ShackCam work

With my ShackCam being down for as long as it has I felt it was about time to remedy that situation, prior to my QTH move the camera was to be based around a Raspberry Pi Zero with a camera module inside the housing of a £1 dummy CCTV camera (which I still have and gutted for that reason (was just a couple of wires, battery contacts and a red LED), I plan to buy a newer Pi camera than what I have and a Zero W for this project because the Zero W has the WiFi onboard, power will be the only required cabling to the camera and the shack computer deals with the video feed from the camera.

Though I have moved QTH I plan to use the same camera housing, only this time I cannot fix it to the ceiling as I intended, this time I plan to run an overhead support from either the desk or the shelving unit for the camera, how power will get to it will remain to be seen, which has to be sourced from the mains supply to keep the camera on and ready for the shack computer to pick up the feed.

I also plan to set up a portable operations ShackCam over a 3G/4G connection with a feed back to the home server, I have written up pages to support displaying this however this requires another Raspberry Pi Camera and a 3G or 4G connection to send the data over securely back to the server at home, and a means to power it in the field, battery or solar power would suffice but a Raspberry Pi requires 5VDC and a supply rated at around 2A so I would need to make sure that at least that amount of current is available.

The original plan was to get the ShackCam on after last year's National Hamfest, this fell through for various reasons, including me shutting down the original web server used to host the page, with a new server up and running it is more likely that the ShackCam should return soon.

73 de 2E0EIJ

ShackCam progress

As you will know I am working on building a dedicated camera for the ShackCam out of a Raspberry Pi Zero, the current incarnation of the Pi Camera (I have the original Pi Camera which I am reserving for another project anyway), and a £1 dummy CCTV camera which has been gutted (with it simply being an LED, some wires, and a switch).

The initial idea for this was to use Raspbian and Motion to run the camera, sending the stream out to the programme on the shack computer that I used previously with the Dazzle and the JVC Everio camcorder, however I found a suitable operating system for the Pi that will allow me to dispense with the complicated setup procedure, motionEyeOS.

For the Raspberry Pi this has a unique feature called Fast Network Cam, with it I can stream the camera output to the shack computer over the existing WiFi network with minimal setup, naturally I will set this up before the ShackCam goes into it's final place so I can see an output while I move the camera about and see where it is best being positioned to get the best view of the shack.

I've also made some changes to the web page the image is displayed on, firstly a Copyright notice that had gone missing during a previous edit some time ago was reinstated, secondly the "about" page was linked to as the hyperlink went missing at some point in time, this is set to open a new tab, tested to work in Chrome (computer, tablet and phone versions) and Microsoft Edge (computer and phone version) though in the computer version of Edge the link to the about page is not very visible due to the blue background I chose for the page until after you open it, but I doubt many people are actually using Edge anyway so I won't bother to fix it, as I cannot test on other browsers I can't guarantee the page will work as intended, but as long as the browser can handle HTML properly you should be fine.

I was also thinking about putting on a mobile ShackCam as well for those occasions I am working portable but of course that would depend on me getting suitable 3G coverage at portable locations, the Everio would not last more than 90 minutes doing this and I'd need a machine I could run off a battery for a long time, the Raspberry Pi's energy usage makes this a suitable candidate again with a Pi Camera and the above OS if possible, worth looking at, this will be added to the ShackCam page if I go ahead with it, I may pick up a 3G or 4G compatible router for this and utilise the Pi3's onboard WiFi again if I decide to go ahead with it, though as the year is progressing I may not do any portable operating for a while.

The improved home ShackCam should be operational sometime next month after the National Hamfest.

73 de M6RSQ/26CT730

ShackCam improvements

As you are aware, I have a shack cam which currently is offline due to no video hardware being connected, until my windows were replaced this was my JVC Everio camcorder connected to a Dazzle USB capture device, this worked ok as a stop gap but a problem was ongoing with the video connection at the Dazzle end, one of the connectors was not making connection properly and was flaky.

So, what to do, reinstating the Dazzle was an idea but this device has a strange interlacing effect which sometimes was apparent whenever I got up out of my chair and moved past the camera, so instead I look at something a little bit smaller and also on the network and a dedicated device, the Raspberry Pi and the Pi camera, as well as a dummy CCTV camera, the pound shop sell small dummy CCTV cameras and at time of writing the Raspberry Pi Zero, of which I already own one, now has a camera connector on the board, this happened after I bought mine so will need to buy a second one at the same time as the camera, also the Pi Zero has very little in the way of current consumption, and adding WiFi to it would make life easier as the Pi Zero has no Ethernet at all and should still keep current draw low.

This setup should work with the software I use on my shack computer to run the feed, which is currently running at boot and not sending images as it has no video source at this time, effectively I plan to make a custom IP camera using mostly off the shelf parts rather than spending a lot of money on an off the shelf IP camera, all I need is a camera, no fancy features, and as I have a light in the shack at night I do not need a camera equipped with Infrared.

Hopefully I will get the new and improved ShackCam online very soon, this might happen after the Hamfest though but we'll see, I have kept the link up to the ShackCam page over this time but of course with it not sending imagery out the most you will see is a "no device" warning.

