Scargill

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

One of the problems of owning a place in another country – is keeping an eye on it. I guess this really applies to anyone with two properties – or perhaps an SME with a small office or factory unit.

Not everyone can afford expensive cameras and most people would not have a clue how to fit them. Costs mount up and so for most people, camera security is simply something that the larger companies use.

Well, that certainly does not have to be the case. Here’s my “5-minute guide to remote cameras on the cheap”.

When we got our place in Spain it was always going to be the case that it would be unoccupied some of the time – you can’t be in two places. I started to investigate the cost of camera systems – most of which can be very expensive. Your traditional COSTCO multi-camera packages are useless for remote viewing and assume you’ll plug in a monitor. That’s not much use when you’re thousands of miles away sitting in a restaurant and wondering if someone’s breaking onto your office.

And so without further ado – here’s my adopted solution.

There are a number of cameras on Ebay and elsewhere called “IP Cameras” – that is the camera runs on your WIFI or wired network… and can be accessed from a web browser anywhere in the world. All you need is broadband and a mains socket!

Sadly they vary a lot – the largely Chinese suppliers have major difficulties with the language and seem to pin up manufacturer’s specs without even checking them.  I’ve seen umpteen ads for cameras “with sound” and when checking with the supplier this was a mistake and they’ve changed the ad.

I was basically interested in two kinds of camera – the external weather-proof kind (see image on the left)– and the internal variety with pan and tilt control (see camera on the right). It seems in the low-cost area you can’t have both in one.   Also external cameras tend to need more LED LIGHTING as the distances viewed tend to be greater. On camera left, note the increased number of LED lights around the lens. They vary from model to model.

I settled on cameras who’s manufacturer is Foscam – at least, that’s the name you’ll see on most of them – there’s a very limited set of chips out there and various manufacturers are actually producing more or less the same thing. I’m not going to get into specifying models here – you’ll need to look at what’s out there. But I can make recommendations…

• Make sure you don’t get old models that will only work with Internet Explorer
• Internal – make sure the photo shows an audio socket (round) if you need audio – and make sure it specifies 2-way if you want to talk as well as listen. Does the camera have an internal speaker and mic or do you need external.
• External – make sure the camera has lots of LEDs around the lens.
• Check carefully – prices vary. Expect to pay around £45-£90 (inc postage) depending on models and quantity – and expect to wait 2 weeks if you’re ordering from China.

There is some setup to do and you get instructions with them – you’ll need a PC to set them up and either wired or wireless connectivity. To access these remotely, if your service provider doesn’t give you a fixed IP address you’ll want to go to a DDNS company like no-ip to ensure that even if you lose connectivity at the other end temporarily and end up with a changed IP address – you still get to talk to your cameras remotely.

Most of these cameras also have motion detect in an a control output (for a lamp) but that’s beyond the scope of this article as they are generally 5v inputs and outputs and you’d have to do your own interfacing. Personally I plan to make a relay setup so I can control a floodlight remotely.

So – you have your camera, wired or wirelessly hooked into your broadband – it’s got power, you’ve set it up and can now see your place from anywhere in the world… how best to do this?

For some time I’ve been using a program called Mobiscope to monitor several cameras – but it has the disadvantage that although it handles multiple camera types and is available on both PC and iPhone, it has no control over the camera so if you find the camera whiting out due to extremes of light – you can’t control it…. no pan and tilt etc.

So you can imagine my joy when I discovered that there are now several programs (variations on a theme) for iPhone to fully control these cameras (which is why I specified Foscam). One program called EASYN for iPhone does a CRACKING job, offering controls which vary with the camera. In the case of the models shown above, it will control the output, brilliance and contrast of the EXTERNAL camera, while on the internal camera, in addition it offers pan and tilt control and the ability to turn auto-scanning on and off – and take snapshots.

Incidentally, from the PC interface, all of these cameras can be set to automatically upload single images to a website – or even email you when they detect movement.  Yes, amazingly for the price these features are becoming commonplace.

So there you have it – for WIFI operation you need no wires, simply plug the camera into the wall socket, set it up and you’re off.

So – to get started – go to Ebay and look up “IP Camera” – you’ll find plenty to choose from – choose well. With the right software and hardware you can monitor and interact with several cameras all over the world, from the comfort of your car, hotel or local pub!

