Simple Conference Room Setup

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ISeeDeadPackets@reddit

Logitech Rally Bar with Tap IP and an Extend so they can connect a laptop to the screen. There are absolutely better systems but the dollars aren't crazy and it tends to work well.

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AlinaRei@reddit

I’m looking into this one currently but with Swytch instead of Extend. Glad to hear feedback from others! Doesn’t seem difficult to set up and use. How was your experience?

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I_Hate_This_Username@reddit

IMO extend is better than the switch for most use cases.

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rybl@reddit

Can you elaborate on why? We have a room with a Swytch and it works fine. We haven't tested the extend though.

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Extend works with the android compute. It’s not a usb switcher but a display link extension over cat 6. Byod works over phones, tablets and laptops. We had existing cat6 in 20 of our rooms for hdmi extenders. It’s been super reliable, users that hate taking laptops but have tablets have liked that experience vs guest join.

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ISeeDeadPackets@reddit

The extend is almost definitely a better option.

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rybl@reddit

Chiming in to second the Logitech route. Their stuff tends to just work in my experience. Their online "Sync" management tool is pretty nice for visibility and updating too.

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battmain@reddit

We use Owl with teams. Testing the sound bar this week in the main office. It appears to switch between the middle camera/mic and the bar camera/mic to find the speaker. The higher ups will decide if they want to keep it. Before that we were using click to share. It worked for internal users because I have not fully locked down the usb ports yet. (on the list.) But visitors could not use it because their USBs and the autorun share software were blocked.

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smart_ca@reddit

We use Conferfly and we really like it.

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hiveminer@reddit

My vote is for the meeting owls and touch screen displays.

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WWGHIAFTC@reddit

I've been locking up our owls. The sound and mics are so terrible.

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hiveminer@reddit

They sell external microphones Incase you need them, but the owls are meant to be daisy chained in large groups.

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Unce_Turbo_996@reddit (OP)

I have read awful things about Owl on Reddit. Have you had good eperiences?

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hiveminer@reddit

Very good experience, however, we don't run them daily.

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WWGHIAFTC@reddit

I REALLY like the Sure STEM ecosystem for flexibility but the bastards killed it off last year.

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PixelSage-001@reddit

For startup conference rooms, the Neat Bar + Neat Pad combo is hard to beat. If you use Zoom or Teams, setting them up in "BYOD Mode" (or using native Zoom/Teams Room licensing) is basically zero-touch for end users. The hardware handles both platforms natively and has auto-framing and audio fencing that actually works.

If you have rooms in different offices (like NYC and DC), the biggest pain point is identifying when a screen or conference bar has crashed or disconnected before a user walks in.

To manage our remote offices, we set up an automated ping and health-check loop on Runable. Every morning before the offices open, the runner queries the Neat REST APIs to verify that the cameras, pads, and displays are online and responsive. If an endpoint is offline or disconnected from the network, it sends a Slack alert so we can reach out to local staff to power-cycle it before meetings start.

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DaCozPuddingPop@reddit

Neat bar is, legit, trash. Overpriced and awful.

Similar situation here I deployed a mix of Cisco room bars and Yealink room bars (I forget the exact model number - but it has a couple of cameras and a touchbad for control - or can be controlled with keyboard/mouse)

Remote control of them is a little rudimentary, but it worked well enough - and I had offices in Europe that I couldn't just pop over to if there was a problem lol.

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redbaron78@reddit

I couldn’t not disagree more. I put a Neat Bar gen 2, Neat Pad, and Neat Center in a conference room at a church and the 77-year-old woman who teaches the Sunday school class in that room emailed me a few weeks later thanking me for putting something in that’s easy to use and makes her remote attendees (6-7 of them are in different states) feel like they are now really part of the class. She said the Neat gear completely solved the audio issues and the Neat Center means remote attendees can see faces of people in the room instead of far-off figures from a laptop webcam.

Plus I can manage it remotely for free via Pulse.

I’ve gotten similar feedback from the two corporate clients using it. But the old lady saying it was easy to use and solved their problems really stuck with me. Maybe you got a defective unit or something.

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Rex_Bossman@reddit

We've got the Neat Bar and Neat Pad in our conference room. When it's working it's great. But at least once every couple months it will lose connection and I'll have to sign out and do the whole passcode authorization again. It's not a huge deal but when it happens I'm always called in past the meeting start time fixing the "piece of shit" with 20 people in the room breathing down my neck getting it back up.

