The CS conference room will consist of a number of video switchers, cameras and amplifiers, with the Extron MVX 44 VGA A 4x4 VGA stereo audio matrix switcher as the core component. The switcher and other components can be controlled via serial ports, usually by sending short text commands to the device. (The commands are documented in the product manuals, which are available on-line at the Extron web site, for example.)

A PC has a video capture card that can convert VGA output to a video stream, using an Ncast video converter.

The project goal is to create a set of web applications that allows users to control the status of the devices. In particular, it should be possible to control:

• turning the video projectors on and off;
• using the video switch to display the laptop or PC on one of the two screens;
• changing the audio volume of the speakers;
• control the DVD player built into the PC (presumably by some remote execution mechanism);
• (possibly) steer the two video cameras;