DIY video baby monitor and video broadcast review

I've had limited success with low cost broadcast video (ustream.tv) , iChat, and Google Video Chat. So I was impressed by the tips and lessons in this do it yourself baby monitor project (emphases mine) ...

The mighty mini, take two: DIY video baby monitor

... In response to Dave Caolo's recent ode to the Mac mini, I figured it was time to step up. I had two things gathering dust: my old standalone iSight, a gorgeous example of Apple design sadly idle since the advent of built-in iSights, and a lovely new Intel Mac Mini that was recently scored on sale at MicroCenter with plans to set it up for my older two kids once I could get my hands on a small LCD monitor.

I figured in the meantime it would serve nicely as a baby monitor, since I couldn't find a matching transmitter/receiver pair among the various baby monitors I had accumulated over the years. My idea was that it would live discreetly, headless and tailless (monitor, keyboard, and mouse-free) in the baby's room, and broadcast both locally on my network and also wide-area so grandparents could tune in remotely.

For the initial setup, I needed a monitor, but fortunately my TV has a PC (VGA) port, which I used to configure the mini. I set it to login automatically to the main account and join my Airport network. In System Preferences, I enabled screen sharing and added iChat as a login item.

In iChat, I enabled Bonjour and instant messaging, added myself as a buddy, and restricted chats to preapproved users under security preferences. Because I didn't want to connect via screen sharing every time I wanted to initiate a chat, I typed the following into Terminal so that it would auto-accept any incoming video chats:

defaults write com.apple.ichat AutoAcceptVCInvitations 1

... While this worked great for my own local use, it had some inherent restrictions: remote users (aka "grandparents who love to watch sleeping grandsons") couldn't join the chat easily. Spouses at work had issues with company restrictions on AIM. Plus, it was iPhone-unfriendly; the holy grail for me was turning the iPhone into a video terminal that followed me around.

I went through a few different ideas: private channel on Justin.tv (great for multiple viewers, but awash in advertising, restricted at work, and unavailable on iPhone), Skype (great video, automatic call acceptance and limited iPhone capabilities, but terrible for multiple viewers), and complicated setups involving QuickTime Broadcaster.

Not wanting to reinvent the wheel (well, no more than I already was doing), I hit upon SJKM's iCam software, which is an iPhone application & accompanying cross-platform video streaming tool specifically designed for video monitoring, available in the iTunes store for $4.99....

When did Aperture get faster?

I was working with Aperture on my old G5 iMac today and I realized edit operations are significantly faster than they used to be. My hardware hasn't changed at all.

It's a noticeable difference. Kind of crept up on me.

I'm guessing it's something in 10.5.7 or in some RAW update.

Nice.

Airport Extreme: Firmware update, Time Capsule bugs, tips and fixes

Update 12/31/09: Time Machine failed me on an iPhoto Library restore.

Update 10/12/09: There may be a manufacturing defect with Time Capsule power supplies. The average lifespan is 18 months. Until Apple addresses this issue I'd advise against buying a TC.

--

As best I can tell from very old posts and an ancient (1999) web page, I bought my flying saucer Airport Extreme base station around August 2003.

It served me faithfully for almost six years, but in the past two weeks I’ve been having obvious network outages. At first I blamed my poor ISP (Qwest DSL, and ever since I upgraded to their higher service level they’ve been very reliable), but I finally stripped my network down until I could figure out where the failure point was. It was the AEBS. As of yesterday it worked for about an hour after reboot and then dropped off the network.

Cough.

Ok, I’m simplifying. I’ve had network wonkiness on and off for 5 months. It’s possible that a not-quite-dead AEBS played a role. Lord, I hate hardware failure. I can’t complain about the lifespan of my AEBS though; most wireless base stations seem to last about 1-2 years (heat? something about the radio?). So five-six years is excellent.

I tried reflashing the firmware just for kicks. I figured I’d reflash to the previous release (@2006 I think) then bring it up to the latest release (@2007). At first I couldn’t figure out how to do this, then I learned Apple has a very elegant (if slightly obscure) solution:

All about Time Capsule, AirPort Extreme, and AirPort Express base station firmware updates

… how can I install previous (earlier) versions of firmware?

Open AirPort Utility.
From the AirPort Utility menu, hold the Option key (Control key in Windows XP and Vista) and choose Check for Updates....
Select the specific firmware version you require.
Select your base station and choose Manual Setup from the Base Station menu, or double-click on the AWD icon.
Choose Base Station > Upload Firmware.
Select a firmware version and click OK.

