Remote Control Teleprompter Android DIY
This is my Parrot v2 teleprompter. It’s a great piece of equipment and there's a little problem though and that is when I am trying to talk to the camera and I'm reading. Sometimes I can't read that fast or sometimes there's a point that I want to elaborate on and I wish I could just pause or skip back or skip forward in my script. So when I had a look at this I'm in Australia and the Parrot v2 comes with a remote control but unfortunately they don't sell them in Australia.
There is some apps that you can buy which you can use your voice to control the speed of the text as it scrolls up the top of the screen of the teleprompter. But the problem with that is you can't skip back you can't pause. Iit just slows down to how fast you reading and depending on how your voice, how quickly reading through the text.
So I needed something that I would be able to pause and skip back and unfortunately with all the apps that I was trying online the only one which is the Smart Teleprompt Pro has got an app however does cost $3 a month. I thought was a bit too much just to have the ability to pause a teleprompter.
So I've gone and tried a few different solutions and one of them is to share the screen of one phone to another. And that way I could control the phone that's actually in the teleprompter as you can see hear from another phone that I'm holding. I'll just runs through what happened with that.
So here are two phones and the app that I'm using is Inkwire. So you've given a code and I just have to type that in over here. The problem I found was when I had the teleprompter on and the teleprompter.. let's just play something.
So what you can see is teleprompters on landscape here. I just fast forward that. But it's in portrait there and if I try to turn this to make it go into landscape it can't. So would have this phone in the teleprompter and control it with this.
So I can control it, how it wouldn't work in the camera. So that's the problem there.
I tried I then tried another one, so let's go through. I'm going to stop Inkwire. There is another screen sharing app. I’m going to share there. Start now assist here it's 1275 connect. Okay that's working, allow and then we go so now if I start my teleprompter. Again it's the idea of being able to control it from this side and unfortunately with this one it doesn't show it all.
So I have tried this with a few different apps and eventually I didn't worry about it. And I did want to pay the $3 per month that's US dollars ends up being like $5 per month just have a remote control.
This is my phone holder. Basically it opens up and you can put your phone in here but it also comes with this little button. The button allows you to take photos. So what I'm going to do with this is I’m going to start my phone and I got to go to Bluetooth and open this up. This actually comes out, might be a bit easier. If I hold the button down to turn the Bluetooth on. And when it does that, I've connected it. I paired it and once I paired it. So it is connected as input device. I then go to my teleprompter and I can then use this text to pause it and to start it
So that's great. At least it’s something but the only problem is it does this media thing at the top and not sure why. At least I can pause and start it with this.
The other option is trying a mouse. So with a mouse. I've just got an Apple mouse here. I'm going to turn this off by holding down the button. Ok it's off. And I'm going to turn this one on. And I'm going to go into Bluetooth and I'm going to connect the mouse. So you can see connected as input device. Then I go back to my teleprompter and just let it run. I can now use the mouse to click to stop and click to Let It Roll. Problem is if I try to scroll it doesn't do anything sideways up and down. If I try and right click it goes out. If I try to double click two-tap really just one click it stops and one click it starts. So that's fine you can probably just hold this in your hand and just do this to pause it and to go that's fine but the only problem I have with this is it has quite a loud clicking sound.
So another option is to use an actual keyboard. I'm going to turn the mouse off. And I'm going to take an Apple keyboard. I think they call this a Magic Keyboard and I turn it on. Pause that and I'm going to go into Bluetooth and I'm going to use the Apple keyboard, it's connecting. Now it's connected and so we go back to our teleprompter. Let's see what the keyboard can do.
So with the keyboard I'm just going to hit the spacebar so it pauses and it's silent. If I use the up and down arrow I can skip back and forth. So I have more control it's quiet and I could potentially have this on my lap or on aside somewhere.