Ipevo Ziggi-HD Plus High-Definition USB Document Camera (Discontinued and Upgraded to IPEVO V4K)

Update: Removed about half a star - read on.I was desperate to find a camera solution for a large online engineering class. Took a chance in the huge morass of cheapo webcams and stacked reviews and this little camera is completely awesome (I'm using it with a Windows 7 PC). Fast, sharp - excellent camera controls and the Ivepo "Presenter" software works perfectly with BlackBoard Collaborate sharing and allows image rotation, focus/zoom all the good stuff.This is very well designed, functions perfectly so far and is a complete pleasure to use - their design team has a lot to be proud of. I've bonded with it already.Oh, did I mention that it folds up to about the size of a stack of 3 x 5 cards?Update: So here's the bad news. The "Presenter" software which is otherwise a pretty good program includes an "auto crop" feature, ostensibly designed for document scanning. I can't get it to work (and I can get many things to work). It locks up the program on the several Windows 7 machines and has to stopped with the Windows Task Manager, which is inexcusable.The rolling menu selector in Presenter requires that you scroll past "Auto Crop" to get to other functions and that kills the program on W7 machines, which is fatal when you've got 47 students online.A bunch of trial and error gave me the result that it was particular to a series of computers we use (HP windows 7 machines) - others would work okay, the point being that there may not be a guarantee of good performance from the software. The software should be better than this...So what do you do?If you're stuck with W7...there's a chrome app that runs the camera in snapshot mode (only). Faster, cleaner and has all the camera controls. For bulletproof online work, do this. Also VLC will display it from the "capture device" menu (it's just a web cam, after all) but no camera controls.If you're running W10 then don't worry about it - you just won't be doing any scanning.This kind of workaround shouldn't be necessary, but for a great camera (which this is) it's worth it.

I have used an older model of this document camera for the past few years in my kindergarten classroom for everything from showing illustrations in books larger so that the kids can see the details to dissecting owl pellets (again, so the kids can see the details) to demonstrating hands-on math activities. I recently moved to a new school where they didn't have these document cameras, or any for that matter. I thought I could do without one but within the first week I realized that I've become completely dependent on using a document camera in my everyday instruction...so I bought my own. I didn't really want to spend $100 on one (at my previous school the corporation had purchased them for teachers to use...it was fabulous) but it came down to the quality of my instruction and of course it's worth the money. The only thing I would change about this item is that the cord can be somewhat cumbersome (I plug it into the USB port on my desktop computer and then use it on top of my kidney shaped table where I work with the kids) when it's stretched across a few feet to get where I need it to be but I wasn't under the impression that it would be wireless or anything so that's not a defect with the product, just a wish if I could have the perfect document camera that would fit into my budget lol.I am able to zoom in on size 12 font on a page and enlarge it on my SMART board (similar to a Promethean board...basically an interactive whiteboard) to letters that are over a foot tall. I usually keep it at a distance that allows me to display the entire page on which we are working so that the kids can follow along with me. The flexible arm allows it to move into unlimited positions. I also love the auto focus feature for when the display is blurry. Finally, just today I used the screen capture feature when I needed to keep something displayed on the screen for the kids but also needed that space for something else. I was basically able to screen shot the page that was being displayed and then proceed to move the document camera to clear the space (but the kids could still see the image which I had screen captured).Obviously I would recommend this document camera to anyone who is in the market for one. I have now owned two and loved them both. I tried to get by without one but as a teacher this is one of my MUST HAVES!!!

This was my first big purchase as a new teacher. It's easy to install, use, has been amazing quality and is in perfect shape 7 years later. It's compact and has travelled with me to new classrooms and easy to store during summer. It's very clear and my students love it. Honestly, it's like the updated version of when teachers took out the old projector ;)

As a teacher, I LOVE this! I use it every day in the classroom for so many things: showing students how to cut/glue interactive notebooks, how to read informational texts and take notes from it, worked examples, etc. I was also able to take pictures of my worked examples and upload them online for parents to see what their work should look like. A couple things to consider: (1) it doesn't always go high enough for me to project an entire page, so I would just place it on a coffee cup or something similar to get the entire page. (2) When using the highest resolution, it lags terribly. It's not a big deal if I want students to just check their answers or to take notes, but if I'm writing on the page, it becomes a problem. My students would laugh when I'm taking a sip of water while my hand on the screen is still writing. I have to switch to a lower resolution to prevent the lag when movement is being used with it.. Overall though, for general classroom use, I would recommend this product. I noticed a pretty big difference in student work after I used this because students could see exactly what was being asked of them.