Here’s another sign it is time to clear out. FPL is replacing power poles in the area. They are four blocks north of here and coming right this way. The old poles are leaning over from the weight of the wires for years now, which you can clearly see in the picture. I don’t know their logic, but that’s what happens when you hang all the wires on one side, see? There are two separate crews, one for the poles another to move the wiring. Neither speaks English.
It was a restless night for me. You see, those ceiling tiles y’day were that asbestos compound that covers your skin with little needles of fiber. This then gets embedded with perspiration and will not wash off. Lack of sleep always causes me to be slow at making decisions. I don’t think I’ll make it to work today, or at least until much later. Most of what I make money at requires constant decision-making with no margin for error.Later. It is now 10:30 a.m. and I’m a wreck. The asbestos got on my arms, but also around my collar and rubbed in. It is not the itchiness, but lack of sleep that slows me down. It takes another day for the fibers to “grow out” of my skin, I know from experience. Naturally, I used the waking time to study. In this case, I followed up on some technical aspects of the IP camera systems. I must compliment that Van Winkle guy for doing great research, although he needs me to do his proofreading.
The field is wide open. The security cameras have just begun to flex digital capabilities. Features I like that I was unaware of are PoE and Powerline (don’t quote me on those terms). PoE is “Power over Ethernet”, where you attach a box that carries the electric for the camera through the Ethernet cable. That way, you can mount the camera anywhere you like rather than near an outlet. Powerline is the close cousin of that computer networking system that uses your existing electrical system. It never became popular but this security use may have found it a new lease. Also, the cameras are tiny and finally beginning to come in blinds [fake coverings that look like something else]. The blinds are frightfully expensive, as in $500 each. You would be smarter to drill out a book and hide your own camera in there.
The [scrambled] video signal goes through your home or office wiring to a central recorder. I love it because it avoids running cable races and does not use the highly over-rated and insecure wireless signals. Which never work where you want the camera anyway. These recorders are another technology in themselves, called NVR for Network Video Recorder. The recorder is just one part of a system, and it is an elaborate system. I’m saying this gear needs more smarts than your average cable guy has got.
Stay with me on the logic here. While all digital systems eventually get bundled into self-configuring packages, such as the new cable modems, the addition of new features means the overall complexity remains about the same. The gear drops in price but not the cost of installation, which spells opportunity. I’m thinking already. Imagine a security system that does not require the manual labor of running cables. Why, a sharp dude could be his own consultant. Sure, Mrs. Jones, I can put an extra camera in the den, but it will cost you $1,000.
The [IP camera] field is new, so research will be difficult. Forget the Internet, unless you are one of those few people who still haven’t learned that giraffes have long necks and really, really need to look that up. What few sources I found on-line are dominated by CCTV technology and not much help. Plus, what they say is hard to follow, I mean what the hell is a flux level? Or a lumen?
Later. Fascinating, the more I read about these new cameras. The better models can have two modes, one for viewing, another for recording. They have built-in motion detectors to cut down bandwidth, on-board recording in case of a network outage and joystick PTZ control. (Pan Tilt Zoom) They can also be triggered by external alarms such as a smoke detector. One manufacturer even has a push-button playback so you can easily view the same event from several different cameras. The worthwhile cameras, all over $400 each, have a web server built in, so you can log in from any computer in the world. Before too long, mark my words, you’ll dial in from your cell phone.
I’m informed the part about motion detection is not clear. Okay, if the motion detector is in the camera, it triggers on site. If the motion detector is at the office, the camera has to supply a constant picture signal back over the wiring, which eats up expensive bandwidth.
I rigged up a camera here around a year ago to test the amount of recording that would fit on a hard drive. Not much, around five hours on 80 gigs. But that was AVI. The new cameras support MPEG4, something even I don’t have at home yet. At this time I do not know if the two technologies are compatible. The Ethernet version still requires cables and the electrical wiring system still requires a nearby outlet.
By early afternoon I was in the shop, where I cloned the 5 gig driver to the 20 gig, only to have a double disk crash. Some problem on the smaller drive got copied and both quit on me. I was there frantically making repairs until closing time, as that computer is also my printer driver. I’ve had trouble getting that computer to recognize the printer before.
While waiting for the install, I priced a couple of the IP camera systems. The low end is WiLife, at $299 for a one camera system. It says a ten minute setup time. The catch is each new camera is $229, something to be carefully thought through. The entire system will handle up to six cameras and that is getting expensive indeed. The site I visited was the company’s. They carefully did not mention if only their own digital cameras would work on their system, so one can safely assume that is the case.Here is my primary security system, Pudding the Guard cat perched on top of my Yamaha PA speakers. The now adult and totally spoiled cat, like all women in my life. Vermin beware. She can stink up an entire room in no time, I mean, what a life. Eat, sleep and poop. Pudding reminds of that welfare lady who lived downstairs from Jamie back in ’03. The lady would sit around all day watching TV and dream about winning the lottery so that she could sit around all day watching TV. That’s the one I asked what she would do if she had a million dollars. She said she would “travel”. Turns out she thought “Berlin” was a country and “Paris” was in England.
I decided to find the temperature at the South Pole anyway. It was minus 53F at 8:42. How do they tell time at the South Pole where technically you could be standing in several dozen time zones? While surfing, I found another site on the Svalbard islands that has a camera which snaps a [very boring] picture every hour. No trees and lots of storms. I could not get it to play back in time lapse. The people who maintain that site write in some kind of strange language with about 40 letters. The point is, I’m thinking about these “live” IP cameras.
One of the manufacturers (WiLife) offers a suction cup camera. You put one on all four windows of your car and record to your laptop. How long before that becomes mandatory?
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