When a room is silent

1. Something is muted

At the mixer, on the laptop, or on the microphone itself. This is the cause more often than the other two put together, and it is the one to check first because it costs ten seconds. Unmute, say a few words near the microphone, and captions start within a second or two.

2. Frasiey is listening to the wrong microphone

A laptop has a microphone of its own, and it will happily be chosen instead of the room's feed. From the front of a hall, the laptop's own microphone hears almost nothing.

Open Frasiey on that laptop, look at the Microphone line, and pick the input the room actually uses. The level meter moves when you have the right one, which is the whole test. If the meter sits flat while somebody speaks, you are on the wrong input or something is still muted.

3. The laptop has gone to sleep, or off the network

Wiggle the trackpad. Check the laptop is on the venue's Wi-Fi, and that the venue has not moved it onto a guest network that wants a sign-in page. Frasiey reconnects on its own and sends anything it held while it was away, so a short drop costs you no words and no money.

What the room's laptop is telling you

The top of the laptop's screen says what the room is doing, in one of these words. The room's line in Frasiey online names the same fix.

• Captions off. Captions are switched off for this room, or the times you set say not now. Check that captions are on for the meeting, and what When captions run says in Settings.
• Can't hear the room. Frasiey is running and hearing silence. That is cause one or cause two.
• Getting ready. Frasiey is getting itself ready. The first time in a room this includes a one-off download of about 300 MB, which on venue Wi-Fi can take several minutes.
• Offline. The laptop cannot reach us, and says Offline for a moment. It reconnects on its own and replays anything it missed. If it is still there two minutes later, check the laptop is awake and on the venue's Wi-Fi.
• Needs attention. The laptop says Captions need attention, and the sentence under it says what stopped the room and what to press. Do that on the laptop, or ask whoever is beside it to.
• Another room on your account is live. Free is one room at a time, for your account and for your organization, so this laptop waits and says why. Stop the other room in Frasiey online, or add a card and this room starts now. See What counts as a captioned hour.

The rehearsal that prevents all of this

In each room, the day before if you can: run the audio test on the laptop and say a sentence, then scan that room's own printed sign with your own phone and watch the words arrive. The go-live screen shows you your first captions with the sentence in quotes. Once you have seen that in a room, that room is ready.

Still stuck

Write to hello@frasiey.com and tell us the room name. It is the one detail that lets us look at the right thing straight away.