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House News
December 24, 2003 16:30
Respect, and a lack there ofA few points of notice for those who might not have a firm grasp on the obvious: 1. The world is not out to get you. If you constantly find conspiracies where none exist, you won't be taken seriously when there's a real problem. 2. I will turn away a good friend for wrongly harrasing someone I hate. Nobody is exempt from acting like a civilized human being. 3. If you screw up, you will likely be warned. In some cases, I have warned people on multiple occasions. These warnings are important. They mean if the behavior continues, the results will get more severe. 4. There is no excuse that justifies acting uncivilized. Any attempt to make excuses for it will only hinder your position. I'm much more likely to accept a sincere apology that makes no excuses rather than hours of childish whining. 5. If you're asked to leave, LEAVE. Don't make a scene. I can't stay mad if I don't remember what you did. But if you make a scene, I'll never forget. 6. Telling people whom I live with that I will destroy their property will NOT bring you back into my favor. As for calling us suckers, you might be right. After all, we once thought you were a decent person. What fools WE were.
December 19, 2003 01:41
Fixed!The hallway and living room cams are functional again, although I'll probably shuffle around the machines they're on. The new camcorder has been fully tested now and is now in place in the living room. Its refresh rate is in sync with the TV & monitors in that room so when zoomed in, it can make both out rather clearly. Over the weekend I'll attempt to get zoom control working on that camera as well, and start designing a rotor for it.
December 18, 2003 10:36
ARGH!Just when things start going well, I get a 3 day setback. Two of my servers suddenly required a reload, which in turn required a download of the installation CD's, all using questionalble hardware, only to discover after the fact that the version of the OS I chose to install is no longer compatible with the software I need to run, so I'm forced to downgrade just to keep things working. So I get to reload everything all over again. Joy. On a good note, I got my 6th camcorder, and the 3rd that's fully functional. I have one that seems to have a focus problem and two others that have no power supplies, so until I find or build adaquate power supplies, they're not presently useful. But they sure look pretty. :) There probably won't be any xmas things to control this year. With this most recent setback, I won't be able to get anything done with it before Xmas, so there's not much point.
December 16, 2003 02:25
Network has been Moved!That's right, notice how much faster the site loaded? Well unless you're on dialup in which case it probably loaded at the same speed. But for everyone else, yay! Windows Media player modes should work now for the hallway and living room cams. I'm working now on getting audio working on both of those and possibly other cams.
December 05, 2003 18:26
Cams and LampsI've disconnected all but the Office cam from the old place along with most of the lights, although I've left two in operation there, even though they're presently not visible on any cams. At the new place, I've added a cam in the living room and should hopefully have zoom working on the hallway cam by later tonight. There are now three controllable lamps available, with more soon to follow. In addition to making the living room and hallway cams somewhat more permanant, I also plan to place a cam in the garage, kitchen, and one on the front porch. There will also be one viewing the pool, and a controllable boat cam as soon as I find a suitable boat.
December 04, 2003 12:31
Moving ProgressAbout half of my stuff has been moved so far. In addition, I have got two temporary cams set up at the new place, although both of these will likely be repositioned in the new future as soon as I get some more wiring run. I have several lamps hooked up at the new place, but I have yet to get all the necessary hardware moved over. Hopefully by tonight there will be some controllable lamps.The internet connection at the house is presently a comcast cable connection with 256kbps upstream and I think 3mbps downstream. The site itself is still operating off the old network, so while the cams at the new house are fast, the site itself might be a bit sluggish for the next couple weeks. However, as I move the cams out of here, the only traffic the site will have to send is the pages themselves. The cams, which are the main bandwidth hit, won't be slowing things down. I gave a few minutes of effort last night to getting the streaming working. I had some limited success, but nothing to write home about yet. Once I have something truely breathtaking, I'll let you know. I'm going to try tonight to add one or two more cams to the house so there will be more activity to watch.
December 01, 2003 18:27
The Move Continues....There was a slight setback on the cable installation order. It had been moved to Wednesday, so it will be 2 more days before there is internet access in the new place. Once that's in place, I'll set up a couple cams. Otherwise, things are going great. Still boxes and furniture to move over and that will likely continue for at least another week, if not longer. And unpacking will continue slowly for the next month or so. But at least life will have a chance of returning to normal finally. :) Received a third camcorder today, although there wasn't a power supply included (as expected). Now I just have to find a 9.6V 1.2 amp power supply for it and all will be good. Still got 2 more in transit, and another action won yesterday, so a 6th will be shipped in a bit.
November 28, 2003 10:45
MOVING TIME!!!The moving process has begun..... finally. Today will mostly be spent wiring the new place. Tomorrow a temporary cable line will be installed to provide some decent internet access until the dsl line can be installed, which will then run the site. Also tomorrow, we will be uhauling the contents of our storage buildings to the house. I'll then move what I have at my parents house over there over the next several days. The network and therefore the site shouldn't have any significant lapse in service. Worst case will be the 30 minute drive from location A to location B. However, I might be using this as an opportunity to upgrade and replace the server, so I might just switch it over, meaning no lapse of service at all. Cams will start moving over likely tomorrow. More news to follow soon.
November 26, 2003 16:43
Moving StatusOk, finally things have gotten rolling. The move is scheduled for this weekend. However, the dsl won't be installed likely for another two weeks. This means the site won't get fully moved until then. We're going to have comcast install a line temporarily so we have SOME internet access available. I'll start setting up cams there and streaming them from that location, while keeping the main webserver here. Since I'm looking at a while to get fully transferred over, I'll probably go ahead and set up a new webserver again and have it take over when the dsl is installed, then switch the dns servers and it should smoothly start up at the new place. Zoom is now functional on the "Another New Camcorder" cam. It was as easy as I imagined it would be, just a matter of obtaining a risk worthy camcorder that I could perform the necessary surgery on. Now I need to build a pan/tilt system for this cam so all three dimensions can be manipulated. Tilting is going to be tough with the larger cameras. It's hard enough with the smaller ones. I'm also going to be rethinking the way I handle the controllers. While direct control via a parallel port works in a pinch, there are probably better ways to do it. And while I'm getting my computer count down to one server for every 3 camcorders, it looks as if I'm still going to require at least one parallel port per cam to control the rotors. I'll probably start looking into some external microcontrollers that can handle several rotor systems each. I also have these temperature sensors that I want to interface. They're only a couple bucks each, so if the interface circuity can be built inexpensively enough, I can scatter several of those around the house.
November 24, 2003 22:48
CamcordersGot my first two of 5 so far purchased camcorders. Both are working great and one I'll be able to adapt to have computer controlled zoom. That will be a project for this week. I've already got the cam torn apart and the zoom switches isolated. Now it's just a matter of wiring some relays to the buttons and doing a little programming. Then I'll have to get serious about a real pan/tilt mount again. Also, Drew has his luminglass linked to the site. It will likely be up and working whenever he's around, so if you see it active, check it out.
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