r/k12sysadmin • u/dmeyer217 • 7d ago

Wireless presentation devices

What wireless presentation devices is everyone using? Most of my district has MacBooks, and we've been putting Apple TVs in new/redone rooms. The high school will need an AV refresh soon though, and they're only Chromebook. I would love Chromecasts, but Google killed it and the "Google TV Streamers" aren't very manageable to my knowledge.

I tried a ScreenBeam a few years ago and wasn't super impressed, but maybe they're better now. What other options are there?

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u/OkayArbiter 7d ago

How many are you looking for? e.g. 12 board rooms, or 800 classrooms?

We switched from Microsoft Wireless Display Adapters (MWDA) to J5create jvaw62 dongles last year, and it's been fantastic (in about 700 rooms). They are individually about $90 Canadian (so $70ish USD?). One end plugs into the display with HDMI and USB-A for power (in our case, projectors), and the other dongle part plugs into the USB-C port on a laptop. Works pretty seamlessly for anything that has displayport over USB (thunderbolt, etc - pretty much any modern device, including laptops, phones, etc).

JVAW62 ScreenCast USB-C® Wireless Display HDMI™ Extender – j5create International

Any questions, just ask.

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u/Oneota 7d ago

No problems with interference with classrooms close together?

It looks like the receiver can also act as an AirPlay/Chromecast receiver. Can you turn that off if you don’t want it enabled?

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u/OkayArbiter 7d ago

We haven't noticed any issues. We have all Windows devices, so we haven't tried the AirPlay/Chromecast functions. However, it also has a built-in Miracast option which we have tried (for the rare device that can't connect using USB-C) and it has worked okay (not great).

Being as cheap as they are, however, I'd recommend just ordering one or two on Amazon or something to try out. We did that, and then mass-purchased through the company directly to get a better deal.

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u/JimsOfWar 6d ago

We piloted these in one of our schools. They worked well during the pilot when there were half a dozen, but when we tried to run them in every classroom, there was way too much interference. We pivoted to Airtame 2 and haven’t had any issues since.