It’s an interesting afternoon, I’m coming back from London Kings Cross on the 3pm from KK. Having been to a meeting this morning I ended up with an hour to spare and ventured into FOYLES bookshop in London – their technology section beats the pants off the competition (in the case of Newcastle and Gateshead that does not take a lot of doing, the number of computing books in most of the larger stores therein are a disgrace) – I was doing fine until I spotted a book on the iPad being put on the shelves by an Asian fellow, who, when he saw me looking at the book started acting like a zoo-keeper urging me closer to the book then digging a hole for himself by pointing out that it’s not just the young people who can use technologies….. and proceeding to tell me that “older folks” are often overlooked before digging even deeper.

I didn’t care to point out that I’ve more IT knowledge than a school-full of “young people” and don’t feel particularly “old”.  I suppose I could have been really cruel and asked him how he felt about the new features in IOS5…or asked for a critique of the book I’ve just bought therein.  Anyhow,   I’m now armed with something new to read (using JQUERY – about which I’m already up to speed but with a few holes I hope to fill with this book)… and I’m now in coach M just in time for the rain to fall in buckets.

There’s a strange mix of people in here including the crew who seem to be entirely French. One old guy keeps wandering up and down the isle whispering “ah yes” to himself which has given us a few giggles. He looks remarkably like the old fellow on the movie “UP” and clearly isn’t quite with it. Meanwhile the lady just over is struggling to get her iPhone to play through the headset instead of the speakers and just down the way, another lady has spent at least 5 minutes trying to figure out where, on her iPad, to plug her headset into (there are only 4 sides but she managed to go through each of them several times before getting it right).

This is so impressive. We might not have colonies on the moon but the 21st century isn’t doing so bad up to now… if only we could manage climate control as well…

It’s not uncommon for people to read the headline figure on their broadband connection “8 meg” and think they have a good deal then wonder why SKYPE gives them problems!  Here’s a simple guide to getting wise (important: see 2021 updates at the end).

Many standard Internet connections in the UK use what is called ADSL – all you need to know is that this means you don’t get the same speed in both directions.  When you’re told you have an “8 meg” connection that usually means the maximum DOWNLOAD (data coming to you). The reality is usually less than that and depends on CONTENTION (how many other people are sharing your connection at any moment in time) and UPLOAD (data going FROM you).

Also important is the PING time – i.e. if you send a bit of data out – how long before it actually gets to the other end.

Fortunately there are some free tools to help you get to the bottom of this without being a rocket scientist. These sites are easy to use and more or less self-explanatory. When I get a minute I’ll go into more detail but for now, consider this.. you have your sparkly new 8 MEG connection and Skype doesn’t seem to work well. In reality it’s your upload speed that is important together with any delays… you SEND video/audio to the other guy and he SENDS video/audio to you – the download speed doesn’t really come into it as long as it is faster than the upload speed.  Of course all of this assumes your kids are not downloading war and peace…

Have a play with these tools – out of interest the results you see are my own rural broadband results.

Testing Upload and DOWNLOAD speeds

Two excellent sites are….

http://www.speedtest.net/

and

http://www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk/

Testing PING and JITTER

Try this out – it’s pretty self-explanatory.

http://www.pingtest.net/

Update November 2021

Note that the above blog entry was written in 2011 before I created my now very popular tech blog – anything of a technical/gadget nature you’ll now find several year’s worth of work in there.

Clearly the comments above about ADSL and speeds are now utterly out of date. In the UK I’d say most people have fibre, Spacex Starlink revolutionary low-altitude satellite network is starting to make headway (though the price is still extremely high) and as I’m now predominently Spain-based, we have high speed fibre in all except very rural areas where for example I’m still on 30Mbps download speed provided by a local dish from town into the outlying areas. However much of the information above is still valid – speedtest.net still works… and see below…

I was just sent this “PixelPrivacy” link to loads of info on testing broadband – you may find it very useful.

I’ve been thinking about aliens and UFOs recently – mainly because every time I go channel-hopping on Sky there’s some conspiracy program or other trying to prove the government is covering things up.

I’m afraid after many years of thinking about this subject, I’ve come to the conclusion that UFOs fit into the same categories as gods – i.e. wishful thinking, nothing more.

Why?

Well, that’s not to say I don’t think there ARE UFOs – a long way away minding their own business. I just don’t think there are any here – and I think SETI are wasting their time looking for radio broadcasts from space.

Part of the problem is our inability sometimes to see out of the box.. take UFO sightings for example. It’s absolutely DEAD CERT that UFOs do not come from any planet in our solar system – if that doesn’t make sense to you I’m not going to explain other than to say – go and watch Discovery channel – we’d know if there were any massive factories on these planets creating UFOs. So where does that leave us? Well, other solar systems of course.

