05-26-2003, 05:00 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 468
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Let the Colorgraphic Voyager Aid Your Presentations
So you've got a great deal of data on your Pocket PC and you'd like to share some of it with a larger audience. Or perhaps you've got to give a presentation and you've got Power Point slides, but don't feel like lugging a laptop into the meeting room. No worries, the Voyager from Colorgraphic is just what you need for your Pocket PC to fix you right up!
Forget about handouts at your next presentation. Don't even think about hauling a bulky laptop with you into a meeting room. Let your Pocket PC handle all of your presentation needs. Colorgraphic has put together a complete presentation package for the Pocket PC platform in the form of Voyager; a package that includes both hardware and software from Westtek -- essentially everything you'll need to use your Pocket PC as a presentation delivery aide.
Contents
The Colorgraphic Voyager is a Type I CF-Card that allows you to connect your Pocket PC to an external monitor, projector or television. It also comes with a cable/adapter to connect to the various ouput sources, an infrared remote control to control your Pocket PC, a CF-Card, PC-Card adapter and a CD containing the device drivers. The Voyager Shadow utility, the product manual and the ClearVue suite of document viewing utilities from Westtek are also included.
Figure 1: Included hardware
Installation
Installation is pretty straightforward, though not perfect. The first things you install are the drivers for the Voyager card and Shadow utilities. The included CD provides drivers for most Pocket PCs as well as HPCs and other Windows CE.Net-based devices. Once the drivers and Shadow are installed, the next step is to install the ClearVue software suite. There are a couple of things to look out for with this install. First of all, the ClearVue install will ask you to disable the automatic conversion of Word and rich-text documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations to their Pocket PC equivalents. This is to maintain the formatting of the original documents so you can use them in your presentations, but it makes editing the files within the standard Pocket PC tools impossible. Secondly, you're required to enter a rather long serial number on the Pocket PC device itself. It would seem much easier to me to be able to type it in on the PC itself during installation rather than the PDA, but those are minor quibbles and once the installation is done, you're ready to go!
Operation
The first thing to do, once the software and drivers are installed is to plug the card into your Pocket PC and attach the cable to it. You'll notice that the other end of the cable has three plugs on it: one for VGA (also supporting Wide VGA, S-VGA, and XGA), one for S-Video, and one for composite video (RCA jack). Any of these may be used to connect to a display, however only one may be used at a time. You will need the appropriate cable to attach to the Voyager cable as you cannot plug the Voyager cable directly into a display device. The VGA plug offers the best resolution, working well with most computer monitors and projectors.
I tested the card with both a 17" monitor and a Compaq projector and got good results with both. The display was sharp, clear, bright and colorful. Working somewhat less well is the composite video output. Plugging this into a 15" television produced an image that was bright and colorful, but not very clear. Small text was particularly hard to read. However, a standard television is simply not capable of producing a high quality computer display output and the lousy quality of the Voyager output on the TV is obviously the fault of the television and not the Voyager itself! In a pinch, and with a presentation produced with a TV in mind (few graphics, large fonts), a television could certainly be used as a decent presentation device. I did not have any S-Video capable displays available so I could not test this adapter, however generally one would expect it to fall somewhere in between composite video and VGA in quality.
Figure 2: Voyager cable ports
Software
There are two primary applications packaged with the Voyager. The first one, Voyager Shadow, lets you mirror your Pocket PC's screen on the external display device. This worked well with all of the applications with which I tried it and it has a number of options, including the ability to select the border color around the screen image. Since your Pocket PC screen dimensions do not match the standard VGA or TV dimensions, the image is surrounded by a border area by default. Setting the border color can help some projectors sync the image correctly. You can also adjust the update speed (one second is the default) which is useful for streaming video or playing games and you can rotate the image or stretch it to fit the external display dimensions, and select various other output parameters.
Figure 3: Shadow setup screen
Shadow works very well and would be a good way to demonstrate Pocket PC software for an audience. For actual presentations, or for viewing specific files, however, the ClearVue suite is the way to go. The ClearVue software is a package of four separate applications: ClearVue Document (for Word or rich-text format docs), ClearVue Image (for image files), ClearVue Presentation (for PowerPoint presentations), and ClearVue Worksheet (for Excel spreadsheets).
