I am pleased to announce that I have been invited to continue my work with the Cisco Champion program for 2017.
The Cisco Champion program provides early access to product development, and direct access to technology business units. Some of the benefits of being a part of this program are
Building relationships around the world with global, like-minded technology enthusiasts
Participate in exclusive Cisco activities, tech briefings, and pre-launch announcements
Leverage the Cisco network of Blogs, Social Media, and Ambassadors to publish and share content across Cisco
Wait isn’t this a blogger for hire program?
No. It isn’t – go ahead and read my disclaimer – I’m not for sale, and Cisco receives no promise from me that I will publish something about their stuff. As always, if I find it interesting – I will write about it. Let me be PERFECTLY clear – I receive no renumeration for being in this program. Obviously if they didn’t like my work, or my contribution, I wouldn’t be invited back – but – I have been.
Doesn’t this mean you have to say nice things?
I’m sure they would like me to – but go and look at last years blogs – it was not all positive, and I was quite critical of many things – but I feel my writing is fair, un-biased and honest. So no, I am not required to be nice.
Why do you want to be in this program?
When cool new stuff comes out, I like to talk to the designers, ask them the hard questions, this program provides me access to people INSIDE Cisco. Part of why my perspective is the way it is, and the reason I get the detail that I get – is that I am given access, and time with the people that can answer the questions. As a blogger/writer, this is invaluable to providing quality content. A good example is my recent Spark Board coverage, the Cisco Champion program was instrumental in that early product access so that I could provide that content.
If you look back at some of the big changes in our industry – the big challengers and innovators have continually challenged the status quo in how we use technology.
A perfect example of this is the iPhone. Until then we all thought keyboards, roller balls and scroll wheels were the answer. Smart PDA devices counted on using a pen to be accurate, and you needed an owners guide the side of war and peace to understand how to get things done.
Then comes this guy – Steve Jobs, who intuitively understood user interfaces. The guy just knew it. The interface was so clean, so natural and so easy – 2 year olds were picking up iPhones and using them like a part of their natural life. Scrolling feels very natural, and button presses are so precise even with big fingers. This crazy attention to user interface detail is what pushed our industry to the next step of mobile computing with the iPhone. Android existed – for some time but until Apple pushed the industry, the Android platform lacked continuous innovation, it was just another mobile OS.
Actually Collaborate
If you go back and read my previous blog about video phones, I talk about how video phones are on the way out – but telepresence is here to stay and without question this is one of the proof positive moments of that.
We need to get past the disgusting world of “conferencing” and actually collaborate. Getting past the microphones sound horrible, echo, robotic voice, poor quality video, difficult to share documents, poor white boarding and high cost of simply collaborating in a basic manner.
In 2012 an international conferencing study found that on a typical conference call – 10 minutes is taken up by distractions. If you have 6 conference calls a day that is an hour wasted just trying to get work done.
Typical meeting room of today – we have a projector connecting to someone’s laptop, maybe a video endpoint, a white board that nobody on the conference can see and some kind of flip chart because we want to keep some of that stuff for later. Nothing talks to each other, and everything is disjointed. The costs of all of this technology isn’t cheap either and most rooms they sit dormant because they are too complicated.
Video systems are impossible to use. You literally need a techo-nerd in every meeting – many companies actually place an IT resource INSIDE the video room for executive calls to monitor the health of the system – that is CRAZY! Many IT departments send IT people to the room 15 minutes before the meeting to check on the equipment, and then setup the call for the participants. WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS HARD!?
Cisco Launches Spark Board
This is where difficult to use – is – OVER. Introducing the “Spark Board” a 55″ or 70″ device that you mount to the wall and do everything with – I mean everything. No more extra stuff, and everything works in a clean manner. This is a “huge iPad” type device for meeting rooms – and it is as intuitive to use – as a typical mobile tablet. No – it is easier than that. White boarding, video conferencing, screen sharing, calling, collaborating, it is all here. One device, simple design and dead simple interface.
High End Hardware Specifications
Cisco has spent time to make this product of the utmost quality. If you look at the MX series of end points, and the IX5000, Cisco was fanatic about design, everything was metal and glass and this is no different.
A 4K panel with 5.5ms response time and a VERY bright 300+ nits provides a bright picture even in well lit conference rooms. 4K video means quality presentations, video output and split screen capabilities. An amazing MIC array that allows beam forming and software audio normalization and optimization – with the possibility for speaker tracking.
