Classroom Device Diagnostics

The Tissimo classroom gives you two ways to make sure your setup is ready for a lesson: a pre-classroom waiting area where you preview your camera and pick your devices, and an optional Diagnostics panel you can turn on during a lesson to watch your live connection statistics. This article explains both, plus tips for improving a weak connection.

The Pre-Classroom Device Check

When you click Join on an upcoming lesson, you first arrive in a pre-classroom waiting area. Use it to confirm your camera and microphone are working before the lesson begins.

1. Allow camera and microphone access if your browser prompts you.
2. Check your camera preview to make sure your video looks right.
3. If you have more than one camera, microphone, or speaker, open Settings to choose which devices to use. The Video section covers your camera and the Audio section covers your microphone and speaker.
4. When you are ready, click Enter classroom.

The Enter classroom button becomes active 10 minutes before your lesson start time. For a full pre-lesson checklist, see Pre-Lesson Setup and Device Check. For step-by-step joining help, see How to Join a Lesson and Getting into Your Classroom.

Turning On Diagnostics

Once you are inside the classroom, you can display a live panel of technical statistics about your connection. It is turned off by default. To turn it on:

1. Open the menu in the classroom toolbar and choose Settings.
2. Select the Diagnostics tab.
3. Turn on the Show Diagnostics toggle.

A small Diagnostics panel appears over your video. It updates roughly every two seconds and stays visible until you turn the toggle back off. You can click its header to collapse or expand it. For other in-lesson controls, see Adjusting Classroom Audio and Camera Settings, and to set your defaults ahead of time see Classroom settings.

Reading the Diagnostics Panel

The panel is a live read-out, not a pass or fail rating. It groups the figures into sections:

• Publisher (You) — the video you are sending: resolution, framerate, video and audio bitrate, and video and audio packet loss. When supported by your browser, it also shows your available upload bitrate, measured round-trip time, and whether quality is being limited by bandwidth or your device.
• Subscriber (Other) — the same figures for the video you are receiving from the other person, plus round-trip time and jitter.
• System Info — your CPU core count, browser memory use, and a rough network estimate (the network estimate is only available in Chrome-based browsers).

A few figures are the most useful at a glance:

• Packet Loss — the lower the better. Loss above a few percent usually causes stutter or dropouts.
• Bitrate — higher generally means better video quality; a bitrate that keeps dropping points to a weak connection.
• Framerate — how smooth the video is. A low framerate looks choppy.
• RTT (round-trip time) — the delay on your connection. Lower is better; high values cause noticeable lag.

A dash (-) simply means a figure is not available yet or is not reported by your browser. If numbers look poor, the tips below can help.

Improving Your Connection

If you see high packet loss, low bitrate, or high round-trip time, try the following:

1. Close other browser tabs and apps — Background downloads, streaming services, and video calls on other devices all compete for bandwidth.
2. Switch to a different network — If you are on Wi-Fi, move closer to your router or switch to a 5 GHz band.
3. Use a wired ethernet connection — A cable provides the most stable connection for live lessons.
4. Restart your router — Power-cycle it for 30 seconds, then reconnect.

If your device or connection struggles even after these steps, you can also select the Lite option in the pre-classroom, a lighter version of the classroom designed for older, slower devices and weaker networks.

A Note on the One-Time Network Test

Some users may have seen a separate Network quality test with a Run test button and an Excellent-to-Bad rating. That one-time test is part of Tissimo's Open Classroom, not your paid lessons. In a paid lesson, the live Diagnostics panel described above is the tool for checking your connection.