Well yesterday was an exciting day, I set up a video conference call during the morning worship service at church with one of our missionaries in the Republic of Georgia. Juan had come from our church and his family still attends so it was an exciting time for all. A couple weeks ago, I had set up his sister’s notebook on the church’s wireless connection so that she could video conference with him with skype. While I was setting up the laptop, he happened to be online and I initiated a video chat with him. Pretty soon the whole church office was in the sound booth talking with Juan and Shirley. I made the comment that we could do this on the projector and that got things started.
The sound booth computer already had an internet connection and a hookup to the audio from the soundboard (both in and out). All I need was a video capture card so that Juan and Shirley could see us. After pricing some cards on newegg.com, I remembered that I had a TV card with video-in lying around my computer work area. So I popped that in and we were good to go.
In an interesting twist, Shirley’s Grandfather had passed away the week before. So she was actually in the congregation as we talked to Juan on the big screen. After Juan got done talking and answering some questions, Shirley got up to speak. At this point it dawned on me that there was no reason to hang up on Juan. So I just moved his video off the projector screen and allowed him to watch and listen to his wife speak, and he continued to watch the rest of the service.
Now Juan and Shirley may be watching all our services online.