Hey everyone, we're currently using a Meeting Owl for our conference room, which has some cool features like tracking whoever is speaking. But the problem is that when we have a big screen set up, everyone tends to focus on that instead of the Owl, which ends up only showing the backs of their heads. We're thinking about replacing the Owl with a camera that can be mounted above the big screen and still track the current speaker effectively. Our largest meeting room accommodates around a dozen people, with the closest seated about 2 meters from the screen and the furthest about 6 meters away. Does anyone have suggestions for a camera that can zoom in on whoever's speaking, similar to what the Owl does?
6 Answers
Honestly, I've never been a fan of the Meeting Owl. The audio quality has been pretty bad, and it doesn't always show the best person on the small screen for remote participants. We switched to the Poly Studio USB video bar and we're really happy with it. It's in the same price range as the Owl, too.
We've installed quite a few Logitech Rally Bars, and they've performed excellently. For your room size, I'd recommend the standard full-size version, not the Mini. You can even add mic pods and it has a new camera called Logitech Sight that works alongside it for better speaker tracking.
We decided on Yealink for our setup, with everything mounted on the wall or ceiling. It helps avoid issues where users unplug or mess with equipment on tables.
You might want to check out the Logitech Rally Bar. It has a mount that can go on the TV and it zooms in to follow whoever's talking.
A good starting point might be checking with your meeting platform's approved equipment list (like for Teams, Zoom, or Webex) and narrow down from there.
If you're considering alternatives, have a look at the OBSBOT Tiny 2. It includes face tracking and can be controlled with a remote, and it works pretty well overall.
I had a bit of trouble getting the speaker tracking to work on mine. It tends to frame everyone in the room and doesn't really adjust unless you manually tell it to.