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ProfessionalWorkAcct@reddit

Strongly disagree. Neat products are awesome. Remoting into them with the Pulse system is fantastic. Yealink, Logitech fucking garbage with garbage support.

u/Unce_Turbo_996 The problem will be wanting both Teams and Zoom functionality out of the room. This will utilize what is called Direct Guest Join. It sucks no matter what product you use. So many issues with Direct Guest Join. We ended up adopting Teams only room.

There is a way using creston to make a bad ass conference room with 1 button deployment of a teams or a zoom set up but its stupid expensive.

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Unce_Turbo_996@reddit (OP)

Re: the Teams vs Zoom issue - yeah, this is what I was afraid of after doing some research. No one true "join it all" system that plays well with major systems like that.

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redbaron78@reddit

Look into Vivo. I haven’t used it, but Neat says they work with it and they purport to solve this problem.

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Unce_Turbo_996@reddit (OP)

Nice, sounds like another vote for Yealink, thanks! Appreciate the heads up on Neat.

Question - does everyone have to go through a Yealink distributor? I find that part annoying.

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DaCozPuddingPop@reddit

I think I had to for Europe, but in the US I was able to purchase on Amazon

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Unce_Turbo_996@reddit (OP)

Ahh didn't look there yet, thanks.

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brownhotdogwater@reddit

For the cheap, Logitech stuff is great.

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FrankNicklin@reddit

Whats your buget. I would look at Yealink solutions that link to a free Teams meeting account so you can including the meeting room in outlook calendar and join meetings directly from the touch screen. Not cheap but a great solution.

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sryan2k1@reddit

Yealink is wet garbage. Their firmware/software is very chineesium.

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FrankNicklin@reddit

We have never had a problem, firmware upgrades have always worked and the system works as intended. We had one issue with the PA20 USB adapter, but support were on the case and problem solved within a few days,

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Unce_Turbo_996@reddit (OP)

Thanks! Yealink is good too. Just had a meeting on Friday with a distribution rep. Waiting to hear back.

Re: budget - not zero, but not unlimited. Was told to keep it reasonable.

For context - career tech leader, who always had big teams, but now I'm the do it all tech guy / tech exec.

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FrankNicklin@reddit

Here is what we used. https://www.yealink.com/en/product-detail/microsoft-teams-rooms-mvcs40

Cost just over £2K.

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Unce_Turbo_996@reddit (OP)

Yup that is similar to what I discussed with the rep with the added touch screen.

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FrankNicklin@reddit

Yes ours included the touch screen and the meeting room PIR so everything wakes up when you walk in.

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sryan2k1@reddit

Nothing is great if you are doing mixed rooms. We do Poly X52 teams rooms and then provide a USB cable and HDMI cable to plug into the bar for "Device mode" to use Zoom or another conference service.

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Obvious-Water569@reddit

It'd be good to know your budget and room sizes/capacities.

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Unce_Turbo_996@reddit (OP)

Budget = up to $4k per room (but that's my limit as the budget owner, can likely go higher if needed)

Room size = each one is roughly 10x12 feet.

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Obvious-Water569@reddit

Logitech Meetup? Affordable, nice and simple and designed for rooms about the size you've got.

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HabitAltruistic5648@reddit

Neat bar sucks. Logitech Rally Bar + accessories ftmfw

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Unce_Turbo_996@reddit (OP)

Going to have to track all of these positive vibes for Logitech Rally equipment, thanks!

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ihaxr@reddit

I just checked what we installed at our new building because they work great... It's the Logitech rally bar and the tap IP devices.

They're very good and easy to use. You book the room in Outlook then just click start meeting on the tap device and it starts the meeting in the room.

We also have the display panels outside the room so you can see who has it booked and for how long.

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njdasher@reddit

I work for c level who expect everything to be super easy, have set up everything from a zoom room using an iPad, NUC and regular webcam, to the yealink systems to what we’ve been using the last 3 years - Logitech rally bar and tap IP controller. The Logitech is the most expensive but has had the best quality, is the easiest to use, and you can manage it via their portal, easier than the rest.

You can set it up for around $4k

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Zander9909@reddit

We have had great experiences with both the Logitech Rallybar and their other options, and the Yealink MeetingBars and theirs. Logitech has a lot better centralized monitoring through Logitech Sync, but Yealink is much cheaper.

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Unce_Turbo_996@reddit (OP)

Thanks, appreciate it. How do you link the Logitech setup for easy and painless "minimal touch" to connect to a meeting on a screen?

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Zander9909@reddit

There's an accessory called a Tap, which is a control board that allows the user to enter any meetings scheduled, or directly call into meetings with the password and code. Yealink has an equivalent device called a Touch console.