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eMeet Jupiter conference webcam: Human tracking and scene zooming
eMeet Jupiter conference camera
pros and cons
- Pocket-sized portable external web cam
- Automatic zoom and light adjustment
- Challenge to connect to Zoom initially
The eMeet Jupiter is a useful external conference camera with four microphones, a speaker and an automatic viewfinder. It has a 1080p webcam with automatic low light correction and an automatic focus function which will adjust the scene's field of view to zoom in to the humans in the room.
The Jupiter conference camera is compact at 85 x 55 x 60mm with a lens at one end of the camera and a USB-C port at the other end. There is a screw thread underneath the camera so that it can be mounted on a tripod. Plug it in, configure the settings in the client app and use it in your conferences.
The webcam has an onboard 3W speaker that delivers good sound with little distortion even at high volumes. The images are of good quality, and you can configure the resolution to suit your bandwidth.
The client app -- the eMeet link -- works perfectly with the eMeet Jupiter, unlike the eMeet HS100, I reviewed. Double click on the Jupiter icon at the bottom of the screen and select your options. There are several configuration settings you can change for the webcam and video quality.
There are ten resolution ranges from 160 x 120px to 1920 x 1080px. The image of the cat was taken using the 640 x 480px resolution setting. You can flip the camera horizontally and vertically -- depending on where the camera is best situated.
You can manually set the light exposure or leave it on auto-exposure. You can also set automatic white balance so that colours are true and set the slider to control the brightness and contrast manually.
You can even set the zoom before the meeting starts to capture the part of the room you require.
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When the AI focus is on, the camera will automatically magnify the screen to display everything in its focus. There is a slight lag -- but nothing to get annoyed about during the call.
I tested the eMeet Jupiter with both Zoom and Skype. Although the audio worked perfectly on Zoom when speaking, I could not use the video -- even though Zoom recognised the camera.
However, on Skype, everything worked perfectly. I rebooted my PC a couple of times and eventually connected the camera to Zoom. Perhaps it was a patch issue as I send my PC to sleep daily and do not do a complete reboot often.
For $140 with the coupon on Amazon, the eMeet Jupiter conference camera is small enough to carry around in your pocket. It is simple to use and configure and adds a new dimension to your online meetings.