The microphone system is so good, you don’t need table microphones or ceiling microphone arrays.
According to FCC Filings the unit is powered by a NVIDIA Jetson TX1 – this means it has an NVIDIA Maxwell architecture with 256 cuda cores, and over 1 teraflop of performance. 64-Bit CPU’s, 4K Video encoders and a camera interface. If this is a standard Jetson, that would be 4GB of LPDDR4 Memory, and 16GB of onboard flash (but they could have added more somewhere). They are using the display and camera headers off the TX1 from what I can see.
The audio system is a 12-element microphone array with intelligent beam forming. The audio is 20Khz wide and includes acoustic echo cancellation, auto gain control, automatic noise reduction and “active lip synchronization”
The panel has a HDMI input, a Home Button, a Whiteboading Pen (Passive) and a 3.5mm mini jack audio out, and 2 USB 3.0 ports. The input resolution is 1920×1080 maximum.
The unit is capacitive touch using an optically bonded glass front, this means that touching the screen feels very natural, and the included white board pen simply sticks to the front of the unit using a magnet, and because of this optically bonded capacitive design, the pen is passive but maintains very high accuracy.
Network connectivity is an RJ-45 Gig Ethernet port, Wifi 802.11 ABGN + AC (2.4 and 5ghz), it is “Bluetooth Ready”, but not sure what the means.
The 55″ Board is 50 x 32 x 1.9 in dimension, and weighs 87.7lbs. Shipped it is 101lbs.
The Camera is 4K 60FPS – not because they want to send 4K video, but because this allows all sorts of future software processing, cropping, tracking. If you look at the IX5000 series, they use 4K cameras and then software process the 1080P frame they want. Same idea here. The Camera Specs for those interested.
Fixed Lens with Infinite Focus
4K P60
Horizontal Field of View: 86 Degrees
Vertical Field of View: 55 Degrees
Camera is mounted tilted at 25 degrees.
The video resolutions are everything from 352×288 CIF,all the way to 1920×1080 30 frames (HD1080P) and anything in between
You literally mount this on the wall like a TV – and start using it in minutes. No need for external microphones or connections.
On the wall, on a stand, against the wall, many options exist for this platform to be placed anywhere. No additional crazy wires, ethernet and power. I can see organizations putting these on rolling carts in hospitals and educational facilities.
Good hardware has been around for awhile – but where this shines is in the software.
Changing The Way People Collaborate
Spark is now adding whiteboards – and what is cool is that after you leave a Spark room, just like today, all the content continues to be available within that Spark room including documents that have been shared, and whiteboard content.
This is a pretty big moment for collaboration rooms, everything has been simplified.
Stay Secure
Cisco says “Trust us, but you don’t have to” – everything in Cisco Spark is encrypted, TLS and uses high end encryption – but – at your option you can even deploy your own key management server on your own site, and in that situation, Cisco doesn’t even hold the keys to your data. Nobody, not even Cisco has the keys to your kingdom.
Simple Calling
How difficult does it need to be to simply make a call? With Spark Board – you simply walk into the room, and control the device from your mobile phone, or walk up and press the call button and you are talking in second.
If you are running the Cisco Spark App on your laptop or mobile device, the app will use Proximity to recognize you are in the room and you can simply place a call using the app instructing it to use the board.
Simple Content Sharing
With Cisco Spark Board – you can use the power of proximity – using a very tiny application on your laptop the board recognizes when people are present in the room and allows you to cast your screen to the board, and the meeting participants.
The Cisco Spark App automatically connects with room devices, if you are already running the Spark application, your device recognizes your proximity to the board and controls appear on screen – nothing to connect, it all works over WiFi. You can place calls directly from your laptop using the board or cast your screen.
No More Table Mess
What table mess? Nothing goes on the table. These days are over.
Powered In The Cloud
No more rack full of servers sitting there, waiting for you to use them, no more 100K projects to deploy video services systems. The Cisco Spark platform lives in the cloud, everything is there in redundant high availability data centers with high performance connections. Unpack – and go. This also means that organizations with 20 employees could use Spark and the Spark Board affordably. No more extensive expensive back end infrastructure.
