Speaker 1: We need to make technology work for us, not the other way around. And that means that it's worth investing in setting up your telehealth space. So let's talk about some of the tech essentials that will make telehealth a much smoother process for you and for your client. And Travis Miller has made us a great video that has some interesting things about equipment and setup that'll be really, really helpful.

Speaker 2: Thanks, Pamela. I'm Travis. Hi, everyone. Welcome to my kitchen. I've been doing video production for quite a while now. So I'm here to talk about some of the equipment that you can use to help your telehealth setup be more comfortable for you and your clients. Check out the download section or the course materials section for an equipment list, which will have links to all this equipment. I'm definitely trying to be economical with the equipment I'm choosing, but there's a lot of options out there. So feel free to look at the reviews and pick whatever works for you. So let's get started. All right. So the most basic setup you could have is probably just your laptop. You've got the built-in webcam right here, microphone and keyboard, speakers. It works, right? So if you're at this basic setup, the first thing I would do is look at your microphone setup so that the people that are on the other end of your telehealth session are able to hear you very clearly. Right now, the microphone's a little bit too far away from me, especially if you want to move your computer farther away. It makes it echoey. It kind of seems like a speakerphone almost. So that's not preferable, obviously. So maybe I'll show you what some of these sound like. First, let's just start with the internal microphone. So now you're hearing the internal microphone on my MacBook Air here. Hi, here's the internal microphone on a MacBook Air in my kitchen. This is what it sounds like if I'm clicking on the keyboard. As you get farther away, check one, two, three, four. Okay, now let's switch it up. So now I have three microphone types or varieties that you could consider to use for your setup. The first is a pair of in-ear headphones. So they go in your ear, and they have a little microphone set up on the lanyard here. Okay, test one, two, three. Now we're using the Apple headphones. Also a great option. You can tell the microphone's near my face, so it's really picking up the voice. Test one, two, three. Test one, two, three. These are the in-ear headphones with a little microphone on the cord. The only challenge with these is you can't really get that far away from your computer or else the cord starts to just hang up in the air. So that's a problem. Let's see. You can kind of hear me rustling with it here. So you can see it's kind of distracting. The next variety is on-ear headphones, which means they rest on your ears. So they're right on top. These are great, especially if you can get one with a boom microphone like this. And you get really great sound because the microphone is right here next to your mouth. They also, a lot of them, have noise cancellation. So it'll cancel out some of the audio from around you. I'm going to plug in this USB headset. Test one, two, three. Hi, here's the Logitech headset in my kitchen. Check one, two, three. Of course, if I move the computer away, it doesn't make an impact on the volume. Okay, let's switch it up. Here's another variety of on-ear headphones that will be in the equipment list. So let's just try these out real quick. Test one, two, three. Test one, two, three. These are the Plantronics headset microphone. And then the last option is over-ear headphones. So they have a cup that goes over your ear and rests on your head. So they are more comfortable, but your ear can get a little bit hot. These over-ear headphones will sound basically the same as the earpods because their microphone is in the cord here. So I'll skip testing those. And one last option that you might want to invest in is a podcasting-style microphone, which stands on your desk. So I'm going to have this as my stand-in. This is a podcasting microphone. So the nice thing about these is they're larger, so they capture more of the frequency range of your voice. So that's why they use them for podcasting. They sound great in podcasting. The challenge with these is they do have to be within about a foot of your mouth to really capture the sound. If you start getting farther away from them, like if they're on a side table or something like that, it starts to capture the echoes of the room again. You'll also need a separate set of headphones if you want to use a podcast microphone so you can hear the person talking. If you do plan on doing some podcasting, then this is a great option for you. So you can use it for both things. But for me, I think my top recommendation would be one of these headset-style microphones. So you have the headphones and microphone built in. The microphone is very close to your mouth, and you can get one with a long cable so you can be farther away from the computer. Okay, so that's microphones. I'm going to keep the Logitech here with me for my main kit, and I'll put the rest of these away. Let's go to the next step. All right, so the next piece of equipment that I would recommend upgrading after your headphones and microphone is Ethernet. It's an Ethernet adapter. Most computers today don't have Ethernet ports, so you need one of these USB to Ethernet adapters. This one also comes with some USB plugs as well, because for some reason, there's no more plugs in the computers these days. So you get one of these, plug it into your USB jack, then get an Ethernet cord and run that Ethernet cord to your Wi-Fi router. Those usually have a couple ports in the back that you can use for hardwired Internet, so you'll get the strongest Internet signal possible. Also, if it's possible, you could upgrade your Internet, and that will dramatically help the quality on the other end of the line. Okay, next, let's talk about webcams. The nice thing about upgrading your webcam is that, one, you get better resolution, generally, with an external webcam, and two, you get more flexibility, so that way you can move around your computer and your webcam stays right where you want it. My recommended webcam is the Logitech C920, although right now the prices have increased a little bit, unfortunately. It's still a great value, and having an external webcam allows you to do a lot of the things that we're going to discuss next. So next, let's talk about lighting. No matter which webcam you end up using, you'll help it look its best by increasing the amount of light that's falling on your face. So there's a number of ways you can do that. The easiest way is, of course, sitting in front of a large window like this, so facing the window and having the webcam between you and the window. This obviously only works during the daytime, and as you can see as I've been filming this video, the sun is setting, so that isn't the most stable option for you. If you're going to have sessions throughout the day, you probably want to figure something else out that you can control more. The next easiest option would be to grab a side table lamp, or other lamp that you might have. This one you can get for $20 at Target. Try to get a lampshade that's white. This one has these stripes on it, so it's not the best choice, but it's just an example here. So I would have this lamp positioned behind the webcam, similar to how I have the window. I want to have the light falling on my face as evenly as possible, and let's see, I'll just turn this on. Oh, so you can see right now I have an incandescent bulb in this lamp, so this lamp looks very orange to you right now, I'm sure, especially compared to the light outside, and that's because you basically have two kinds of light. You have daylight, and you have incandescent light, which is an orange hue, compared to daylight, which is generally a bluer hue. So the key here is that you don't want to mix these two kinds of colors, because it ends up getting muddled. And your webcam has software that is trying to correct for whichever light it's sensing is on you. So if you are just using daylight, then the webcam will look great. If you're just using incandescent light, the webcam will also look great. But if you're doing both of them, or if you have, maybe you have a window over here, so you have daylight on one side, and then you have incandescent on the other, then you're mixing light, and your webcam will get confused. So what you want to do for your lamp is you want to think about what other colors of light are going to be in the room. And I'm guessing that's going to be daylight coming in from a window somewhere in the room. So what you can do is find a light bulb that says it's daylight balanced. Usually it'll say the light temperature is 5,000, or it'll say daylight, or something like that. And incandescent, the ones that are yellow, they'll usually say 3,000, or something like warm, they'll use those kind of words. Another option that's popular and inexpensive these days is to get yourself a ring light. So this ring light, I think it's about $30 actually on Amazon, comes with its own stand and some little ball heads so that you can rotate and angle the light whichever way you'd like. So maybe I'll just set this up as an example here real quick. Open up the tripod legs here. Screw on this little ball head. So you screw everything together here. You'd probably put this on your floors because it can extend, but I'll just place it here. So plug this in, and it has a little remote. You can turn it on, and then you can also change the color temperature. So like I was talking about, it has both daylight, the blue, and incandescent, the orange tinted light, has both options. So there's the daylight. There's the orange one, obviously. And then it also has an option where it mixes both of them, so it's kind of a mix. So in this situation, I should probably choose the daylight so that it matches the light that's coming in from the outside. And so now I position this, maybe tilt it down a little bit. So having this light here right behind my webcam, it brings a little light into my eye, so there's a little reflection of light. That always helps. And if I had my webcam up a little bit higher, probably here at eye level, you can tell that it removes all the shadows from my face and everything looks pretty good, as good as it can, at least.

