Manex is a family-owned company of over 50 engineers that has over 20 years of experience in creating automated technical solutions in the areas of product transportation and packaging, among others.

Some of our work includes designing different types of robots for our customers’ automated lines. Our “Pick and Place” robot, for instance, can pick up an item and place it on a tray.

Just like the automated assembly lines we create, Manex works towards smooth operations in our offices, as well.

That’s why we made the choice to go with Airtame when we were looking for a way to streamline our meetings.

How we use Airtame

We use Airtame for several reasons. To understand how Airtame has improved our work flow, let’s go over each use case individually:

Client meetings

Every day, our employees use drawing and 3D modeling programs to show our customers the engineering solutions we create for their automated lines.

It’s so important that we make a good first impression when we present our models and simulations in front of customers or management. To do this, we needed to make sure that meetings run smoothly from start to finish.

This is the main reason we started using Airtame. It’s hard to impress a customer during a presentation if you’re fumbling around with cables to connect your computer to a bigger screen.

Now, our business partners often make it a point to tell us that they have never seen this wireless HDMI system before. Not to mention, they get very enthusiastic that we implement modern ideas not only in our engineering solutions, but also in our work culture.

Collaborative employee meetings

In our conference room, it’s commonplace that more than one person would need to present at the same meeting. With an HDMI cable, this meant having to unplug and replug every time the presentation switched to a new speaker.

This constant interruption made it very difficult to stay focused during our meetings. Long story short, our previous cabled solution made communication ineffective.

Now that we’ve used Airtame for a few months, this interruption is gone. It’s been easier for us to smoothly and quickly switch from one person to another during a meeting.

Board meetings

I’m the CFO of Manex, which means I am responsible for the company’s economic and financial aspects.

Tracking our performance, internal reporting and data-driven decisions are essential to our business’ good health. A business that doesn’t track its financial data runs the risk of blindly operating.

I personally use Airtame for board meetings where I present the company’s economic results and I suggest new ways to develop the financial area.

The technical setup

I would be lying if I didn’t mention that the implementation of Airtame requires a certain amount of patience with the settings, depending on your company’s needs. But the result once it’s installed is definitely worth it!

At Manex, we’ve created the ideal hardware and system environment for using Airtame:

• 8 Airtames in daily use
• A router with 2.4 GHz and 5GHz antenna

We have 8 Airtames in the Manex office. As for our network setup, we use a router with 2.4 GHz and a 5 GHz antenna.

Since Airtame relies on a quality wireless system, we had to increase the transfer speed of our old router. That’s because when you use a router with 2.4GHz, it’s possible that the router will not be able to transfer large amounts of data to Airtame. This will cause the quality of the resulting streams to suffer.

Now, before that scares you away, these are issues that the employees at Airtame can help you with. From our experience, if you happen to encounter a problem, their customer service team reacts very quickly.

As a family-owned company, we know the importance of tradition. As a company of engineers, however, we also know how important it is to stay up to date with technology. Take it from us, you don’t want to get stuck with HDMI cables just for the sake of old habits.

Every company needs to find their own way into the future, because the future will not wait for anyone. For Manex, Airtame was a big help in this.

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The additional manpower means that we’ve been able to do some really awesome things that we’ve been wanting to do for a while – one such thing is that we’ve built an entirely new tray (the software you download for your desktop) from scratch under one unified platform using node.js within the past month.

Since our last update, we’ve managed to overhaul the entire underlying structure in that time. Under the new platform, we’ve also unified the desktop operating systems. The previous platform (QT framework) had to have separate builds for each operating system and meant that any features we wanted to release had to be built separately each time. It’s a big improvement that is much more stable and makes it easier and faster for us to include and release new features across all of the platforms at once, as opposed to having to build entirely separate features for each individual platform. This basically means that we’re able to more effectively roll out new features and will enable us to focus on delivering smaller updates on a frequent basis from now on.

Linux support

With the move to the new platform, we’re also happy to announce that we’ll be able to provide full Linux support from v0.1.6 onwards! Our long-suffering Linux users have had to use patchy early versions, and had (very) limited support – but not any longer. From today, you’ll also be able to get the new Linux tray directly from downloads

The new version of the PC software also comes in a stand-alone version that means that Airtame can run without the need to go through an installation process. For organizations (or anyone for that matter!) that have guests that instantly want to use Airtame without previously having the software installed, can simply run a .exe file that will launch a basic version of AIRTAME that enables them to stream – and when finished, nothing is left on the computer/device. This not only dramatically decreases the time on a PC to start the first stream but also opens up the possibility of allowing non-admin users access to Airtame quickly and effectively.

Firmware

For the firmware running on Airtame, we’ve also released v0.1.6 which also includes a big improvement in a module we have been working on since the end of last year. It’s the module that handles the video stream from the computer and “Decode module” (basically the part that receives the stream from the dongle, so it can be seen on the screen). Until now we have been using the standard module provided by Freescale, the manufacturer of our processor chips. Whilst it would have been great (and much easier!) to continue using this, the module provided had some bugs that meant we simply didn’t (and couldn’t) have full control over how the video stream that was being handled. With our new shiny module that we’ve crafted in-house, we’re able to control all aspects of the video stream.

1080p resolution

In terms of features, this means that the 1080p output resolution is out of “extreme experimental version” to be made available as standard. This will give a much sharper resolution for text and graphics, without having to compromise on the stream.

There are also some small (but great) improvements such as improving the WiFi scanning module (which means that we can find local AIRTAMEs much more effectively), and fixing cases of the missing cursor for Mac 10.10 (Yosemite) users.

Public beta!

The final announcement is that we will also be launching public beta with v0.1.6 – so as soon as we receive the new devices from the manufacturer, we will commence shipping to those waiting ASAP. We’re shipping another 4.750 devices that will increase our BETA community to +7.500 members across the globe preparing us for the public launch in Q2.

This will be done with our new master distributor after the lessons learned from the initial early release (up to 10-12 weeks delivery time & multiple devices going MIA). We’ll be able to offer much more efficient shipping options, but there will be more info on this at the end of the week 🙂 We’re looking forward to your feedback on the differences & also welcoming those waiting members to our ever growing BETA community at forum.

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