Extreme Affordability
This board is ridiculous value the 55″ at $4990 USD MSRP and $9990 USD for 70″ (Expect discounts) for the board, and $169 USD / month for the service the board is crazy accessible to almost every organization out there. Previously solutions like this would cost $40K in hardware, $40K in back end systems, and then another $30-50K in professional services. How Cisco has managed to reach this price point is beyond me. Even if you consider 3 years of Spark service at $169/month the board still barely tips the scales at $10K all in. (Spark user services are required)
Cisco Spark Interface Enhancements
The new interface launch is totally over shadowed by this new Spark Board launch – but the secret is in the software. To power this amazing new hardware platform, Cisco is overhauling the interface and adding new client enhancements and features. Go ahead and update your Spark app, and notice the changes.
The new layout provides instant access to the things that you need and want. Simple interfaces, with no user training necessary to get basic things done.
A new meeting layout that lets you focus on the meeting at hand and collaborate with those in the meeting. Even if you are on a mobile device the experience is optimized.
Even while sharing content – video continues, but the meeting content is visible – on the Spark Board, on your laptop or on a mobile device – the experience is platform optimized.
Justin’s Take
If this really is an “iPhone” moment for Cisco Spark, this could trigger a huge change in the “Video Conferencing” industry. I say that in quotes because nobody wants to “Video Conference” they want to work, they want to collaborate and they just want to get things done. This thing is so easy to use, the entire platform is super intuitive – something these systems have never been.
I remain puzzled why this thing is so inexpensive – they could have launched the board for twice the price – and nobody would have batted an eye. This is setting a new bar. Perhaps the intent here is to flood the market and gain significant market share for Cisco Spark. Cisco must be selling the board at close to or less than the cost to manufacture it.
Spark is sized for 20-2000+, this makes this kind of technology accessible to every organization of every size and at an affordable cost, this will reduce barrier to entry for many organizations.
When you look at the MX/SX platform as well, this means you can have rooms with Spark Board, and rooms with MX/SX all collaborating together. I question how many customers who have purchased SX10N or MX systems might have a little bit of buyers remorse. I could see some cool possibilities in the future for Spark Board – Cisco tells me “It isn’t over yet” and there are some ideas on the roadmap that sound pretty cool.
The future is looking up for Spark and Cisco. This will be one to watch.
Here is the presentation calendar for this week’s event – as always join in on the conversation on twitter with the hashtag #NFD14 and head over to techfieldday.com to watch the live stream.
Watch as the team asks the hard questions, these are in-depth technical session with limited marketing content – if you want to catch up on these innovative technology companies, tune in to the live stream.
With the SRTUSA team on our home turf, it was time to show them what we are made of up here in the great white north. I was super happy to have a chance to both meet Travis and hear what he thought of the conditions. Even more exciting was that Subaru would now produce a Launch Control episode about our home event.
With the aim to take a serious shot at the entire 2017 Rally America season, Travis Pastrana and Robbie Durant needed more time to work on their notes capability. With the new “American Rally Association Championship” will start at Rallye Perce Neige – which is no joke of a rally.
In order to prepare for Rallye Perce Neige in Maniwaki Quebec, more time with Robbie and get notes in order, so instead of heading out to a training ground they decided to contest the Rally of the Tall Pines here in Canada. With the team at Vermont Sports Car using this as a training round, Travis is under instructions to go easy – but there is no question he is out here to win.
With the countless wins and championships from Antoine L’Estage there is no question that he is here to win, the championship is on the line. The question was, will Travis take that from him? Will Antoine feel pressured by Travis to push too hard and risk it all.
Speaking with Travis Pastrana on Friday night, he was a super happy guy, and told me that he was happy to be here, but the conditions were challenging.
Travis was gracious enough to sign my hat for me. I go to a dozen events per year, and I never fan boy it up, but really how often do you get the SRT-USA team up here?
Times were traded all day, with Travis and Robbie in the SRT-USA 199 car sometimes within 2-3 seconds on Antoine, and even winning a few stages, but in the end Antoine L’Estage won by only 3 minutes and 25 seconds. While that may seem like an eternity, the next competitor was almost 15 minutes off that pace. With this being the first Rally of the Tall Pines for Travis – that is an amazing accomplishment against someone like L’Estage who basically owns the Canadian Rally Championship.
Without further, here is the final Launch Control of the season, episode 14, where I make an appearance at 5:40 as I live stream for our event from the side lines – bright orange coat on the right of the frame.
Along with all of that – Cisco Spark Telephony offering PSTN, and not to mention the SX10N integration complete with the ease of use of proximity.
So what now?
From what we can see is – it involves some kind of Pen, making my mark? Maybe i’m way off and I am over reading into the marketing. I’ve heard rumors – but I don’t do rumors. We do know that Cisco is developing more and more for the Cisco Spark Platform with a strong API, including an entire site “Spark for Developers” – last time I checked, we don’t have “WebEx” for developers.
