Laughingboy's Hobby Lodge

Ok, so the next thing I wanted to look at was the ability to file battle reports. I have seen many ways of doing this so thought I was doing my own take on it.

I decided what I wanted was a view that encapsulates the whole table and then a moving camera to get into the details, dice roles and players.

I initially when with the old faithful Logitech 920 HD which is pretty much the default choice for streaming HD webcams these days…..

but even though I highly recommend the camera I found it just was not capable of taking a wide enough shot, even from the highest position it would cut the ends off the table. So I upgraded to the 930 HD which is much more of a business grade for meeting room type setups and has a wide arch.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CES5A60/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07D2G3V4C/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00B2HP2UI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I simply tacked the wire across one of the roof beams and used a 5m repeater USB cable very simple to do.

Next, I knew I wanted a hand camera but wanted to see if I could get something to work from my phone (iPhone 8XL) given it is a pretty decent device I thought it would be ideal.

The first problem, I had no idea how to wireless stream from my camera to my PC.. airplay is good if I wanted to present something but this was live streaming my camera.

So I did some searching around and found iVCam that actually creates a video capture device on your PC and allows you to then connect the camera and stream. I was surprised how well this worked with little fuss, £2.99 to go AD free and remove the watermark was an easy decision.

“https://www.e2esoft.com/ivcam/”

Next, I knew holding my phone in my hand waste playing would probably lead to seasickness for anyone watching so I looked at Gimbles in the market. Now if the marketing is to be believed done well these can make even the worst camera operator look good. So I picked up…

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07CJSDYLN/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Now whilst I am still learning how to use it I like it and know it is just a matter of practice to get the best use of it.

The only thing I am not entirely happy with is the mic so I might be looking at improving that but for now, it seems to be ok-ish.

So what do you think? One thing that has come to me is would it better to swap the images, so have a smaller one of the overview and the main view being the actions/players etc… the more I think about it I think maybe the better.

Let me know your thoughts on any of this, thanks. Hey, would you even watch a battle report if I published one 😀