Wow, that’s elegant. The UI displays images of the appropriate device. I had to scroll a bit since I was going back in time, but it worked. I think I had some odd thing where I had to do this twice, but I wasn’t paying much attention.

I flashed to old then reflashed to new, but it was still busted.

At last! Finally, I could buy new hardware!

I’ve been hurting ever since I fell on my shield and added Gordon’s Laws of Geekery to Gordon’s 4 Laws of Acquisition. Under the new regimen I’ve not been able to buy a darned thing! I thought I’d have a 3GS by now, but I’d misremembered a phone contract termination date so that won’t happen until October 1 (Em is getting my 3G).

I was leaning towards the 1TB Time Capsule because I like the idea of an Apple secured file share and the lightweight NAS approach – but the price differential between the Airport Extreme and the 1TB Time Capsule is absurd. My personal Guru of The Deal (A.M.) advised me to the buy the more reasonable priced 500GB Time Capsule and to track down the ever reusable 10% off Best Buy Coupon (harder to find these days). I don’t normally buy retail, but BFF will slaughter me if I don’t resurrect the WLAN tonight.

The 500 GB will do for now. It’s possible, though not super easy, to replace a Time Capsule drive. In a year or so I might swap in a 2TB drive.

Update: A few observations after installing the Time Capsule

• It doesn't include any USB or ethernet cables. Apple assumes you have these; I certainly did.
• There's no power brick, just a cord. The power adapter is internal. Nice.
• There's no WEP. It's WPA or nothing. Good.
• I created a guest network with no password. My old G3 10.4.11 iBook still asked for a password when I connected to guest. I clicked cancel on the WPA password dialog and it connected. So a bug somewhere!
• I have NAT on my DSL router and I ran NAT on my old AEBS. This device objected. I had to click the amber icon on the status link to stop warning me of the double NAT configuration. The TC wanted to go into Bridge mode, but then there's no public network share, etc. Odd. It seems fine in double NAT. There's a setting on my 2WIRE Qwest DSL router to allow all ports to pass (disable firewall) so if I discover issues with double NAT I can disable that. I can also put my DSL router in Bridge mode.
• There's only one USB port. So if you want to connect a printer and hard drive you need to use a powered USB hub (per the manual). I don't know if you could connect multiple USB printers or multiple drives. I'll play with that eventually.
• The 5GHz 802.11n only network is disabled by default. I enabled it. It's hidden away in Wireless Options. (See bugs below, however)
  
• If you connect a printer, you can share it over the Internet (WAN) including using Bonjour.
• If you connect an external USB disk, you can archive your Time Capsule data (all of it, I think) to the external disk. Then you can take it offsite. I've not seen this feature mentioned; seems like it should get more play.
• Windows File Sharing is configured under the Disk File Sharing menu. It asks for a Workgroup name and a WINS server. I don't have a WINS server, so I entered my workgroup name. When I tried to connect it declined my authentication request. This isn't covered in the manual and, as near as I can tell, is not documented anywhere! Weird. There are several alternative security options for the NAS drive. Since I haven't exposed it to the public net I enabled Guest access. On my PC when I was prompted for a user name I entered "Guest" and then left the password empty. That worked.
  
• In theory you can share disks over the Internet including with Bonjour access without a MobileMe account. I've not tested this.
• The 802.11n range is impressive. I'm typing this in the basement, two floors beneath my TC. The signal is excellent. I've disabled my old AirPort Express WDS, it now only an AirTunes client.
• The Time Capsule is fanless and very hot to the touch. Uncomfortably so. It lives in a cabinet with my cables, I think I'm going to move it to an area with more air circulation. The heat output might be a good reason to purchase an Airport Extreme rather than a Time Capsule -- heat is bad for gear.
  
• Note that if you use the Time Capsule disk as a file share, you have to figure out how to back it up. You can't use Time Machine!
• When you use Time Machine with a Time Capsule it creates a sparse disk image for each backup. So you can use the Time Capsule both for backup and and as a file share.

Update: I've found several issues - of course

• There's a bug affecting my iBook running 10.3.9 with an 802.11b network card. It connected fine to the AEBS using WPA but it can't connect, using the same password, to the Time Capsule. If I enable the Guest network with no password it can connect. The connection failure error message is cryptic: "There was an error joining the AirPort network ..."
  
• If you enable BOTH the 5GHz 802.11n network and the Guest network then an 802.11b client will see ONLY the Guest network. With this combination there's no 802.11b LAN connection.
• My AirPort Express had no trouble running AirTunes when paired to the saucer AEBS (802.11g) in WDS mode. It's now stuttering in conventional client mode.

