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Surface Hub 2 Smart Camera Now Commercially Released
Microsoft on Wednesday announced that its Surface Hub 2 Smart Camera is now commercially available.
The Surface Hub 2 Smart Camera is Microsoft's "first AI [artificial intelligence]-powered camera." It delivers a 136-degree field of view to capture meeting room participants with an automatic framing capability. It has a 12-megapixel sensor that uses an algorithm to adjust lighting and eliminate "warping, distortions or depth-of-field issues" and create a more natural view.
The camera uses AI facial recognition to automatically adjust its view, but it doesn't store that facial recognition data, another Microsoft announcement explained.
The Surface Hub 2 Smart Camera works with Microsoft's Surface Hub 2S videoconferencing device. It's being sold separately from that device starting on March 16, 2022. It'll also be included with Microsoft's Surface Hub 2S products using 85-inch screens "starting in May 2022," according to a footnote in this Microsoft document.
Microsoft also sells a 50-inch screen Surface Hub 2S product, but camera availability for it wasn't described.
Organizations wanting to use the new camera will need to meet its system requirements. They include using the Windows 10 Team 2020 Update 2 operating system with the Surface Hub 2 device, plus organizations will need a "system hardware update" from Jan. 21, 2022 or later.
This latter hardware requirement stipulation seems to mean that the camera only works with newer Microsoft Surface Hub 2S products, although the 50-inch and 85-inch Surface Hub 2S products both have a "modular compute cartridge" that can be swapped out. The cartridge is described in the product's specs, but it isn't listed at Microsoft's accessories page for Surface Hub 2S.
The hardware requirements for the camera on older Surface Hub 2S product seems to be somewhat unclear. If the camera is available for those devices, though, it just clicks onto the top of Surface Hub 2S device using a built-in USB-C connection and magnetic fastener.
IT pros can manage how the camera does its automatic framing via "the Surface Hub configuration service provider (CSP) from Intune or a third-party mobile device management (MDM) provider," Microsoft's document explained.
About the Author
Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.