My security camera kinda-sorta works!

For those with long memories, you may remember that for many months I tried to obtain an IP wireless webcam. The first seller took my money and vanished, totally vanishing off eBay after getting something like 200 in negative feedback. After that I got my money back off eBay and ordered again from a different seller. This seller again took my money and vanished, vanishing off eBay after getting more negative feedback. I got my money back eventually. Then I ordered again, making sure to go for a USA based seller. Well, the camera did arrive and then sat on the bedside table for a couple of weeks as I just could not get the thing to work.

Today, having failed totally and utterly to get the thing to work on my phone, I tried the software on my tablet. Well, it worked. The whole thing is slower than a tick swimming through treacle but it works. Interestingly that camera has audio and video. The audio is bidirectional too. I noticed when I spoke through it that I sounded just like a Dalek. Oddly enough, the camera looks like the eyeball on the end of a Dalek’s stalk.

Though they can’t be seen on this photo, there are some ominous looking glowing red lights. What it really needs is cat-eye shaped red lights to make it look really evil in the dark!

Having played with it for a bit, I find the software fairly clunky to use but it does work. It’s probably better run through a network as opposed to point to point as I have been running it. Panning and tilting seems fairly slow and there’s no zoom. Image quality on standard is mediocre whereas on high-quality it’s better. The difference is the whole thing works better in standard quality.

That’s what a screenshot of the tablet looks like with the camera sitting on my countertop, aimed out of the bus window. It’s good enough to recognize people and to see faces etc. I’m feeling it’s a little of a disappointment being so hard to get working - particularly on my phone. I can see that if I left it switched on in notify mode and connected to my phone, it would send messages every time anything passed the window - flirtatious squirrels, randy cats, delinquent rabbits etc.

I’ve always liked surveillance and counter-surveillance gadgets ever since I was a child. In fact that love came in handy a few years ago when a particularly malevolent individual was stalking me. Fortunately they ceased to bother with me after a couple of years. That’s not why I purchased this though. It was because where I’m living, people don’t normally knock on the door. There have been a few knocks on the door of late and it has usually been unwelcome. In fact, one of the neighbors up the road had just such a knock on the door and somebody gained entry to their home, fired a few shots and vanished.

When I lived in my rented rat hole in the slums of Lexington, I had one of those goofy viewers in my door. It didn’t allow me to see very much to be honest and there was no way of seeing who was at the door without opening it. Thus, I used only to open the door with my hand behind my back and my .357 in my hand. I’d have loved to have had some kind of remote camera.

Thinking further about security, it’s an idea to put hidden security cameras in a motorhome since they’re easy to break into. I’m not so bothered about people trying to steal a bus because there’re a lot fewer criminals out there that can actually handle the length and width, let alone manual fuel shut offs, air brakes etc. In fact in some instances the best anti-theft device is a manual gearbox since so few seem to be able to handle a clutch and gearstick. I’ve heard a gearstick referred to as the Millenial anti-theft device. I wouldn’t call this remote IP camera remotely hidden though. I’d call it a nice idea that won’t go further than just being a nice idea. This is, of course, why I bought it on ebay for $15 rather than paying full whack for a good one in a store. Mind paying full whack would have probably got me exactly the same camera in fancier packaging given the ubiquity of Chinese stuff.

I was thinking again about internal lighting. I’ve put the wires in in order to be able to use internal lighting. That’s just in case I decide to go through with it. From what I’ve seen online, it just seems to me that there’re an awful lot of people selling LED lighting, all of which suffers from exposed LEDs.  Exposed LEDs give a false impression of how bight the light is. Looking at them, the light is very dazzling. That gives the impression of brightness. Holding the light up to try to see something is fruitless. In fact on some of my lanterns, the LEDs are beginning to die.

Notice the LED on the second row on the second column? It seems to be very dim. That is apparently what LEDs do - they get gradually dimmer and dimmer. The life of an LED is graded as the time it takes to dim from full brightness to 50%.

This is one of those shower-head looking LED light bulbs. It was way too blue for my liking but as a stairwell light it was OK. I believe it lasted 3 months before LEDs began to fail in a pattern. Where the gap is that you see was all at one time brightly illuminated. I paid I believe $8 or $12 for that bulb. Clearly I wasn’t too impressed with the outcome.

I’m very suspicious of new electronics as usually the bugs haven’t been worked out on them. What I don’t understand is how LED lighting is so completely unreliable when LED televisions and LED monitors and tablets/phones with LED screens are so completely reliable. Look at the destination board fort he next bus or train you see - are all the LED segments that are supposed to be lit actually lit? I’m going to say they probably are not.

Does anybody remember those horrible e-readers that flooded the market a few years ago? I recall one customer in a store reminding their partner who was very enthralled with I believe the first generation of Nook, that it was never a good idea to get the first generation of anything. Now that truly was a horrible e-reader. I played with it for a few minutes until the fiickering e-ink screen gave me a headache. The only e-reader I saw that was any good was actually in K-Mart and it had an LCD screen and took AA batteries. It’s downside like so many was that it needed to be connected by a cable to a computer to download the books. I’m not quite sure what happened to e-books. I think they must have died out a few years after they killed off some of the big bookstores. I rather expect the current surge of exotic LED lighting devices will be historical curios in a year or so.

The reason I went for LED lanterns (about which I complain - a lot) was because the current electrical lighting situation around the world is so utterly miserable. Essentially we have incandescent which produced a lot of heat, fluorescent which contains mercury vapor and LED which doesn’t work. We are getting to the stage since incandescent lights are pretty well banned and fluorescent seem to be vanishing where it’s going to have to be LED or something traditional and reliable. One day I shall avail myself of an oil lamp and a candle and do a comparison test with some of my LED lanterns. I have little doubt that the oil lamp is going to win.

Maybe Saturday next week will be a good day. I should be able on a good day to go underneath to complete installing the bedroom cable including the one join. Now I know how to do it with my mini torch, that’s not going to take long. I’ll measure up for the battery hanger too though I’ll wait on installing the battery cables until I’ve completed, painted and installed the hanger. At the rate I’m going, that might be around Christmas! (Notice I did not say which Christmas).