Installing the 1st Board

As I was the "guru" for all of this it was decided that my room should be the guinea pig room. In that way we could iron out any problems regarding the installation so that when installing the system into the next three rooms we could basically duplicate the system. One of our parents volunteered to assist in the installation which was carried out over the term break.

Installation necessitated the modifying of the existing blackboard and removal of some cupboards below it. The mounting of the board was quite easily done though the builder had originally set it higher than I wanted it. Luckily I was able to check in and help recify this. Mounting the projector was also a problem as we had not taken into account the need to pitch the projector at a quite sharp angle. Again modifications were needed to the projector mount. A fan was removed to mount the projector and this was then used as the power source.

After a few hours things were sort of set up though the need to run the cord from the computer to the board meant going up over the top of the board and down its side. (Why didn't they put this computer/board cable connection at the top of the board?) Connecting the projector to the computer meant a cable dangling down onto a trolley in the centre of the room plus power and network cables also running from the corner along the ceiling and dangling down. Albeit temporary and a little problematic regarding Health and Safety issues at least we had the board functional.

The only other minor problem was that the batteries to to projector remote control were flat which meant to turn it on and off I had to stand on a table, (more grist for the OHS people :)