There are so many star systems out there with planets that there are BOUND to be advanced civilisations out there and they’d need to be a pretty advanced civilisation to send out a UFO into our star system. Why? Because unless their main goal in life was wasting time, they’d have had to figure out how to go faster than light by some way – and our science says that’s pretty much a non-starter.

That’s not to say that faster-than-light travel is impossible – it’s just to say that if it is both possible and practical we won’t be doing it in the near future – and that’s the point… they would have indeed to be so far ahead of us that we could not possibly hold anything other than novelty value for them. This is real life, not Stargate (much as I like Stargate).  Indeed that’s the central plank of my argument – anyone SO advanced would be very unlikely to accidentally leave the lights on so we could spot them at night.

But more’s the point, we’ve been serious about technology for less than my lifetime – lets face it back in the 50’s we had, what BAKELIGHT and VALVES and most devices were that simple that it was actually possible for one very bright person to know pretty much how everything works. Those days have long gone. In 60 years we’ve transformed this planet and our technologies beyond recognition and we’ve only just STARTED…  We USED to send out Megawatts of easily digested signals which would go off to other worlds in time but today we send highly encrypted digital signals – mostly by methods that don’t involve powerful wide-angled radio waves. In time everything will be a mix of optical and short range radio – so we won’t be sending ANYTHING significant out to space and what we do send out will be so well compressed and encrypted – that it will look just like – well, noise. Background noise in fact.

Any aliens likely to be within range will:

a. likely have no use for us other than as zoo specimens

b. be transmitting data so complex we could never hope to read it – just as someone from the 50s could never hope to do anything useful with a DVD.

c. Be watching us from a safe distance just the military can watch us from satellites so far away you can’t tell them from stars – only much much further away and with much better resolution. they are likely now to be watching us as we decimated each other in WWII. There is no way they can see or hear what we’re doing now because the information won’t have reached them yet. They will know that anything they learn will be so old as to be useless.

And if they do need to pop down to pick up samples – they’re CERTAINLY not going to leave the lights on so we can see them coming!

I trust that knocks aliens on the head!

Peter Scargill

Bit of an update really rather than something new… the weather this weekend kept up – i.e. it was sunny – but hardly record-breaking – a tad cool out of the sun in fact, so I did my bit and went to B&Q for some stones for the garden but actually having had success with my new solar flood circuit – see a couple of blog entries back – the circuit works a treat and I’m now running 3 AA rechargeable cells and a PAIR of sets of 3 series white LEDs in parallel – up to now the combination is giving very reasonable pathway lighting – but bear in mind the sun’s done well for the last couple of weeks – the solar cell had no problem charging the batteries – funny really, my wife Maureen normally heads off to better weather in the States and she ‘s been away 2 weeks – it’s rained most of it over there and been QUITE the opposite here for a change. Even Galera hasn’t had the sun we’ve had.

Apart from that I’ve spent the rest of my day, well, in a complete fantasy world. Check out Cities XL 2010 the last post in here – I’ve started to get to grips with it now and this is so near science fiction – but it works. The program is basically Sim City on steroids, the difference being you can actually go in there and be part of your city, none of which would be THAT impressive if it were not for the sheer scale of the areas you can work in  – tonight I’d just finished putting together a major freeway leading through a sub-urban area into a massive sprawling city and armed with a glass or two of wine I drove through the city in more or less real time – to say we’re looking at AT LEAST 20 to get from one end to the other (if you don’t cheat) kind of puts this in perspective – all the way there are people going about their business – kids playing in front of houses, cars going from home to work and vice-versa… it really does put some kind of perspective on modern PC power – there was a time when the PC could just about manage the angles of a PONG ball going back and forth.

And with that I’ll leave you with some screen shots. A picture paints a thousand words – or whatever – these are crude screenshots  and bear no resemblance to the fluid, real time video quality graphics in the actual game… and remember this isn’t a prefab – I put this lot together in blocks… I need to write to the developers – I want customisable street signs! These are late-evening shots.

Ok, I’ll admit, I have nothing against the royal family and no interest either. They fascinate me about as much as does football, rugby and tennis – which is, well, not.

So today with no chance of getting any serious work done and not one to sit around doing nothing (plenty of time for that when you’re dead) I spent the morning in a futile attempt to resurrect some plants.. when that failed and the weather cooled off (I’m not complaining, it’s still sort of sunny here in the Northeast) I decided that I simply could NOT bring myself to watch the Royal fiasco – and so went off in search of a new challenge – which usually means a new game where one blows away Korean soldiers.

