Zoom room for local sharing only? No mic, camera, or controller.

[neve]

I've been asked to set up a space where people can wirelessly share content to a local display. No cameras, no microphones, no controller. Just a hidden PC running the Zoom Rooms software. We have plenty of full Zoom Rooms.

There are plenty of 3rd party hardware solutions for this situation, but I was wondering if this could be done with a minimalist Zoom Room.

You would just start the Zoom app on your laptop, select share, and enter the sharing key on the room display.

[bstrelko]

Not to discourage the use of Zoom in the community, but why not consider a display or device attached to a display that supports Airplay, Chromecast, or some other mainstream wireless sharing protocol if local sharing is all that's desired? Even better (in my opinion) why not use a local cable attached to the display and remove any learning curve?

However, YES, what you are explicitly asking for is possible.
If you insist on Zoom Rooms for this task, the main issue you'll face is camera/mic missing alerts when running a minimal setup for this purpose only.

In the room settings, you'll want to turn off these alerts so the main display is not cluttered with them and so you'll be able to join meetings (yes, local sharing sessions are considered 'meetings' on the Zoom back-end).

Things you'll want to consider, if you haven't already -

• Even an inexpensive Zoom room is going to be more expensive out of the box than a purpose-built 3rd-party solution for local sharing (yes, you may be reusing an old Zoom Rooms computer/appliance and already have the device in stock)
• There is also an associated expense to maintaining the device, pushing updates, etc.
• In the case of Windows/Mac Zoom Rooms, you're adding a device with a larger attack surface (from a security perspective) than a small appliance designed for local sharing
• Zoom Rooms require an active network connection with connectivity to Zoom Cloud, whereas a 3rd-party sharing device (or local video cable) may not require this, depending on the technology used

[neve]

Thanks for your feedback. I'm still looking for a well-reviewed wireless screen sharing device which supports Windows & MacOS without requiring that the user install a new program. Everyone already has Zoom and knows how to use it.

Any device/display will need Ethernet connectivity as all Wi-Fi connections at our location require user level authentication.

I have extra Zoom Room licenses, and a PC to run Zoom on has almost no hardware cost. All the updates and management are done automatically, so there's little additional burden for an additional room. I could probably throw on a webcam and make the cam/mic errors go away.  Even better would be to disable the buttons I don't want people to use without generating errors. Network Attack surface is managed by Zoom VLAN so shouldn't be affected by an additional system.
Local HDMI cable will be a backup option, but can be awkward.
I'll use a Kramer 6 button wall control to turn equipment on and off, and to select input (Zoom/Direct HDMI).

It's just too bad Zoom doesn't have an official solution for this use case (yet).