Pearl 2 for UX lab - what gear to use?

Hi all, I am looking to buy the Pearl 2 to use for a UX lab. Now I am looking to use it to switch between video sources from a laptop, smartphone (iOS & android device) & 2 IP cameras, as well as audio sources from 2 microphones.

Now my main question is, can the smartphones be connected to the Pearl 2, so that the screen of the smartphone is recorded and streamed? I was thinking of using a lightning-to-HDMI & micro-USB-to-HDMI to get the screens to the Pearl 2, but I am not sure if this is supported.

Next to that, is it possible for the Pearl 2 to reach out to the Nest camera stream? It is not clear to me whether it is open to other soft-/hardware than Nest’s. If not, I think the easiest option is to use wired cams. Does anybody know cams that work well with the Pearl 2?

Lastly, does somebody know an easy way to get audio from different sources to the Pearl 2 without using a mixer? If anybody could help with any of these questions I would be very grateful.

You can certainly utilize a proper micro USB to HDMI or lightning to HDMI adapter and then connect an HDMI cable to Pearl-2 in order to utilize a mobile device as a video source.

Pearl-2 does have support to capture an IP camera as an RTSP source in the Web UI. Under the general sources section, click on “add source” at the bottom, click on add RTSP source and add the URL and information for the camera. Once you have finished click “apply” and you can now select the RTSP source in the channel sources section.

Pearl-2 only supports Line-level audio. This unfortunately means that direct microphone connections are not supported on Pearl-2. If you do not wish to utilize a mixer then you will need to purchase and utilize a microphone pre-amp to boost the signal to a line-level, however good pre-amps are often more expensive than consumer or pro-sumer level mixers.

Thanks for the reply! Do you also have any experience with using the Nest cam as a video source?

About the microphones, I see the Pearl 2 has an A and B pair of XLR connectors. Do you know if it means that if I connect a microphone, with pre-amp, to pair A, and another microphone, with pre-amp, to pair B, I can switch between pair A and B as audio sources while recording?

Unfortunately we have not personally tested Nest cameras in our labs.

Audio sources would need to be selected at the channel level before recording. You could indeed connect the output of a Pre-amp to the XLR input of Pearl-2 and have two analog audio sources used, but any switching or muting would need to be done before entering Pearl-2.

If you were to disable and enable each audio channel from the encoding page it would immediately stop the recording every time you applied the changes.
For this reason I would recommend connecting your microphones to a mixer and connecting the output of the mixer to Pearl-2 to give you better control over the microphone “mutes”

I don’t think the Nest cams would work because they don’t natively support RTSP streaming.

You should send a note to our sales team member Alex Leibovich, aleibovich@epiphan.com

He has lots of experience working with UX labs

@Mrenaud thanks, that clears up a lot. I had assumed the switching would be possible without stopping the recording, so knowing this definitely prevents some problems.

@victor thanks for the referral, I wrote him a message :slight_smile: