Update

I have everything set up and decided to go with speakers instead of headsets for the participants. Below are some pictures of all my equipment set up in the basement of my house. Decided the white box will not be big enough to shelve the laptop and the projector. I want to be able to put the microphone on top of the box so people can walk up and grab it and sit down and talk. So this weekend I am going to build my own.


Here is a run down of how this works:

• I have two second life accounts:
• I will be logged in at the local location: Just an avatar that will be used as a watcher.
• I will be logged in at the remote location, which will be my main character that will be doing the talking on screen.
• I will be at the remote location logged into the local location via skype for video and Second Life for visuals and audio.
• I turned all audio off on skype so I only have a web cam shot of who is sitting and talking to my character. This will allow me to get a better view of who it is that is hanging around the exhibit and it just feels better to be able to look at who you are talking to instead of guess who may be standing there. So Skype is taking care of the video aspect.
• On the Second Life side I have my speakers, projector and laptop set up. I also have a webcam set up on the laptop as well as two skype counts connected so I can communicate with the local machine while I am in my remote location via the video feed.
• In the pictures below it will make more sense.
• The only thing now that I need to do is really figure out how I am going to clean this up and go about tucking wires, taping wires etc. and get my box built this weekend. Other than that it's ready to roll.

This is how I set it up for the time being because the white box did not provide sufficient room to house all the equipment. Thus I am building my own. I need to figure out how to set this up so it doesn't look this messy when it goes into the final installation space.

This is about the right space and height I want for the final installation. I think the lower the projection is the more people will feel that it is at their eye level and communication will be easier.

This is a shot of my remote location set up. I have dual screens, the one on the right is the one that will be monitoring the local location via Skype and the webcam. On my side will be the left screen where I will be logged in as my character and be able to watch myself as my character talks and monitor everything to make sure it goes smoothly.