ClearVue Document does a great job with Word Documents, including displaying images, tables and fonts. ClearVue Worksheet does equally well with spreadsheets, even those with charts! ClearVue Image displays images individually or in a slide show. I've found the slide show feature a great tool for showing off family photos to friends. But ClearVue Presentation is really the king of this suite. PowerPoint presentations are displayed looking very much like they did on the PC they were created on, including images and even transitions and animations! Within ClearVue Presentation you can choose which slides to include in your slide show or re-arrange their order, but where the application really shines is when you configure it for use with the Voyager card.
Figure 4: ClearVue Document
Figure 5: ClearVue Worksheet
Figure 6: ClearVue Image
Each of the ClearVue applications has a setup screen similar to the one below, where you can re-direct the output to the external display via the Voyager card. (You'll need to shut off Voyager Shadow for this to work!) This re-direction is most valuable with ClearVue Presentation. One of the best uses of the software is to display the slides on the external display and show a small version with your speaker notes on the Pocket PC's own display.
Figure 7: Viewing a single slide in ClearVue Presentation
Figure 8: Viewing an entire presentation in ClearVue Presentation
Remote Control
One of the coolest things about Voyager is the remote control that comes with it. The remote is small, about the size of a PC Card (a little narrower, but thicker) and has "bubble" buttons for directional control and six "F-function" buttons. Along with the remote comes a tiny cheat sheet that lists common functions and the buttons to which they map. For example, in ClearVue Presentation, you can zoom in and out of a slide with the F3 and F6 buttons. You can also enable an on-screen cursor and move it around with the directional buttons. Of course, you can advance through your presentation slides with the remote as well. It's very nifty in concept. Execution isn't quite as good, however.
Perhaps this is simply an issue with my Jornada 560, but in order for the remote to work, I had to hold it VERY close (within a few inches) of the IR port on the Jornada. Given that the IR port is on the top of the unit right next to where the Voyager cable is coming out, the range of locations from which the remote would work was seriously limited. This also generally requires the Jornada to be upside down in relation to me, in order to line up the IR port with the remote, making speaker notes on the Jornada's display impossible to read. It's possible, though, that other Pocket PC models would have better results than I did, and the remote still scores very high on the coolness scale.
Figure 9: The remote control
Figure 10: The remote control next to my Jornada for size comparison
Specs- OS support for Windows CE 3.0 PocketPC 2000, PocketPC 2002, HPC 2000, Windows CE.net
- VGA, SVGA, wide VGA and XGA support with HD15 VGA connector
- NTSC and PAL TV-Out support with S-video or composite
- Output to VGA monitors, projectors or televisions
- Output orientation, centering and image enlargement
- CF Type I card
- PCMCIA Type II to CF type I adapter included
- Voyager Remote and Software included
- Westtek ClearVue Suite included
- Voyager Shadow software - mirrors handheld's LCD image to Voyager-connected display
- Combination cable with HD15, S-video and RCA connectors, length: 3ft or 900mm
The Voyager also supports several other presentation packages including Pocket Slides from Conduits, the IA suite from IA Style, and PocketTV from MpegTV.
Where to buy
The Voyager is available from the Pocket PC Thoughts Mobile Planet affiliate store for $149.95 US.
Gotchas
I encountered no serious problems with the Voyager. A couple of minor annoyances with the installation of the software and a less than satisfactory performance of the remote control were about it.
Conclusions
If you make presentations on a regular basis and would like your Pocket PC to provide assistance, then the Colorgraphic Voyager is definitely for you! The combination of hardware and software provide an excellent manner in which to turn your Pocket PC into a terrific portable presentation aide.
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05-26-2003, 06:16 PM
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Editorial Contributor
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 5,411
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Darn. Didn't help me make a decision. I am in the market for some sort of presentation tool for my PPC, but am torn betwen a couple of options. Part of the issue is I don't have a rock solid requirement, so I can't evaluate based on meeting my needs.
On the Voyager you mention that the refresh rate is adjustable, and even show a screen shot with 1 sec selected. Can it do better than that? It lists supporting PocketTV, but that would seem superfluous with only a 1 sec refresh. Any chance you tried a video clip? I haven't seen a real (impartial) review of it, but the FlyPresenter indicates that the video preformance is optimized.