73 de M6RSQ/26CT730

ShackCam tests, one week on

The shackcam has been running for one week and I am pleased to report that on it's current hardware (after some bodging by me to the Dazzle hardware) that is is working just fine, the website itself has been updated to include my Amateur callsign as the primary callsign, with my CT callsign being secondary as it is not really an official callsign and I've not done a lot of CB or 446 work in a while and the bulk of my transmissions have been on 2-meters since my license came through.

I plan to move all my radio operations (except /m and /p of course) back to the shack in the coming weeks, my handhelds are being charged elsewhere and Echolink is currently running on my laptop though I plan to keep it on there for the foreseeable future, but it's on my phone as well

With the shackcam working as it should be I am happy, the shack computer will be shut down at some stage to allow the monitor to be wall mounted to free up the desk space it currently occupies for such items such as radio chargers, so expect to see changes soon

73 de M6RSQ/26CT730 on CB/PMR446

ShackCam tests

I've put my shackcam back on for testing, this is in part after I discovered a fault with the FTPd running on my server (the server itself is also visible on the shackcam as it is on the shelves that seperate my living room between living area and shack), and to ensure the hardware is still up to the job until a better camera can take it's place, it appears to be but it has been erroring out periodically.

The camera will be on for the next week in order to ascertain if it is working as it should be, if it is then  I have no further work that I need to do, if not then I will need to do some further work, so I can put a proper 2/70 rig into the shack as I plan to operate on both the 2-meter and 70cm bands in the coming months,

The link for the shackcam is unchanged and is on the right hand side of this page.

73 de M6RSQ (or 26CT730 on CB/PMR446)

President Grant 2 to be ordered soon maybe? (also a shack computer update)

I may place an order for a President Grant 2 next week if my finances look good, this will allow me to operate on SSB, in particular on my DXpedition to Tan Hill, however I will see what's what.

The reason I chose the President Grant 2 is several reasons, it is the first legal rig that allows you to switch between the new modes in the UK band (this is a recent update to the firmware in the radio), the radio is fitted with a power socket on the rear that the power lead plugs in to, this is similar to my Moonraker FA5000, a rig I hardly use now.

The President Grant 2 is easy to open up to export mode, inside there's a white wire and a jumper block, simply snip the wire and move the jumper, at the loss of your warranty and and your own risk, you also would lose the UK setting but you can get this back by moving the jumper back to it's original position.

It support's President's Liberty wireless microphone, a great idea that no one really thought of in the past, means you are not tied to sitting in the shack or your /p station, you can take a wander if you like, up to 100 meters I think it is, much like a DECT phone or a bluetooth headset.

Another nice feature of the rig is a choice of two backlight colours, orange and green, which also includes a dimmer so you're not blinding youself with a bright backlight at night.

There are other features as well on the rig but I'll do a full write up when I actually get hold of one, hopefully in a couple of weeks all being well

My shack computer has had a new motherboard, RAM, and CPU ordered for it, this would help with performance with regards to SDR use, there are incompatibility issues with the hard disk, optical drive, and existing graphics card, the hard drive has had an adaptor ordered for it to allow it to continue to work, the optical drive will be rectified later as it's not important at this time, the power supply should be sufficient for the new board, the only card that will be fitted is to be the CMI8738 sound card that the machine already has and that is compatible with the board.

Performance with SDR# has been dire with the RTL-SDR operating, the FRN client does work... just, the shackcam feed isn't really reliable on the machine (it's controlled by it both hardware and software, though I intend to replace this with a network camera,, which will make it software and link), and with plans to do the Amateur radio foundation exam as well I want the machine to reliably handle the Echolink software.  Another radio software installed on the machine is Zello, this runs reasonably OK but I tend not to use it as I use it on my phone more than I do on the computer.

Programming my Wouxun KG-UVD1P has proven unreliable with this machine, upgrading the internal hardware may be sufficient to remedy this (the official software, that is practically incomprehensible, works fine, the easier KG-UV commander doesn't read the radio properly, though it could be a bug with the software rather than the computer).

I should be taking delivery of the motherboard and it's ancillaries by Wednesday at the latest, for fitting that evening, which will take out the 446 gateway for a couple of hours but this is no real issue, the RAM on the existing board, if compatible, will be used in the 446 gateway computer to hopefully try and improve things, the GPU in that machine will also be swapped out with the one in the shack computer as I feel the one currently fitted to it is wasted in it and would be useful in another installation.

So, a better shack computer and maybe, just maybe, a President Grant 2 will be sitting on my shack desk soon, but we will see :)

73 de 26CT730

26CT730 ShackCam once again operational

The ShackCam is now once again operational, however I am testing it so it may go on and off intermittently during the course of the day and it won't be shut down overnight.

The link to view it is on the right as always, and as always it is a JVC camcorder fed by a Dazzle DVC100 frame grabber, however I am looking to cobble together a WiFi network camera with better quality than the Dazzle can offer (the JVC camcorder is otherwise pretty good video wise), a network camera will also offer flexibility as if I need the camcorder for it's intended use the ShackCam doesn't need to be reinstated.

But for now it's running, I'm not in the shack at time of writing but I will be on and off through the day.

73 de 26CT730