Speaker 1: I like using a ring light. So there's a bunch of different products out there for lighting, and you can actually get really creative with whatever lighting you have in your home already. I like using the ring light because I can really control it. And again, this doesn't do that much for you. As the therapist, this isn't about you. This is like making sure that the couch your clients sit in in your office is just as comfortable as the chair you sit in in your office. You're trying to make the experience for your client as good as it possibly can be. So you're not going to appear 3D through the screen and sit in their living room, but you can certainly have a better quality image so that your client feels more comfortable and is not distracted and fatigued by, wow, she looks different or he looks like, you know, not himself. Okay, so I really, really recommend an external monitor. The thing is that even a good size laptop has a pretty small screen, and you're going to end up hyper focusing on it and you can get really bad headaches. I talked to one therapist who's doing everything on her phone and I just, oh my gosh, and she is having some real headache problems. You want to reduce the eye strain, reduce the headaches, and it allows you to stay an appropriate distance from the camera because if you're working on a very small screen, you can't really see your client if you're far enough away to be in the appropriate placement. So you want to have something that you can set up that lets you really see the client. It's easy to do. Monitors are not expensive. You might not want to invest a lot, but you won't really have to because what's going to happen is you set yourself up correctly and you'll be less fatigued. You'll be able to do better work and you'll be able to see the number of clients you need to see to maintain yourself and your practice.

