I am the chairman of a chamber choir and we give concerts in a lot of small churches with old 2 manual + pedal board tracker organs.

They tend to be lacking modern comforts such as a video link to enable the organist to see the conductor and often the mirror is either inadequate or in the wrong place.

I'd like to make our organist's life easier.

Does anyone know of any relatively inexpensive kit that can be used to provide a video link? It would need to be portable as the choir would own it and install it as required at each venue. I'm a ssuming some sort of small camera, cable, and small portable screen. As the chor would be paying, we'd want to keep costs down, probably below GBP250 ideally.

Thanks.

EDIT: fixed string of typos....

We use a single manual Viscount usually with small orchestra. You wouldn't really want to play solo for long periods on it for reasons of comfort and feel and without pedals or two manuals simple continuo work is the limit of what it can do. However with our own amplifier we are happy with the sound it makes. It is easily portable and can be positioned with a good view of the conductor.

Sadly at ?805 it blows your budget by a considerable margin, so unless you can find second-hand you'll have to see what else is suggested. Ours was acquired many years ago at considerably less cost.

http://www.viscountorgans.net/product_cata...m_ii/index.html

PS. I should add it makes a more baroque sound than your typical English village church - though it has been used with orchestra for the Easter hymn from Cavalleria Rusticana and an introductory solo in a Dvorak sacred work. I was glad would be out-of-the question.

Did exactly that, using:

- cheap 2nd hand monitor from eBay
- cheap wireless camera (keyhole type) from eBay
- All that was needed apart from that was extension cables for mains for the camera and receiver power supplies.

Total cost about ?30, and it's all been working for 18months or so now.


You'd want a portable camera stand, or adapted music stand (the camera I use is very lightweight and very small), and a copious supply of gaffa tape (for all sorts of reasons).

If you visit a Maplin store you will find all sorts of CCTV cameras available for a very reasonable price. Most have a USB, wireless or Ethernet connection, and will work with a Laptop. Some may also connect directly to a PC monitor, or perhaps to a tablet device, such as an iPad.

There are many possible configurations, but the cameras themselves need not be too expensive. However, make sure they are capable of working in low light, (B&W may actually be better than colour), as some church buildings can be very dark inside; even with all the lights on!

SB

Thanks for that - I did have a quick look at the Maplin site yesterday and there are plenty of cameras with various capabilities for the GBP40 - 60 range that should work. I think the main issue will be getting a suitable monitor device. I don't have an iPad, but I'll ave a look for small monitors etc.

I would advise against using any form of wireless system (unless you have the chance to test it before you buy); some wireless systems have a slight time-lag between the camera and the monitor - exactly what you don't need in this context!! A simple system with a cable link between camera and monitor is a much better option.

Philip

I think this can be a problem with 'digital' systems generally, (not just wireless), as they need to buffer data before playing it back. Mobile phones and DAB radios do exactly the same thing. (Try listening to a DAB radio set and an FM radio set tuned to the same station at the same time and you will see what I mean!)

However, wireless has its own problems, and if our church radio microphone is anything to go by, you need to place the receiver very carefully. The ultra high frequency signals used by these systems work strictly by line of sight, so pillars and thick walls in the way will prevent reception.


SB

Possibly, but the real latency comes about through data encoding and compression before transmission.

Thanks for these helpful comments and observations.

I was already wary of wireless for the reaosns stipulated and judging by the weird way sound propagates between choir and organ in most churches I've ever performed in, I would assume that radio waves do similar peregrinatory perambulations (latency, drop out etc). So I think hard-wired is the way to go.

I hadn't given much thought to latency due to the read/write I/O buffereing and the D/A conversions. I think this means testing potential kit carefully.

I'm discussing it with the committee on Thursday so we'll see what happens....