THE BRITISH TECH NETWORK

I am the next James Bond

16 Dec 16

Since my purchase of the Apple Watch Series One a couple of months ago I've been happily bumbling along with its functionality with glee. It's OK. It doesn't blow me away, but I like it.

But today I was totally blown away by the simplest thing and now I feel like a super spy. There is no real substance to this story but I thought it would be fun to share with you.

As part of my job as a Digital Learning Designer at the University of East Anglia as well as designing online content I am also the system owner of our digital signage system, a network of 50+ large displays around campus that advertise the various events and goings on of the uni.

I have been spending the last few weeks getting the system up to scratch ready for the new year and one of the screens was giving me some grief in that it wasn't displaying the correct resolution.

The was one issue though. The screen was 20 feet from the PC that powered it. In fact it was in a separate room which makes its administration a tad difficult. So I thought I'm a clever guy. I'll bypass the visual network connection to the screen and plug in an external monitor but as those Windows geeks out there will recognise the PC will only pick up the resolution of the screen it's plugged into so not a lot of good considering the signage screen was 50" and the screen at my disposal was 17".

So then I tried opening the resolution control panel and tabbing between options and running between said screen and PC to make sure I was doing it right. I failed miserably.

Then it hit me. I need to control the PC but I can't see it. How do I that? I then set up my iPhone and positioned it in front of the wall-mounted screen. I then activated the camera view finder on my watch. So in a different room I could see all of my onscreen movements live and the solution was simple.

i-watch-v-finder