Just as I was starting to look, an email came through from some service I signed up to years ago alerting me to bargains and it was this that led me to take a look at Cities XL 2011.   I’ve been a Sim City fan in the past but then they sort of lost the plot and the SIMS did nothing for me in the same way that Coronation Street does nothing for me… I’ve always wanted something a little more powerful – in fact a lot more powerful – something that would not only let me create entire cities but get in there and drive through them – or sit on a street corner watching my creation unfold like some weekend God enjoying the fruits of his or her labour. Well, I have to hand it to the creators of Cities XL – they’ve done it. I’ve not had so much fun for… weeks.

Essentially Cities XL 2011 lets you start off with a blank canvas, dropping in roads and anything from individual houses to blocks of accommodation for everything from chief executives down to factory workers. You can create farms, office blocks, factories, recreation… I mean – just about anything you need for your average city…

Enough blethering – here’s my first attempt. The original quality was great but due to the utter lack of screen video capture programs out there, I stuck my iPhone 3GS on a microphone stand and videoed the screen so it looks a little like one of those cheap Sunday market copy videos…. but I think you’ll get the general idea – this is serious world-building kit – look around -  cost me under 15 quid – worth it for the fun I’ve had today ALONE..

It’s hard to believe the weather we’re having here in the Northeast… it’s been sunny now for over a week – and to keep the gardeners happy and keep the air fresh, it has conveniently rained overnight twice only to return to full sunshine in the morning.

I remember “April showers” when I was younger, when it would be sunny with constant drizzling but in recent years the weather has just been PANTS ALL SUMMER.

If this is our share of global warming – bring it on!  It’s giving me the opportunity to do something I’ve not done in a while – play with solar lighting. I’m trying to do a better job than the Chinese do while keeping the cost to next to nothing. So far so good. 2 transistors and a couple of other bits. Just need to stop batteries getting too flat now.

Finally.. is it ME or is Adobe updating that stupid reader 2 or 3 times a week? You’d think by now they’d have it right.. Imagine what the infinitely more complex Windows 7 or Apple operating  systems would be like if they had a many problems – you’d be updating every minute!!!

The iPad2 wasn’t the only upgrade this month, yesterday we took my venerable 140,000-miles Mercedes e-class to the dealer in York and exchanged it for a new(ish) black model.

More modern and efficient, it’s not as gadgety as the original would have been in it’s prime but being several years newer and in considerable better condition with black-as-a-black-thing tinted rear windows, it’s a pretty neat upgrade non-the less.

On our way back from the York Merc dealer (via a VERY nice nearby garden centre to which we’ll return) we gave it a hammering at which point I was told to slow down for fear of losing my licence so it has no problems in that regard (diesel but far less truck-sounding than the old gold Merc).

The car already has an auxiliary socket for iPods, meanwhile an iPhone Bluetooth adaptor is on the way, personal number plates being registered and we’ve just sent off for customised floor mats, meanwhile I’ve just discovered where the battery is so I can look at fitting a 250v AC invertor somewhere out of view and a mains socket in a handy location. The next job will be to fit the must-have white LED arrays on the front but that’ll have to wait for a meeting-free weekend.

This one is coming to Spain with us in the summer so it’s important it can charge everything at once!

After an early start (over-enthusiastic alarm going off at 6.30am I headed off for Worcestershire – a leisurely 4-hour drive (for a driver with an attention span of around 2.5 hours).  I made good time until I actually got there – then sat in a traffic jam for half an hour! 

The purpose of the day was to do a video shoot (green screen) and to finalise a PowerPoint for the FSB’s forthcoming conference.

All went well for once – which was nice, apart from a little high  blood pressure. It turns out that the venue the conference is at, has a rather interesting restrictive policy regarding broadband. Not content with making a whopping charge for actually supplying broadband for 2 days (that’s not unusual – in the past we’ve had to order a BT line in and pay 3 months rent- though in recent years we’ve usually paid a lump sum and then used our own routers to share out the signal) this lot really take the cake – they want paying for every single computer or device that’s plugged into their networks – and they REFUSE to allow you to use your own routers – even down to refusing (if it’s even legally and technically possible) use of the like of MIFI units.  God knows how they’ll handle the public using WIFI sharing (tethering) to their iPads.

I’m keeping mum for now, but when this is all over I intend to detail charges and the name of the venue to alert others to this utterly unacceptable practice. Unbelievable. The venue is in Liverpool incidentally!  But apart from that, the day was pleasant enough and now… a local Indian I think…

Peter Scargill