Update: I somehow fixed the G3 iBook 802.11b 10.3.9 access problem.

I played around with various features. I was abruptly connected, but I'm not sure what happened.

• I turned off "use wide channels"
• I turned off 5GHz support
• I read this 2004 Airport 3.4 knowledge base article and followed the advice ...
  If you see the message after updating to AirPort 3.4, try these steps:
  1. Dismiss the message after it appears.
  2. Press and hold the Control key.
  3. While holding it, reselect the network from the AirPort menu.

The iBook console log had repeated error messages of the form "malloc[273]: error for object ... : Double free".

I see lots of complaints, but I can't find anyone else who's had success getting a machine this old to connect to Time Capsule. I'll update this post as I learn more. I did open an Apple Discussion thread on this problem.

Update 7/11/09:

• I reenabled the 5Ghz 802.11n support and my 802.11b 10.3.9 iBook is still connected - for the moment. So far my 5.8GHz phones still seem to work.
• After moving the 802.11n connection to 5GHz my 802.11g connected Airport Express AirTunes service stopped stuttering. (Try saying that quickly.)
• My iPhone seemed to have some trouble seeing the network prior to connecting, but then seemed fine after connection. That may be a separate iPhone 3 bug.

I've done some further research. It's surprisingly hard to learn this, but it turns out that adding 802.11n to the default 2.4GHz spectrum used by 802.11b/g is a bridge too far. I think the 802.11n was knocking out the 802.11g AirTunes connection.

When I moved the 802.11n to the 5GHz frequency the dropouts stopped.

AirPort Utility Advanced:Statistics:Logs and Statistics shows all devices and throughput. My current signal, after moving 802.11g to 5 GHz looks like (higher, meaning less negative, is better):

• iBook (16) 802.11b: - 71 (1 floor down)
• MacBook (21) 802.11n: -41 (next to AirPort)
• AirPort Express (61) 802.11g: -80 (downstairs and across the house)
• iPhone (47) 802.11g: -54 (next to AirPort) and -90 (next to AirPort Express)

Note that the MacBook (802.11n) has a much stronger signal than the iPhone at the same physical distance, and the AirPort Express (802.11g) also has a stronger signal at the same distance.

My impression is that the combination of 802.11n interference and the distance to the 802.11g AirPort Express was causing the AirTunes dropouts. The fix was to move the 802.11n signal to 5 GHz.

It's so sad that I bet Emily this would be easy to configure.

Update 7/13/09: Since migrating the 802.11n to 5GHz and disabling wide channels it's working pretty well. This morning I had another "There was an error joining the AirPort network" message from my 802.11b 10.3.9 iBook; I'd not configured it to auto-connect and I got this on a manual connect. I clicked 'retry' and it connected; it also worked when I restored the auto-connect feature. It's an odd behavior, I wouldn't rule out some distance/interference effect playing a role.

I did test Time Machine from my wired iMac and that worked well. As noted above when you use Time Machine with Time Capsule it creates a sparse bundle DMG for each client machine. So you can use a single Time Capsule disk as both a file server and a Time Machine store.

I'm going to use Time Capsule from my MacBook as well. I'm still using Retrospect as my primary backup with offsite rotation, but I like the idea of a secondary backup that relies on a completely different technology.

I've yet to see how Time Capsule manages multiple external USB drives connected through a powered USB hub and I've no plans to test the print server capabilities.

Update 7/20/09: Nasty Time Capsule issues with backups to changed logic board and with FileVault.

Update 12/15/09: Things have settled down. It had to be reset a month ago, but otherwise stable. I did read an extremely complex article on 5GHz configuration; hard core geeks will want to study it closely.

Recommended article on passwords

The author of this excellent article on password management uses 1Password -- as do I. He mentions some features I've yet to use ...

Remember your passwords | Business Center | Working Mac | Macworld

... I’m all in favor of regular backups, as well as MobileMe syncing, which can be configured to keep a copy of your keychains on Apple’s servers so you can sync them with your other Macs. However, even if you do either or both of these things, I recommend keeping another copy of your keychains or other password files in a secure location online.... If you do this, there’s a way to retrieve your passwords even if you’re away from home, if your computer is stolen, or if some other problem arises when you need them.

As long as you use the OS X keychain or 1Password files, your passwords are securely encrypted, so you can safely store them online without worrying that someone could get at them without your permission—as long as the password you used to secure your keychain is a good one! But there’s a catch: you can decrypt and view your passwords only on another Mac. If you think you might need to get at your passwords from a Windows PC, those files won’t do you much good.

