Ok, so we have two Jitsi Meet rooms available:
- the main one will stay open,
- another one for talks and training sessions which will need a moderator to open it if we schedule something.
You can join in when you want, there’s no fixed schedule anyway. If you want to give a talk, or teach something you can propose here in advance of course.
Beware it activates both webcam and microphone when you join in, so make sure you have clothes on before joining in. Also it sometimes happens the connection break and it tries to rejoin and reactivates the webcam+mic, so be aware of this. You don’t have to use a webcam by the way, you can still participate with only audio if you want or don’t have one.
Click on the “Membre AAA” text on your thumbnail to set your nickname. If you right-click it you can flip your image, by default it does a mirror and not everyone likes that.
If you connect to the second channel in another tab, make sure you mute both mic and audio output of the other tab to avoid larsen effect.
You can use keyboard shortcuts in the interface, like ‘m’ to toggle mic, ‘v’ for video (webcam)… They are documented here. The icons at the bottom are in order:
- toggle mic (and there’s a menu to change audio sources and sink from the detault),
- toggle video (and webcam change),
- screen sharing,
- internal chat, although IRC is easier to use I think,
- raise your hand (to tell you want to speak during a talk),
- toggle tile view,
- your own parameters,
- other options,
- and quit the channel.
The server is hosted by a member of a non-profit, over a fiber link, and has been tested with at least 30 connections so it should work fine. Still here are some technical hints:
- Chromium (or Chrome) seems to work best still for this, Firefox has or at least used to cause issues before version 80, so depending on your version that might work or not for you.
- While it does work on a mobile device, they usually go quite hot, and sometimes it also drains the battery even with the charger plugged in, so prefer a full computer.
- While it’s quite stable, it can happen that you miss video feeds, or audio, or sometimes other can’t hear you, usually reloading the tab fixes that.
- The tiled view seems to use more bandwidth, so if yours is limited you can switch to the other view.
- Screen sharing is restricted to 5 fps, but that’s usually enough for slideshows.
- Webcam resolution is restricted to preserve bandwidth, and some webcams don’t like that. If you can’t get it to work, try this:
- Open another tab to this site,
- Select the webcam in the list,
- click “Quick Scan”, and wait for the test to finish,
- then force VGA by clicking in the resolution list to force it,
- finally force reload the Jitsi Meet tab. That worked for me on an external webcam it didn’t want to switch to.