See below: On Mon, May 8, 2023 at 10:03 AM Ted Mittelstaedt <t...@portlandia-it.com> wrote:
> > > Oh My God that stuff is horrendous. > > Do a search on Home Depot's website for security cameras. $100 for a 2MP > (1080p) camera combined with a motion detection light by Blink. And of > course, the light is some square POS that does not take an Edison bulb so > when the LEDs in it start getting dim the entire light and camera needs to > be unscrewed from the side of the house and thrown away. > > You can buy a separate motion detector only light from HD for like around > $25 for the base and replaceable bulbs then pair it with a real camera with > good resolution for cheaper than that. > None of those things have interested me in the least, anymore if one of those motion light/camera/audio device/whatever detached from the supporting structure you might have a serious legal problem.... > > Plus all that big box crap is all Chinese made and since it's all > cloud-based the cameras have to connect to the Internet, and I'm quite sure > the Chinese government sees all of those video streams. Geeze people, > Hikvision is state-owned. > I try as much as possible to avoid cloud based thermostats, cameras and other devices. > > >The only thing I am interested in PTZ for is WX cams. Here in OK we have > a lot of that and a PTZ cam comes in handy >to look at what is going on out > in remote area. > > OK you piqued my curiosity on that - I've seen WX associated with weather > for a while online now - what exactly does the abbreviation WX stand for? > Telegraphy abbreviation for Weather. Very old one. Like RX = receive, TX= Transmit, and many others. SMS and texting have inherited or revived some of the original abbreviations. > > >As I recall the guy put the code out there for folks to use. > >He used it to give the police a better idea of the times it was happening > and video of the vehicle. They then were able >to be there at the right > time and catch him. But before the ZM video nothing was happening. > > Unfortunately we have this thing in Portland OR now called "road dieting" > It is something that city planners dreamed up, they shrink major arterials > in the city down from 4 lanes to 2 lanes claiming it "increases safety" Of > course all it does is tremendously increase congestion and so as a result > people start shortcutting through the residential neighborhoods. In > response to that the city set every residential neighborhood street speed > from 25Mph to 20Mph. But needless to say there's not enough police on the > force to patrol every single residential street. > > The people living in neighborhoods are ballistic about it because they > went from having a neighborhood street with practically no traffic to > having a neighborhood street that now had a steady stream of cars on it. > The city planners who dreamed this up finally admitted that the entire idea > was to slow traffic down and that the people in the neighborhoods would > just have to suck it. > > I just laughed my ass off about it because the same people in the > neighborhoods now who were complaining about traffic were the ones who > voted in the road dieting. So now they got speeders in their > neighborhoods. Should have known better than to vote for the road diet on > the arterial 3 blocks away from your house when the city came around asking > if you wanted it. > When did they do that? I lived up in SW WA until 2017. So they must have started doing it after then or I just did not notice it. Most of my trips were to the fish plants and other food processors to work on ozone machines used in organic processing. I have seen that sort of thing most cases appears that they did some realized the error of their ways and abandoned it, but they did leave the poor buggers where they did the testing with the road dieted streets. > > People need to quit being so stupid and anal about this stuff. You don't > want speeders in the neighborhood, then ease congestion by widening > arterials. And yes, that DOES mean people are going to drive fast on the > arterials. That's their purpose. > Yep and for that a few cops with laser/Radar guns with cameras, that will slow them down somewhat. > > Out West from Portland in cities like Hillsboro they understand this stuff > and you go out there and see miles of empty farmland where they are > platting out subdivisions and new business parks and you see 4 lane roads > everywhere in the cornfields. No road dieting out there! > Smart folks. > > >I just cannot believe you can leave a windows box unattended for any > length of time. > > You actually CAN do this with Windows XP. I've done it. But the catch is > that the system has to be COMPLETELY patched, I use one of the Unofficial > Windows XP Patch sets (sometimes called the Unofficial Service Pack 4) and > it CANNOT be accessible from the Internet. And, obviously, you typically > either have to use an old commercial