We already have a series of room systems we can run with Spark.
Cisco TelePresence SX10 Quick Set
Cisco TelePresence SX20 Quick Set
Cisco TelePresence SX80 Codec
Cisco TelePresence MX200 G2
Cisco TelePresence MX300 G2
Cisco TelePresence MX700
Cisco TelePresence MX800
Cisco DX70
Cisco DX80
Lots of phone options too..
7800 Series: 7811,7821,7841,7861
8800 Series: 8811 8841 8845 8851 8851NR 8861 8865
What is missing here?
Clearly the focus in Cisco Spark is collaboration – not collaboration technology, but actually collaborating, we have teams now, and we can do text, voice, video, calls, attaching files to messages.
The bottom line is something new is coming – and Cisco is talking all over town about how we all need to be there to watch. They tell every customer, every partner and all the people on the street to sign up for this thing.
I’ll be there – and you will have my take on it as soon as I can get it posted because I am pretty excited to see what is next.
One of the things on my bucket list, is my PPL – that is private pilots license. Well, between Rally, and other hobbies, I have neither time – nor funds. Like my other hobbies, I may need to take some time away from them to get this done. My friend Steve is really inspiring me. Making it worse was thanks to Spectrum Aviation, I was able to get a rare ride in the same Boeing Stearman made famous by Steve in many Flight Chops videos. Nothing will get you addicted to wanting your PAL like an open cockpit flying almost upside down.
Photo Courtesy of Flight Chops
Until then I have been vicariously living through my friend Steve Thorne @flightchops from Flight Chops. As a professional in the video media business, Steve started a great channel a few years ago over on YouTube, filming some of his flights so he could review what he did wrong – so he could get it right. The big bonus was with Steve’s professional capabilities he could actually put some professional production value to his channel so things quickly took off. Once the channel got serious, Steve made this quick video to show more of what was to come – and wow was it great.
It helps that Steve is super humble guy and has no fear of sharing, even entire videos of him screwing up landings over and over, or not being able to figure out IFR (he keeps saying he will get his IFR rating, but we are all still waiting Steve!). Here is the 2017 preview.
Where is this all going? Steve is proving in a manner similar to the likes of, Stevo1Kinevo, Live From the Flight Deck, MrAviation101 and MZeroA that you can actually (almost) make a living on YouTube and while the content is focused on the aviation community, getting mass appeal like someone like Casey Neistat would be difficult when focused on a topic like Aviation. Steve is still proving that with sponsorship and Patreon (yes, I am a patron) that getting enough revenue to make this a real “job” is attainable, and while he is not quite there yet, the time might be soon. The bigger things get, the most they cost, with full production budgets going into the channel now, air to air camera work, travel, extra camera crews (Brock does get himself into some interesting places!)
Justin’s Opinion
The bottom line is – YouTube is changing content creation in a big way, and to quote a talk from Kevin Spacey at Cisco Live! – “If you give people content they want, the way they want it at a price they are willing to pay, people would rather pay for it rather than steal it”. Content creators are finding ways to make a living online without the big studios, with smaller budgets and niche producers, like Steve and FlightChops are able to finally spread their wings (pun totally intended) and create the show they really want to, and I am super happy for him, not just because he is creating amazing content, but because he is also able to realize his dream of doing what he wants to do every day. Even if you want to build a channel about a unique topic, you can build content on YouTube and attain revenue, something that topics with less universal appeal could not do easily before.
Well if you are a car nut, it is all over the forums, at least Ford has made good on their current promise. While the dealers do not have all the info yet, it would appear the software itself is floating around.
The upgraded USB hub is almost impossible to get, but it looks like they are trickling in, some of us (me included!) found out what the part number was and ordered it a few months ago to avoid the out of stock issues with the part.
So at least I have the part, and I know the release is here, just working with my dealer on when I can get the software installed in my truck. Finally my 2016 F-150 is getting CarPlay and Android Auto – the question is – when will we get WAZE on these platforms? I am still confused why that hasn’t happened yet!
This is pretty big. Wait others have been doing this for some time!
Ok, except the problem with having a ton of AP’s is management, the bigger problem having tons of AP’s at remote locations – is also management.
Stop me if you have heard it before – simple management – plug it in and you are off to the races, templated configuration. All of what is great about Meraki starts to make a lot of sense when you think about having 100+ little AP’s all over the place.
