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I am also a co-host on The NBD Show podcast.
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Showing posts with label server. Show all posts
Showing posts with label server. 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.)
With the popularity of the iPhones and iPads, the Mac has become practically viral among technology professionals. Even without official company support many of these users have banded together to create user-support communities within their companies.  I was recently at a large network hardware company and they threw out some statistics about Mac adoption.  Only 4 years ago they began to allow staff to purchase Apple devices, and since then almost 45% of their employees run a Mac. This is with no official technical support.  So how do they make the Mac Network engineer friendly?

There are several things a Network engineer needs.
  1. Serial Terminal App - The Mac has several options including the built in terminal app.  But many of us like to have something more.  Secure CRT $99.00 - Great app kinda expensive though. There is also CoolTerm, it's free and so far so good, really clean interface and easy to use.
  2. SSH Client - Once again the built in Mac SSH app is great and some cleaver developer out there created an app to manage multiple telnet and SSH connections.  JellyfiSSH $3.99, in the Apple app store, is a really easy and intuitive way of bookmarking all those connections.
  3. TFTP Server - I haven't really explored TFTP on the mac, but I found TFTP Client $1.99, in the Apple app store.  I haven't had a chance to use it and I have to admit I love tftp32 for windows, but let me know what you find.
  4. Serial Port - Steve Job's obsession with sleek industrial design killed off the com port a long time ago. Without a com port a network engineer is practically dead in the water.  There have been some really good USB serial adapters like the Keyspan by Tripp Light USA-19H, but recently I have been on the hunt for a Bluetooth serial adapter.  After looking online, Bluetooth serial adapters range from $40 to $250 dollars.  I am not looking to spend a ton of money so, luckily, I found a great post by Chris Marget on fragmentationneeded.net. In his post he highlights the UConnect BT232B from US Converters.  He says it's a slam dunk for Mac or PC and it seems very reasonably priced at $45.00.  I can't wait to give it a try and update once I get a look at it.
  5. Text Editor -   The text editor in the Mac is as good as notepad but you may want more.  Syntax highlighting is kinda like crack for those who are look at code or configs all day.  I wanted to list a couple text editor I have found invaluable. The first is Ultra Edit a robust text editor with a ton of extras and at $59 bucks well worth it. They also provide a ton of free extras such as the Cisco IOS language pack found here.  There is also a pretty good free alternative called Text Wrangler, it is the freeware version of BBEdit which i have not used, but it to also has a Cisco IOS language pack that can be downloaded from here.
Lastly, I welcome your ideas so feel free to list any apps hardware tor tricks you have found to make the Mac the network engineers friend.