... and another one makes three.

Way out on the Hauraki Plains of Auckland Provence, good quality, wired, ADSL connections can be a bit suspect. In spite of this, the second of our newly developed PODS was successfully installed and tested yesterday. This student was thrilled to see her POD arrive and she eagerly helped to unpack and set it up. Within a few minutes a satisfactory test connection was made with our engineer back in Auckland. It is also possible for these [currently three] students to connect with each other during holidays and weekends. It is now only a matter of getting other families on-line one at a time.

Today's 1:40 minute slideshow portrays yesterday's (typical) arrival and setup of a POD. It shows the slightly nervous family cautiously unpacking the box, finding (and reading!) the instructions, correctly lifting the the POD out of the box and sitting it on the floor. They found the two (only) cables and the line filter and correctly plugged them in. Because they followed the instructions, they were able to turn on the three power switches and make contact with the engineer standing by in Auckland. When completed they told me,
"To start with it looked a bit confusing but, it was really easy!"

Well done J and M and M!

Want to know a secret? Normally, a Videoconferencing engineer or technician is present when such an installation is performed. We were quoted $750 per installation. Yes, an engineer was standing by on-line today and was used for a few minutes but it looks as though even that may not be necessary in the future. Thank you and well done iCOM.

It's rather exciting ...

Although we didn't complete it before Christmas, we now, as of today, have the first of the new family pods up and running successfully. This is possibly another NZ first: a complete installation of a professional videoconferencing system without a technician being physically present.

The student and her mother unpacked the pod, plugged it in and turned it on without support.

To be perfectly honest there was a slight hitch. "If all else fails, read the instructions" was the appropriate saying. (In the excitement we all forgot the manual!) The order of powering on the TV, the router and camera is crutial as is the timing. However once the instruction manual was read and understood they had almost instant success. I say almost - there was an obsecure teething problem which was relatively easily rectified by the engineer by remote control 200 km away and hopefully won't be needing to be done again. Later in the day the two Deaf girls in this project (in different towns and now on-line) were able to contact each other by their own professional Videoconferencing gear - this too is a first for New Zealand. All told, today was another real milestone. Congratulations to all concerned.

These photos show the simple sequence of events followed today from unpacking through setting up, powering up and making the first connection. It was as simple as that!