Why would you want this? I can give you a very good reason why the new Meraki MR30H is a great product.
It stands with their ideal use case – In-Room Hotel / Dormitory use.
The Science – 5GHZ
Let’s talk science for a second… We have all been using 802.11B/G/N for some time on the 2.4GHZ band, that is an ISM band, ISM stands for industrial, scientific, and medical – basically anyone can build stuff on 2.4, and run it – oh and don’t forget your microwave which will wipe out half the band each time you turn it on. The bottom line is 2.4ghz is dead for most people, the band is so noisy, nobody is really designing networks for it anymore.
So now we move to 5GHZ, 802.11a/n/ac – but wait – most people do not seem to realize the coverage for 5GHZ at the same power as 2.4ghz is not the same. In 2002 Magis Networks a semi conductor company did testing on various materials for loss metrics on 2.4GHZ and 5GHZ frequencies.
I’m going to try and explain this – hit me in the comments if I made a math error – but thanks to my good friend and colleague Jason Miles @photomediaguy for helping me check my thought process on this (If you need some amazing photo work, check out his website www.jasonmilesphotography.com)
Concrete is the enemy!
Dry concrete block has about 6.7DB of loss on 2.4ghz, while 5GHZ is has 10.3DB of loss – now that is 3.6DB of loss MORE – but before you think “Well that’s not much” – DB is logarithmic.
A loss of 6.7DB is about 70% signal LOSS and 10.3DB is about 90% Signal Loss.
If I had an access point right on the other side of concrete, and it was running 50mw – if I was on 2.4GHZ, I would get about 10.7mw on the other side, or barely enough to even operate. on 5.0GHZ – I’m looking at 4.6mw – or useless.
I think I am making my point – 5.0ghz is significantly more lossy through the same material than 2.4ghz, and while 2.4ghz was really difficult through concrete – 5.0ghz is pointless.
Even drywall is 37% more lossy on 5GHZ – through a typical office wall you are looking at 1DB per wall.
In Modern WiFi design, we actually design more for performance and density and less about coverage, it is more about low power AP’s, and many of them in order to deliver high-density high performance. The days of running 100MW on AP’s to give us wide coverage with a single AP are long gone. We worry about battery life, and co-channel interference – we don’t want to run high power. So as we build this new world of many low powered APs in more places.
MR30H – Details
So we have talked about Wifi Design, a little about 5GHZ and Loss – now we can talk about the MR30H. This is a pretty good retro fit solution for many clients especially hospitality, education, utility and government where installs are a problem and if could simply replace an existing jack, with an AP, we could easily provide spot wifi, and maintain 802.3af power to hang a phone off it with ease of install and no ladder.
Technical Details
3 Radios – 2.4, 5GHZ and WIPS
Bluetooth BLE
802.3AF Compatible – but 802.3at means you get 802.3AF Power Output
It turns out the Drone market isn’t quite as easy to get into as some companies think – even the big guys like GoPro. Turns out GoPro is saying about 2,500 Karma’s simply lost power while in flight.
GoPro has had a tough go as of late, trying to stay relevant, lauching a TON of products this year – and their stock jumped as high as 16.79 earlier this year and has now dumped it’s way down to 10.14 in after hours trading last night on the new of the Karma problems. A stock price we have not seen since June.
The bottom line – take it back where you got it – all of it, GoPro and Grip as well even though those are not a problem – you got a bundle so it all has to go back.
There is no replacement – it is a full on recall with refund – if/when they fix it, they will just start selling it again.
I’ll admit, I purchased a GoPro Hero 3 Black a few years ago, and while the video performance is stellar, the batteries have been total garbage, and some tell me “Oh the 4 they fixed it” but I still hear of issues on the GoPro 4.
Part of why I have not purchased another GoPro is because of the problems I have had – I even considered a Karma because I wanted the new GoPro, plus I wanted the Grip. That being said DJI Osmo Mobile is probably in my future.
Prediction
If DJI comes out with an action cam – GoPro is finished.
Cisco has recently released a new video around the anatomy of a hack. Most people think hackers are script kiddies sitting in their basement (or their grandmothers basement) wearing a hoodie writing “scripts” and damaging infrastructure.
There is no question the script kids are out there – but organized crime and foreign governments have become the real bad actors.
This video is actually pretty realistic, and many of my friends and colleagues have gone through these exact scenarios at work, or at their clients.
So for the previous blog entries where I was critical of some of Cisco’s marketing videos – this one is bang on.
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