application that is really very very > stable, or you have to use an app you wrote yourself, typically with Visual > Studio 6.0 or earlier. > Glass container inspectors I used to service used XP as the HMI, except what was called the rotational inspector, that box also had some A-D stuff in it so it was more than the HMI. The sidewall inspector and the base/sealing surface inspector would run with the HMI box shut down. Indeed the controlling stuff was Linux based. I do recall that we had to reboot those machines every 49 days or so or strange things would happen. > > The typical application for this is Point of Sale cash registers. POS > software is actually in a pretty sad state of affairs these days because > all of the current cash register vendors have moved to the Cloud, as a way > of getting recurring revenue. Most of them will sell you PC's with Windows > IoT on them and cash drawers and all that. But needless to say the small > business retailers don't want to be stuck paying ongoing revenue for a > flipping cash register so many of them use older antique cash register > software programs that were written in XP days and sold as "perpetual > licenses" > I recall seeing some Linux based POS, but that was back when I lived in Tampa, FL. Not sure that I have seen any of late. > > >I am sure that they have >corrected things but something that calls home > >(MS) and feels like working on a car with the hood welded shut just does > not sit right. Not to mention the monetizing >of the desktop. > > You actually CAN do this but NOT with Windows 10 Desktop. You can do it > with Windows Server (obviously) but the expense is too great for hobby use > and also if it's connected at all to the Internet you have to patch it > periodically. But, then again, if Ubuntu or any other Linux OS is > connected to the Internet, you have to patch that periodically, also. > > But for smaller/hobby use you can do this with Windows IoT (formerly > Windows Embedded) They even have a version for the Raspberry Pi that is > free to use, here: > > https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53360 > > Yes I have seen the RPi stuff but see no use for it personally all I need runs on the Linux code. > Assuming of course you can find a cheap Raspberry Pi which these days is a > pretty tall order. Windows IoT doesn't have all the call home to mommy > stuff and is designed for embedded systems use where they have to run > unattended. I've never tried booting it myself, though. > Just seen it but never tried it either. > > The problem Microsoft has is that nobody wants windows on anything other > than an x86 platform because they all want it to run software like > QuickBooks and other stuff that is just refreshes over and over of antique > software programs the vendors monetized. So yeah, if you want to write a > .NET application for a gas pump or EV charging station and run it off a > Raspberry Pi they will turn themselves inside out supporting you. > > But as for getting access to the source code of current windows - well you > either have to be a government and use this program: > > https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/securityengineering/gsp? > > Or you have to get it from a leaked source. Windows XP source code was > leaked a few years ago. I suspect we will see windows 10 source leaked > years after MS stops supporting it. MS also periodically releases "antique > software" source like that for GW-BASIC and MSDOS and I wouldn't be a bit > surprised if some of these leaks like the XP leak had tacit support from > Microsoft, as a way of pushing customers to stop using old software. > > But as far as Windows 10 Desktop, connected to the Internet so that your > security camera can stream to some server on the Internet - oh yeah, that > is all Ring Doorbell stuff and it's all toy stuff and not stable enough to > be unattended. > I just try to avoid MS when at all possible. Just too much stuff I just rather avoid. Back on ZM. I think I am going to set up some sort of WX cam system. For that speeds of say 1fps is probably more than enough for capturing most WX activity. Perhaps if there is something like alert signalling or detectable WX conditions that I can use to speed up the frame rate that might be handy for capturing rapidly changing or moving WX, like a tornado. I have one PTZ camera, I am able to control it from ZM, but it does not look up above the horizon, indeed it is aimed somewhat below the horizon, when it is not zoomed it you get about 8 degrees above horizon visible, but as you zoom in you see that it is actually zooming in on a point below the horizon. I found another cam that can look about 10 degrees above, I would like to have one that can at least go vertical, sometimes you may want to see what is going on directly overhead or at a higher angle. I know that they are out there, most of what I have seen are pretty expensive.
