Presentation followspot
posted by ChrisNo on 30 August 2007 1:21 Go to the market place Go to forum
Problem context :
The business world now lives in PowerPoint. To make the presentations as bright as possible for the audience, presenters have to turn off the lights in the room where they are presenting. This is unfortunate since the faces of the presenters carry so much information and emotion, vital to the success of an earnest proposal or review. Before we all become radio voice actors trapped in darkness, let's design and sell a simple followspot that will bring light back to presenter's faces.
Proposed Solution :
Presenters invariably have a laptop or a computer nearby when they're making these presentations. Why not sell a small, lightweight, USB-powered followspot? It consists of two parts: the target and the spotlight.
The target
The presenter wears an indiscreet, battery powered pin that emits an infrared frequency via IR LED. (Alternately, the spot itself could emit this frequency and look for a reflector worn by the presenter.)
The spotlight
The followspot itself sits atop a two-axis stepper motor base, and is trained to continually retarget the IR frequency in real time, offset to illumine the face rather than the lapel where the pin rests. An inexpensive, plastic, slightly-amber-colored fresnel lens turns the UltraBrite LEDs into a warm, flattering glow. To avoid "horror movie" underlighting, the base can be clipped to the top of a laptop screen. Tofit into travel gear, the device is either collapsible or it comes with a simple safety wrap of neoprene.
Using the followspot, people will become part of their presentations again.
Submissions (5)
More expensive projectors work fine in a lighted room
answered by tagline on 31 August 2007 16:03
The solution would need to be cheap to be used with cheaper projectors otherwise the price difference can be used to model up on your projector to one with enough lumens. Automatic spotlight would be cool for more theatrical presentations though.
Add Ambience
answered by carl.lens on 5 September 2007 23:48
Just like Philips does with Ambilight, we should do something with the ambience as well. Give your presentation more weight by working with colours and sounds.
I'd really be interested to see how accurate...
answered by pedxing on 30 August 2007 3:00
retrofitting a spotlight onto a self-targetting tilt/pan/zoom webcam would be. something like the Creative Webcam Live! Motion would do nicely. =) http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=218&subcategory=219&product=13979
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answered by ertman on 30 August 2007 2:36
The device should be easily attached to a speakers podium or other high-up location. Sitting on the floor or a table will give you a spookly lit-from-the-bottom effect on the presenter - not very flattering! Perhaps including a standard camera mount on the bottom would be a good idea. Then you could use some thing like a Gorillapod or any standard tripod to set it up high. http://www.joby.com/products/gorillapod/original/