The remote performance you describe is dismal. If you have to be within inches of the PPC, I'd just as soon they keep the remote and nock the $40 off they added when they started including the remote. Anyone have one of these with a Dell AXIM? I assume the issue is more with the IR capability of the PPC than the remote. The remote is preferable to the FlyPresenter one which just does forward and back, but if it doesn't work acceptably (from a remote location), it is less useful. The IA Style setup seems to have about the same remote setup, but I think the range as reviewed wasn't stellar either.
Overall the software package that comes with the Voyager seems the best for what I think I need, or want, though I could always buy different hardware, and the Westek suite seperately. It seems to support the popular hardware.
ARRGH. Wish I could just go to my local PPC store and try them each out. I'm not the sort to buy things and return them, unless they just don't do what they are advertised to. [I think less than 10 ft on the remote would constitute useless, and so would result in a return, if the remote was a feature I bought it for]
__________________
Sometimes you are the anteater, sometimes you are the ant.
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05-27-2003, 03:29 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 59
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I've got the FlyPresenter. It plays 320x240 resolution MPEGs with audio at about 17fps using PocketTV. With a lower resolution video, you could probably increase the frame rate, but it won't fill up the tv/monitor screen.
It's "remote" is a remote/laser pointer combination. The remote part of the pen has two buttons (page up and page down) and the other end is a laser pointer. The range is ok... not sure how much exactly but the CF card has a IR reciever built into it so its better than other solutions that use the PPC's IR port.
The software that comes with it is IAMirror, IA Album and IA Presenter... the same stuff that comes with the other VGA-out card that was reviewed here a little while ago.
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05-27-2003, 03:40 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 59
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Alright, I just tried the remote and it's range is about 25 feet.... if only the remote had more buttons to push 
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05-27-2003, 03:52 AM
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Editorial Contributor
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 5,411
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Thanks, rudolph, I appreciate that input. Sounds like a good solution to add an IR receiver to the unit itself rather than relying on the variable built in IR. Two buttons at 25 ft does beat 12 buttons at under a foot though.
I have no real interest in the IA style stuff since I already own Pocket Slides which supports the FlyPresenter, and Powerpoint is my primary concern I think. The Westek suite interests my more because of it's integration with the free HP printing solutions. Seems I could buy the Lifeview product and Clearview for about the same price as the Voyager solution, get a working remote, and a license to PocketTV Enterprise.
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Sometimes you are the anteater, sometimes you are the ant.
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05-27-2003, 02:56 PM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 8
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Voyager Remote
Perry must have had something incorrectly configured with his remote. We have tested the Voyager with a range of PPCs and routinely get at least a 10 foot range on the remote. This includes the Jornada 568 and iPAQ products.
Moreover, an LED on the remote lights up when a button is pressed to let the user know that the battery is functional. The Remote uses a larger and more standard battery than that used by Margi or IA Style.
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05-27-2003, 03:19 PM
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Editorial Contributor
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 5,411
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Re: Voyager Remote
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Vger
Perry must have had something incorrectly configured with his remote. We have tested the Voyager with a range of PPCs and routinely get at least a 10 foot range on the remote. This includes the Jornada 568 and iPAQ products.
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I was hoping this might be the case. Thanks for chiming in. I also hoped you would be monitoring this thread. I would find it hard to believe that you would release a product with that remote deficiency. I have had less than acceptable performance with other IR remotes due to their placement. The ambient light (even that from a projector) has overpowered the receiver. Maybe it was such an issue, or a weak battery.
Comments?
__________________
Sometimes you are the anteater, sometimes you are the ant.
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05-27-2003, 03:29 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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In my tests of IR remotes with the Jornada, I found it to be extremely sentisive to the angle of the remote. If you hold the remote on the same horizontal plane as the IR port on the Jornada, it will work from fairly far away, but if the angle is off, forget it - you'll need to get fairly close.
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05-27-2003, 03:40 PM
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Editorial Contributor
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 5,411
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Jason,
How about the Dell? ( I know you have one)
__________________
Sometimes you are the anteater, sometimes you are the ant.
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05-27-2003, 04:41 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Sven
How about the Dell? ( I know you have one)
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I haven't tried it with the Dell.
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Linear Mode