.... Unfortunately, Keychain Access offers no option for exporting your passwords in any other format. However, 1Password lets you export your data as an encrypted Web page. ... To do this, open 1Password and choose File -> Export All -> Web Page....

Microsoft Bing – is this some kind of trick?

My IE 8 update somehow injected Bing into my life. I don’t use IE 8 all that much, so I left it there and I’ve been playing with it over the past 10 days or so.

Wow.

Bing really stinks. Their algorithms are tightly bound to large marketing-heavy commercial sites that are potential advertisers. Bing feels like a “pay-to-play” strategy. For my purposes these sites are rarely useful. Bing works pretty well for searching Microsoft’s material, but not significantly better than Google.

So is Bing the best Microsoft can manage, or is there some kind of deeper ploy at work?

I can’t figure out what the heck they’re trying to do here. Maybe Microsoft has Google stock options and they’re trying to boost Google’s share price?

PS. To change search providers click on the IE 8 drop down next to the magnifying glass link (top right) then choose “Find More Providers …” then scroll down a ways to find Google Search suggestions (if they could move it lower on the page they would …). I do give full credit to Microsoft for one thing. With a few clicks you can completely remove Bing from the IE Add-ons Search Providers list and you can make Google the default including search suggestion handling.

Waiting for an iPhone external keyboard

One of my big hopes for OS 3 is that it would support an external keyboard, like the one I had for my Palm III.

Didn't happen. Apple has yet to provide an API to support any kind of external kb.

Frustrating, but nothing to do. While we're waiting, however, we can appreciate a comment on the topic from a historic expert (from the new gdgt site, no less) ....

Apple iPhone 3GS: Connect APPLE iPhone 3GS to APPLE wireless keyboard! - gdgt

.... I co-founded the company that developed the folding keyboard for Palm, the Stowaway. The iPhone could certainly benefit from one, but it requires getting into territory that Apple hasn't opened up and likely won't. They need to decide to incorporate the software at a low enough level that will work with all apps...

The "won't" comment is a bit grim. I have to say though, that I share the fear that Apple will keep this door closed. My only hope is that the Pre uses some future external kb coolness to beat Apple over the head ...

Weird iPhone 3 omission: still can't delete all images

I thought it was odd last October that OS X iPhone users didn't have an obvious way to delete all images from the phone "roll".

It's no trick on XP -- just mount the phone and delete. On OS X you have to know the Image Capture trick (you can delete without importing).

Even with OS 3 there's no phone UI for deleting all images.

I can't recall seeing any image capture device, phone or camera, that didn't support this.

Bizarre.

A review of web based task managers

The best Web-based task managers. - By Chip Brantley is pretty good. He justly dings Toodledo for their awful aesthetics, but completely misses their data freedom features and iPhone integration. He ends up liking Gmail's new task manager; I'd like that one better if there were an API and the ability to sync to my iPhone.

Offline Browsers (web robot) – options to review

I’ve been working a way to create a local copy of a Sharepoint wiki. I haven’t solved the problem yet!

I’m working through a series of offline browsers, apps that we once called web robots. They claim to retrieve web pages and store them locally. I pulled this list from CNET view: Offline Browser by download, Vista support; I don’t use Vista but I wanted apps that were being actively supported (Vista is a good marker for that). Here’s the list:

• WebCopier (has iSaveWeb for iPhone, Mac, Windows versions, $30)
• SuperBot Offline Browser
• Offline Explorer Pro
• Website Extractor
• Website Ripper Copier
• QuadSucker/Web
• Teleport Pro (I’ve used this one for years – but I already know it won’t authenticate against an SP server)

I currently use SiteSucker on my Mac, but that doesn’t help with this problem.

So far I’ve been able to set WebCopier to authenticate against SP server (NTLM style authentication) but my first attempts to retrieve the wiki web pages and store them locally didn’t work very well.

I’ll update this list if I come up with anything that works. I think it’s useful as a list of offline browsers to consider for any purpose.

Looking for your Google Calendar Sync Log files?

This morning I discovered all information about the log files for Google Calendar Sync had been deleted from the net.

No, seriously. It’s all gone.

Weird.

But, if you’re reading this, you know that. You’ll only have gotten to this post if all your other searches have failed.

Anyway, if you’re having problems with Google Calendar Sync you’ll usually need to check the logs. They’re here on XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\[your account name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Calendar Sync\logs

In my case GCS has actually been behaving fairly well lately. The current bug is only a nuisance; if Outlook isn’t running GCS throws up an error message "could not obtain microsoft outlook version". It’s annoying, but harmless.

