Last night I finally got a chance to test using Skype to call missionaries from the church. It worked really well and I recommend it for any church that is considering a good way to talk to their missionaries.

Here’s what I did:

1. Get Skype

   I downloaded Skype and installed it on the church computer and signed up for an account.

2. Audio Out

   Audio out is a bit of a struggle since there is a 1/8-inch-size headphone jack on a laptop and I need to get it into an XLR jack on the church audio board. I started by hooking up a 1/8-1/4 adapter to the laptop’s headphone jack.

   From there I attach a 1/4-inch cable. To get to the XLR size cable I hook the 1/4-inch cable into a “hot box.” (A smaller version of this.) On one side the 1/4-inch cable hooks in and on the other an XLR cable.

   Then from the hot box, the XLR cable hooks into one of the channel on the audio board.

3. Audio In

   Eventually I will need to get audio from the sound board back to the laptop because we want Pastor, who will be at the front of the church with a mic, to be speaking directly to the missionary. But for the test today, I hooked up a cheap little mic with a 1/4-inch male connector, once again using a 1/8/1-4 adapter into the laptop’s mic jack. Thankfully they are spaced enough apart that both adapters fit next to each other.

4. Start Skype

   I then logged into Skype and moved it onto the church’s projector screen. Our setup treats the projected screen as a second monitor to the left of the laptop, so anything I drag off the right side of the laptop monitor (including Skype) shows up on the projector screen.

5. Test Sound

   Skype has a nice test account that you can dial to test your Skype connection. To test that sound I simply made a call to the test account. It asks you to record your message after the beep. This spoken part came over the church speakers loud and clear. I then spoke into the mic after the beep and after a few seconds Skype replayed my voice and that came over the church speakers nicely, so I knew the mic was working.

6. Test Video

   I had prearranged a Skype call with one of our missionaries, so I called him and he enabled his web cam. In Skype you can make the video full screen, so I did so and it filled the entire projector screen. As a nice surprise, the video controls disappear if you leave the mouse alone for a few seconds.

Everything went great and was easy to setup. There are three things that I would like to do next; two are must does and the other would be nice but not necessary:

• First I would be to figure out how to cable everything up without the use of the hot box. The hot box is used by one of our guitarists and I feel it is too much setup anyway. I would like to get a cable that is 1/4-inch to XLR.
• Second, I need to get audio from Pastor’s mic to the laptop. This can probably be accomplished by taking the audio out from the “house” line that everyone hears into the laptop. I think that may on require using a cable that is 1/4-inch to 1/8-inch, but I need to talk to our audio guy to figure that out.
• Lastly, I would like to setup a web cam at the church so that the missionaries can see Pastor as they speak to him. There’s a couple of ways that I can think of handling this. One would be a wireless camera, but I need to do some research on how that works. The other would be to take a standard camcorder (with zoom) and hook it up to the laptop and zoom in on the Pastor.