I bought an Avermedia CP130 visualiser to use in my science lessons, hoping it would extend the range of activities that I use the whiteboard for.  I already have digital camera, microscope and flip video so this seemed like a logical extension.

My first impression when I unboxed the camera was the wobbliness of the neck.  Like a big black rubbery swan, the visualiser sat on my desk with curved neck, but fortunately a smaller footprint than a real swan!  When in use there was some wobble of the image when I knocked the desk, but this was only minor – however I’d recommend seating the visualiser on a firm surface.

The visualiser comes with manuals, a selection of cables, a mains adaptor (on a cable of reasonable length) and a CD containing software for PC and Mac.   Installation of the software was relatively straight forward on stand-alone laptops but our technician ran into problems when installing on our networked desktops (hopefully he’ll have success on the later version that we downloaded from Avermedia’s support site).

The software was quite straight forward, with the ability to operate the main features of the visualiser from both the software and the unit itself.  Pupils were impressed by the ability to switch between colour and black & white (handy for looking at monochrome text) although the negative mode freaked them out a little!  Capturing a still image from the camera takes only a mouse click, although saving them is much less intuitive (or perhaps I was limited by the resolution of my desktop – the control panel of the software starts up by default off the edge of the screen).  Video recording/time lapse is supported, as are basic annotation functions, mimicking some of the simpler functions of an IWB.  An interesting feature is the ability to broadcast the image over the network, for other PCs (with the software installed) to receive.  Whilst this sounds useful, there was significant lag between images being put under the camera, the screen updating and then networked satellite PCs being updated making it less useful than first impressions would suggest.

As you can see the images were crisp. quality good and the colours well balanced when viewing on the PC screen.  The image updated quickly on screen and zooms were good, although the software was unable to save a zoomed image, instead it reverted back to the full image.  Capturing the windows worked well, although it is possible that future versions of the software will make this process easier.

I didn’t use the VGA pass though cables supplied, which are more suited to the visualiser used as part of a permanent installation.  Instead I connected it up using the composite output (phono plug).  It took me a while to locate the tiny RGB/TV switch which needed to the flicked, but then the image appeared a glorious 72” wide.  It soon became apparent that the quality of the picture through the composite output was not as good as that captured at full resolution over USB.  Whilst this is probably due to the limitation of the composite video format, it is worth bearing in mind as connection to a PC gives a crisper picture with much brighter clearer colours.  Hopefully the picture below gives you a better idea of how the image differs from the composite output.

I haven’t had much of a chance to use the visualiser yet.  The software isn’t installed on my whiteboard PC, limiting me to using the composite video output.  When I tried the hardware out with my year 11 class it was very useful being able to project a worksheet on screen (I hadn’t got a digital copy of the one I was using) and then being able to show the pupils’ work on the screen was a huge motivator.  (With the software installed I would have been able to easily highlight the flaw in the plug wiring above, which is not as obvious in the bottom picture).

I look forward to using the Avermedia visualiser more in future as I become more accustomed to the hardware. 

Have you got a visualiser?  How do you use yours in lesson?  Do you have any ideas how I could use mine better?

Feel free to post comments and suggestions below.