OpenBoard – An interactive whiteboard for schools and universities | Hacker News Reader

OpenBoard – An interactive whiteboard for schools and universities

openboard.ch

115 pointsbuovjaga19 comments

Annoyed by Promethean's software, I was about to start working on something like this. Not because their software is completely bad, but because an update removed something that many professors relied on and there's nothing even a school full of programmers and computer scientists can do about it. I don't understand how workflow-critical software like that isn't open-source (not even saying free software, just accessible source code). I will be taking a close look at this and possibly throwing some dev time your way if I think I can get our school to use this.

I was using a feature in Skype where I could do video and have an interactive sheet open with a choice of red, blue or green ink to see who was drawing at the same time. I think this was 2007. I was overseas and was doing homework with my kids. It's still in Skype, but I believe only the business version or with Office 365. It was free then. I don't see many options now that are free and are interactive.

Anyone used this?

I'm looking for a solution at home, but I think I'm looking for something a little more interactive, as in an open source style SmartBoard.

Check out Mural

If you can live with a very basic solution you could build a Wii Smartboard: http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/

I did for a few years :) Was great!

A short time later after I found out about Johnny's work I tried to build my own as well and it was great indeed.

When doing research on how to build one, I was having issues with the methodology I was using ( a very naive one), so I actually emailed Johnny asking him for pointers and he actually responded!

His very short email just said (and I quote): "it's called a planar homography"

After digging a lot and tracking some research I found an explanation of the algorithm and things kinds just clicked. It was amazing.

So... if someone reads this and is figuring out how to do something similar, search for that :)

Edit: I actually found the paper!

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=6725...

Very interesting read if you want to figure out how to warp coordinates from a camera to the screen

Thanks for sharing, what a fun and clever solution!

If you just need basic writing/drawing functionalities, there is xournal on Linux. It is extremely good at what it does. You can overlay images and PDFs too!

Only if money is no object... :

https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/23/15680250/google-jamboard-...

They use this in my uni, if the Prof feels like it. Seems to work nicely

http://crossnote.io/ should be out next year (it's still in development)

Previously I used https://github.com/Sankore/open-Sankore--install- (on windows for my employer, successfully), but the project seems to be dead. So I'm glad there is something active.

What is the chalkboard software that some mathematics and programming folks use on YouTube or when streaming?

You mean like Khan Academy? MS Paint. Seriously.

Like these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCvB-mhkT0w

There are some other ones where the presenter isn't on screen but it's the same software (or looks identical in writing style)

It's hardware, not software :-)

"The lightboard itself is made up of a heavy duty frame, a 3/8” sheet of low iron glass (commercial name starphire,) and a string of LEDs to wrap the edges of the glass to shoot light inward to make the neon markers pop on camera."

https://devcentral.f5.com/articles/lightboard-lessons-behind...

Love that he does it in shorts with a formal shirt up top.

This I think: http://lightboard.info/

It's actually not software at all. They use a glass surface between themselves and the camera with lights piped in the edges of the glass. They then use fluerescent markers to get the bright text effect.

Mirror the video image (or learn to write backwards) and viola.

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