Speaker 2: So you do your session on this large monitor and then you'd have your laptop screen as like a secondary monitor if you needed to look at your calendar or anything like that. So when you're buying your monitor, you'll want to look at what kind of cord you'll need. So this is an HDMI cord. Most monitors might come with an HDMI cord, but it's good to check. And then you'll want to look at your laptop and see how you'd actually plug in an external monitor. So a little adapter here to adapt the monitor to my computer. If you're using the secondary monitor, you'll want to use your external webcam so that it can be over here by this monitor so you can make eye contact with your client. So we'll plug that in. This one clips to the top of the screen, which works well. You can also use a little selfie stick to position it where you'd like it. Then I have my ethernet adapter. Plug that in. And then my USB headphones. So these USB headphones have a really long cord, about six feet. That's great because that way I can move away from my monitor. My client can see more of my body like Pamela was talking about. And also the eye contact, the webcam can't tell the difference as much from when I'm looking at the client themselves and at the webcam. So the farther away you get, the harder it is to tell whether or not you're making direct eye contact with the webcam. So that's nice too. And there we go. There's my setup. I've got my light behind the monitor raised up so that it's striking my face, making it easier for the webcam to see me. I've got a nice big monitor so that I can see my client and I'm comfortable. I've got my computer connected to an ethernet cord so that it's getting the best internet service possible. I've got my headphones so I'm getting the best audio service to my client and I can hear them clearly. And there's one more thing that I'm forgetting. What is it? It's my chair. I'm using this wimpy chair.

Speaker 1: So you want to make sure that you are holding yourself in a good posture that's going to be comfortable for you and sustainable for you in a chair that's supportive. I love this chair. This is a gaming chair. This is horrifying. Not horrifying, it's a gaming chair. What's horrifying to me is if you go to a place that sells chairs, especially gaming chairs, they're rated by the number of hours you can sit. This is a 12-hour chair, which cracks me up because I don't want to sit in it for 12 hours, but I guess in theory I could. Rotate a couple different chairs because you don't want to be sitting in the same position all the time. Your kitchen chair is great for a meal. It is not made for you to sit in all day.

Speaker 2: Okay, I got myself this nice cushy office chair. Whew, that makes a big difference. Okay, let's do a quick comparison of what my setup looked like before versus what it does now. So here I've got my webcam set up. You're seeing the webcam now. This is the Logitech C920. I've got my ring light up here right behind the camera so that it's lighting my face. I've got my webcam set up at eye level and now I can set it farther away because I have this nice large monitor. And you know what? I just realized I broke one of the other rules here. I have a busy background, so I should probably take this down.

Speaker 1: Make sure you look at your background. It's really important. There are some astonishing things in client backgrounds, but don't think you're immune, right? So make sure that when you set up and practice with a friend, you set up and make sure that you have a nice environment behind you. If you are having to work at home, you can get an inexpensive screen behind you or maybe you can kind of shift yourself around, but make sure you look. And you don't want to be right on top of your camera. So you can see from here, I like to have a little bit of margin here so I don't look like I'm taking up the whole thing. And I like to be like belly button level so that my client is actually seeing all of me to the extent that is possible on camera. And think carefully how you set up your environment, right? How it's the background, what your client sees, what your client experiences, how comfortable you are, what you need to do. When you set up your person, your in-person office, you'd put a lot of thought into where things went and where the clock would go, right? So that you could see it and maybe you don't want your client to see it. Okay, think about that. Do it like this. Look at what your office looks like to your client. It's a really good idea to have sort of a dummy session with a friend and they can screenshot what you look like to them.

Speaker 2: Okay, so this is where we ended up. Let's go back to what it looked like before real quick just so you can see how far we've come. And now we're back to the basic setup that I had with just a laptop and you can hear the audio. The audio is echoey. I kind of feel like I have to shout because I'm reaching to the mic that's in the computer here. This is a Mac so the webcam that's integrated in is pretty good but you can tell that there's some graininess going on here because of the lack of light. And you can also see that I'm blurry when I move. You can also tell the lighting is kind of weird. I've got the blue light coming in from the window and then some incandescent orange light coming in from one of my lamps in my home here. And then, you know, it's just my eyes are kind of dark overall. So you're not really connecting with me as much because I'm not well lit in comparison to the background and it doesn't seem very intentional. Also, the angle of the webcam is a little bit lower than you'd like it, right? And so that's it for a quick comparison between the basic setup and a more advanced one.

Speaker 1: So take some time making your telehealth office a good place for you to be and a good place for your client to be through the screen.