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I like to travel, f*ck with technology, and partake in the occasional tropical drink.
I am also a co-host on The NBD Show podcast.
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Showing posts with label iphone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iphone. Show all posts

Home surveillance systems can get really expensive, and many times don't provide everything your looking for.  My goal was to set up a functional reliable home surveillance system, that I could view on my mobile device, provided motion detection image capture, and the ability to support multiple cameras.

iPhone Software:
I found icam in the apple app store.  This app caught my eye because of its simplicity. It also does not require a subscription, in app purchase, or ads.
https://appsto.re/us/cDmQr.i

Server Software:
The server software (icam source) works with the app and is free on the company website.  For free software it is very stable, and can also push notifications during a motion event. I set mine up to archive the image captures to external hard drive, so those images are backed up to the cloud.
http://skjm.com/icam/support.php

Cameras:
These cameras have worked flawlessly for me.  They don't have a ton of bells and whistles, but perform great in low light and have been super reliable.

Update:
If you are getting public proxy busy or the app is trying to get you to pay for proxy access take a look at your local home router. You will probably have to forward a range of ports to allow your iPhone app to connect to your home server when you on another network. 

IMPORTANT NOTE #1 - If your router only allows you to forward a single port at a time, change the port range from 12000-12100 to 12000-12005 in the iCamSource and add 6 port forwarding rules in your router, one for each port.

IMPORTANT NOTE #2 - If you are running iCamSource(s) on more than one computer on the same network then you will need to use (and forward) a separate port range for each computer. (We recommend using 12000-12100, 12200-12300, 12400-12500, etc.)
Touch ID is an awesome feature and has been the best implementation of consumer biometrics I have used. But for some it is troubling. For those who suffer the ability to train your Touch ID, in essance give it more data about your finger print would be benificial. Well Steve Gibson of  the Security Now podcast has stumbled across just that, an undocumented way to train your Apples Touch ID. I will embed part of the security now podcast showing Steve training his iPhone 5s, as well as a nice guide imore.com put together.

Security Now Episode 440

  1. Launch the Settings app and tap on General.
  2. Tap on Touch ID & Passcode and enter your numerical passcode when prompted.
  3. Now tap on Touch ID.
  4. Here you see a list of all your registered fingerprints. Place one of yourregistered fingers on the Touch ID sensor. The registered print will pulse grey. Continue placing and lifting each registered finger as many times as you'd like to train Touch ID further.

Encrypting your email has always been for the geeky or super paranoid. Now with everything in the "Cloud" encrypting your email is even more crucial. Imagine every email you've ever sent or received saved across countless servers in scores data centers any where in the world. By encrypting your email you can use their infrastructure with out them monitoring your emails.

I wouldn't say I wear a tin foil hat, but I care about privacy especially my own. Steve Gibson had a listener sum it up pretty well on his podcast, "One might say I have nothing to hide from people I trust." So with that said lets dive into setting up email encryption on the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Mail client.

First step is to generate a certificate. I went to Comodo and found it to be very strait forward to set up and free.

Here is a couple of Certificate Authorities (CAs) that offer free email certificates.

Click on the Free Email Certificate button


Fill out the form and Click Next

They will send you an email once you get the email click on the link and download it. 
Note forsome reason   on Mac downloading the cert using Chrome broke it.  I used Safari and it worked great.

Once you have accepted the cert on your desktop you can open keychain and export it.  During the processes it will prompt you for a password that is used to encrypt it.  This password will be needed later when you install it on your IOS device.

The final step is installing the cert on your IOS devices, and I found a post that does a very elegant job of walking you through it.

The End of Google Exchange Active Sync

Google released a blog post titled Winter Cleaning where in they layed out their road map for Exchange Active Sync (EAS), and sorry to say the road is short. Google says "Starting January 30, 2013, consumers won't be able to set up new devices using Google Sync; however, existing Google Sync connections will continue to function." Google does not hint for how long these existing free EAS devices will work, but did state they will continue to support EAS in Google Apps for Business, Government and Education. 

So where do we go from here?  Google has finished their CardDAV sync for contacts, so in association with IMAP for email and calendar they say they can "offers similar access via IMAP, CalDAV and CardDAV, making it possible to build a seamless sync experience using open protocols." It's true I have tested their solution and it works just not as seamless as Exchange and with a much more complicated set up process. 

Here are the steps from Google's Sync site for the new set up of an IOS device. Word of warning these procedures may change so follow the link at the top of each config example for the most current Google Sync procedures.

To configure the 'Mail' app on an Apple device for access to Gmail, just follow these steps:
  1. Make sure you've enabled IMAP in your main Gmail settings
  2. Open the Settings app on your device
  3. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars
  4. Tap Add Account...
  5. Tap Gmail
  6. Enter your account information, being sure to use your full Gmail address, including '@gmail.com'
  7. Tap Next
  8. Tap Save
Contacts via CardDAV:
Here’s how to sync your contacts to your device:
  1. Open the Settings application on your device.
  2. Select Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
  3. Select Add Account...
  4. Select Other
  5. Select Add CardDAV Account
  6. Fill out your account information in the following fields:
    • Server: Enter "google.com"
    • User Name: Enter your full Google Account or Google Apps email address.
    • Password: Your Google Account or Google Apps password. (If you’ve enabled 2 Step verification, you’ll need to generate and enter an application specific password.)
    • Description: Enter a description of the account (e.g. Personal Contacts).
  7. Select Next at the top of your screen.
  8. Make sure that the "Contacts" option is turned to ON.
Exchange Active Sync has some benefits over the open alternatives.  The first is its speed, emails arriving into the Microsoft Exchange inbox or Google's inbox using EAS are instantly pushed to the device.  Where as IMAP uses a sudo push/short polling mechanism to trigger the action. The second is ease of set up, as you can see above there are quit a few steps to setting up your phone using open standards.  Where as Exchange Active Sync was just one set of credentials and a control screen to select what you wanted synced.

Exchange Active Sync for me has been the killer APP for my iDevices, and I hope Google can make the alternitive as reliable, speedy, and seamless as EAS.
Apple Brining Home Jobs

If you're a fan of apple or it's products you may be curious about Tim Cook.  Here is a link to a great interview with Apple's CEO Tim Cook. It's entertaining to watch Tim speak in the specific generalities that is apple, but he did drop some very interesting tidbits.  



Google sync is as robust as any enterprise solution, and I discovered one more feature that makes it even more impressive. Many of us have multiple family members that share Google calendars, but  until now I didn't know how to sync those calendars to my iPhone and iPad. Now I do!!!

To select which calendars to sync to your Apple device, follow these steps:
  • Sign in with your account and select your device from the list of devices you’ve set up for Google Sync.
  • Once you select your device you can choose from the calendars you have already set up in your Google  calendar to sync.

  • You’ll need to do this setup on each IOS devices that uses Google Sync, to show multiple calendars.
I also found this helpful link that list some of the known issues between Google sync and IOS devices.  Click Here