim Kader:

It’s back to your HD [crosstalk 00:51:22].

Christian Bighi:

The minute you start having issues with CEC, I really look at those HD CTL 100s, because we can actually set predefined commands, and we can bypass the CEC channel. So generally in the professional realm, we’d rather like to control the panel via serial or Ethernet – we get a lot more reliable bidirectional communication using serial or Ethernet. That’s literally what this device does, is it will receive the command by CEC and we can send it out by serial, and that alleviates a lot of headaches around that whole CEC discussion.

Kristy Leclerc:

Perfect. There’s one here.

“Can you show a diagram of the system using Extron and Logitech or other examples on the websites?”

Ibrahim Kader:

Or on your flip phone?

Kristy Leclerc:

Yes.

Ibrahim Kader:

Do you want to draw something? I mean, you’ve got something on your website. Obviously, you got a really good web page showing Tap with control.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah, I can draw it up quick as a basic room setup. Luckily, I’m a natural Picasso. The idea with Logitech …

Ibrahim Kader:

Want to zoom that in? There you go.

Christian Bighi:

I’m just quickly drawing out the typical scenario. This is sort of a typical scenario where you actually have your Tap device connected to … whether it’s your MTR system or your Zoom Room system. One of the USB peripherals going into that PC is either a Rally or a MeetUp-type setup.

From an Extron controls perspective, let’s say you’ve got your building management system which is pretty much where all your lighting control, etc., gets managed through, we have a whole range of products. The one that sort of comes to mind is any of our IPCP range of control processes, with that linked license that I talked about earlier.

This is sort of how we’re bridging – I might just draw this around – this is how we’re sort of bridging that communications. If we start looking at any other sort of interfacing in that room, like we were talking about earlier, we got a BYOD connectivity.

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah.

Christian Bighi:

If I’m using this with my laptop and I want to actually connect to my system and present using the Rally MeetUp, and I’m not actually using an MTR system, I can easily put in a USB switch up. This is actually communicating to that. This bridges into that.

Please, don’t judge my drawing ability.

We’re building the puzzle. But the most important aspect is this IPCP. This is what’s actually communicating to the PC, and this is actually what’s interfacing all of the third-party control elements that you really want to bring into the solution.

But definitely online. If you register on the Extron website, it’s definitely something I can recommend. A lot of our dealers get a lot of value out of becoming an Extron Insider, because we have so many different examples online. We show so many sort of different small, medium, large type meeting rooms, and that’s all through the website. If you aren’t registered, definitely get on Extron.com and you’ll get all that information.

Kristy Leclerc:

Perfect. Well, I think we just have one last question come through, and I think this will be the last one before we finish up. From Zane.

“We are running Zoom Rooms on the Logitech Rally system standalone, no Extron controller. We have the issue of the connected displays not supporting Zoom Room CEC. Zoom Rooms only support CEC for Samsung and D10 displays.”

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. Definitely get in touch with us. That sounds like an HD CTL fix.

Kristy Leclerc:

Perfect. Well, I think that will be it for us and we shall wrap it up. I want to say thank you Christian and Ibby for your beautiful insights for Extron and Logitech. I’ve really enjoyed it, and I believe everybody else has.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah.

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah. Well, thanks everyone for joining. Obviously, there’s so much more we can talk about ourselves. We’re available. There’s a national team. Logitech has a national dedicated business team, can assist, and similar with Extron.

Christian Bighi:

Yeah. From our side, thankful for the opportunity to do this. It’s definitely been valuable for us. Like I said, if there’s any questions, feel free to contact us and happy to sit with you and sort of try and build these problems or challenges you may be facing and sort them up. Yeah.

Kristy Leclerc:

Perfect. Lastly, the recording of this will be emailed to everybody along with a transcript.

Christian Bighi:

Perfect.

Kristy Leclerc:

Thank you, everybody.

Christian Bighi:

Thanks guys.

Ibrahim Kader:

Yeah, bye.