USB Device Sharing: Solution for Old Printer Driver
I had a situation where we have a perfectly fine Epson Stylus Photo R2400 that is a few years old now but still a quality printer but we had been using it with 3 iMacs in a lab area. The Epson printer driver has some nicer features than the Gutenprint one that ships with the Apple drivers and we wanted to have the printer driver be set to that.
Via direct USB, the printer driver worked fine. The Epson driver was developed for PPC I believe and since it is such an old printer, it probably is the last version we will see. Rosetta also needs to be installed to handle it, but that is pretty-much automatic. So direct USB is fine and if you do printer sharing on the iMac that has a direct USB connection, you could get the machine that was piggy-backing on the sharing iMac to work with AppleTalk. But, when we upgraded to 10.6.x we lost AppleTalk on those iMacs and we lost the Epson driver nice stuff on two of the three computers. Sharing via Bonjour or IP did not work for the Epson driver, so we had to figure another solution out or re-purpose the printer.
So, enter the IOGEAR GUB431 4-Port USB Automatic Printer Switch
It can be used without software, but the software is a critical piece because it can be set to do automatic switching. After setup, we got the old R2400 going and the three iMacs into the switch. Each iMac sees the native USB so the driver is happy and shows all the options the users like and the USB switch is smart enough to handle switching between the computers when a print job is dished to it. The default software setup is to have the computer printing grab hold and own the printer for 3 minutes then let go, but I changed the settings so it would automatically let go when needed by other iMacs. It seems to be working well and we will keep testing it with users to see if it can handle what we need. I like the solution and well worth a try to keep a perfectly good piece of hardware going even if the vendor might have some driver issues across the network. We could have tried a print server on ethernet, but I was hesitant to try it since printer sharing wasn't even working. To clarify, one could print via Bonjour printer sharing, but NOT with the extra driver features Epson bakes-in to the USB type of connection which is a major deal for us.
The device has Mac and Windows software and seems very solid. So far, so good.
For more info checkout
Digital Signage In Schools
When I took up the task of trying to find a nice system for displacing paper-based bulletin boards in my high school's foyer, I looked at a lot of solutions out there. I also asked around to see what others schools were doing. The types of setups people were using ranged from an old PC or Mac running Powerpoint on a display to provide scheduling and events for students and faculty to doing crazy VGA over ethernet to expensive displays. The top of the line solution was much to expensive and you still only had video and the fun of dealing with the craziness of cabling.
But, then I found MediaTile. Their systems are geared towards advertising and using their portal, the tile can communicate across the internet to get the data feeds you want for it. We got the 42" model and set it up on our wireless. We have been running it now for over a year and did have some hardware issues, but MediaTile support went above and beyond to correct them and we are talking about power supplies, so what can you do?
We are looking at getting a few more around campus now that are internal trials seem to be positive. We also recently had a member of the Faculty at Lick-Wilmerding start to do some Adobe Flex/Flash development for a better, more interactive way to show our rotating block schedule which can really be difficult for everyone to understand and be aware of daily. The MediaTile system is currently and Windows-based system running their Adobe Flash-based MediaTile Player. We have it taking RSS feeds from our Whipple Hill Podium website News so we can keep our information unified and not have to post the all the same information in multiple places even though it is great to optimize screen images for the MediaTile for students and Faculty in a different way than we would for our website.
All in all, the lack of cables and overall slickness and network-connectivity the MediaTile digital signage system gives us is great and has become critical to our day-to-day operations. When we change the schedule or need to alert students to events, this is a great tool. The update time to the tile is not immediate, but that is due to the way the system checks-in for updates back to the home-base @ the mediatile.net portal. But, the time between the send and live on the screen is minutes so it is more than adequate for what we need.
More recent pics of our signage
Lick-Wilmerding High School Digital Signage Pic1
Lick-Wilmerding High School Digital Signage Pic 2
Epson Brightlink 450Wi First Impressions
Got a demo today on the Brightlink 450wi projector. Here are some thoughts/observations.
Observations:
- Love the simplicity. Really like the super-short throw aspect of the device so we can mount this on the wall and get people out of its way.
- Software is simple. Basic floating palette for Windows or Mac OS so it can be used across all apps.
- Pull-down white screens will actually get in the way, really you have to project to a hard surface or wall
- USB and VGA connectors coming off the projector to the computer.
- Calibration initially with pen was easy.
- Single pen
- changing colors/width via the sw floating palette
- uses IR to communicate back to the projector
- has a right-click button on the pen/stylus
- a little space in the point to the shaft of the pen is nice because it gives feedback on pressure against the wall
- wide screen throw is nice.
- virtual screen stuff is nice to create multiple whiteboards on the fly.
- No pairing/registration system needed for wireless pen to projector
- wireless video to it - not really interested but probably still not there yet.
- Really a good fit for what I think we need
Notes/Concerns:
- I wanted to touch the whiteboard with my fingers (a la Smartboard). Not going to work. If you have teachers using their hands with other interactive boards, this would be tough to get used to.
- Can use a couple of pens with one projector, but not at the same time. No multi-touch. Also, would be nice to have colors/thicknesses tied to the pen, but no biggie
- Because of the demo location of the projector below me and front desk projection rather than the standard front above projection, I was able to block line of sight of the pen to the projector a few times. Not going to happen when it is properly installed, but interesting.
- Fewer pieces of hardware makes more sense to me.
- Less stuff to lose
- Less stuff to break
- Less stuff to install
- Seemed like a nice transition to interactive boards for teachers who want to play and see if it makes sense with their content.
- Really a pen-based system. The pen is the mouse/color, etc.
- You also see the stuff you are annotating back on the computer screen which is nice.
- Has basic built-in speaker, but can do audio out, so you can tie it in with existing amplified speakers.
- floating tool palette remains visible in powerpoint and browsing the wbe and other applications, but doing the fullscreen flash test (i.e. youtube full screen) you lose the palette which I expected but would be nice in flash video fullscreen to be able to annotate (I know our teachers do it with dry-erase.)
Seems like a good call for our situation where you have space challenges and you have rooms that have multiple subject and teachers that may be interactive board users and/or ones who want to test and see if they could use one.
My LWHS iPhone App live on Apple App Store
It went live on July 4th. All you need to do is go into the Apple App Store on your iPhone or iPod Touch and do a search for LWHS or Lick-Wilmerding to find it. If you have an iPod Touch or iPhone and are part of the L-W community, this is a great tool to have to search the Directory, get althetics info and link into the school calendar and all the events. There is a lot more coming in the near future and those updates will come to you via the standard Apple App Store update process.
The My LWHS app is a free download.
L-W iPhone App on the way!
Should be getting an iPhone App shortly for my school, Lick-Wilmerding. We are waiting on Apple to clear the application through its crazy approval process. This will be a great way for Lick-Wilmerding Students, Parents, Faculty and Alumni to stay connected to the school. It will be available in the App Store shortly and be free of charge.
Here are some screenshots.