Note I only do one way sync – from Outlook/Exchange to Google Calendar. I consider two way sync to be an unreachable dream; Microsoft and Google calendaring are much too different. I sync from Outlook to gCal, and from gCal to my iPhone using Google’s exchange calendar services.

Retrospect 8 for PPC

I've been waiting for this. I'd like to move backup off my old XP box to my not-quite-so-old G5 iMac ...

MacInTouch

.... As promised in March, EMC released Retrospect 8.1.148, which brings PowerPC support to the latest version of the venerable Mac backup software. The release also offers increased performance, interface enhancements, and important bug fixes....

I'll give it a month or two to settle down.

How can I create a local copy of a Sharepoint wiki?

I asked this one on Microsoft TechNet (seems to have replaced their usenet groups):

How can I create a local copy of a Sharepoint wiki

I'd like to have a local copy of the wiki pages on my hard drive so it's available when I'm offline. The links and editor don't need to work, I just need to be able to feed it to Windows Search so I can find the wiki material.

I've tried a couple of offline browser products to see if I could havest the page, but so far the results have been mediocre. I also tried accessing the wiki list using Access 2007 to see if I could get at the files (documents) attached in the list. No luck.

I'm a SP administrator, but I have no server access.

Is there any way to get a local copy of the wiki?

I think the answer is “no”, unfortunately. For me this is the biggest drawback of Microsoft’s Wiki implementation. (Number 2, curiously, is the absence of a “paste as text” option. The rich text editor gets hopelessly confused by formatted text.)

Update 7/6/09: The Colligo suite of products provides offline access to a lot of SP content. Unfortunately, they’re just starting to look at support for the wiki content. Their application architecture is not ideal for this purpose however.

The Colligo application suite is designed to support offline editing and synchronization of SP content. That’s a very ambitious goal, and it’s easy to see why they need to use a proprietary database to store content and to hide the data from ‘backdoor’ manipulation in ‘…. Local Settings\Application Data\ColligoOfflineClient\Storage5…’.

Sadly, this doesn’t fit that well with Microsoft’s oddball Wiki implementation. I’d like to be able to view the Wiki pages in IE, to have local links become ‘relative links’ (so they work against the local store), and expose the data to Windows Search. None of that works with the proprietary store. (I don’t care about offline editing as much as having an offline store, so the main value of the Colligo architecture doesn’t apply to me.)

Lastly their HTML viewer is just a placeholder for future work, it’s keyhole view of the Wiki data. Of course they’ll improve this, but the other challenges are tougher.

There’s not a lot of alternatives however. I’d go for it if Colligo were to add an export feature that would create a static HTML view of the wiki data on demand.

Update 11/2/09: There's still no answer.

Dumb: iPhone OS 3 changes the screen lock while phoning behavior

I've verified this. It's a really dumb change Apple made with the OS 3 update:

Macintouch - iPhone/iPod Touch Platform: OS 3

... It took me some time to figure it out, but in my experience, OS 3.0 will use the top button to hang up when you use the iPhone as a handset. Prior OS versions let you lock the phone, and only hang up when you hit the scary red button.

The feature isn't without its inconsistencies. If you use the iPhone with a headset or as a speaker phone, it still behaves as prior versions, locking the phone rather than hanging up when the top button is pressed.

My opinion: it will take some getting used to, and may even be useful as a quick hang up when its a handset (i.e. when you're done with a call, just hit the top button to hang up while its next to your ear.) However, my opinion is that the mere inconsistency of this potentially unwanted and unexpected behavior is a serious minus. If you have a conference call or call-waiting, I don't know what to expect.

Unlabeled and obscure features were a thing other smartphones do with their plastic buttons, not the iPhone. It should be left to the clearly labeled red button. I expect it to revert to the old behavior with 3.0.1.

One of the few downsides of the iPhone as a phone is that it's incredibly easy to accidentally disconnect a call, especially when you're using an earset or the speakerphone. The red disconnect screen button is very sensitive.

So I was delighted when I learned the power-off button would blank the screen when I was on a phone call. I use it all the time.

Since I mostly use my earset I wasn't aware the behavior had changed. If you use an earset, it still works properly. Otherwise, it's a problem.

Bad Apple.

PS. Macintouch is a great place to learn about bugs and issues with OS 3 and with the 3GS. I can confirm my 3G's battery life has fallen sharply, but that might because I've enabled Push notification for Beejive. I haven't noticed the Wifi and network issues others report, but I usually connect to an Apple Airport.

Radical approach to fixing an iPhone sync problem

If you're really stuck with an iPhone sync problem, this Macintouch advice might be useful to have on hand ...

iPhone/iPod Touch Platform: iPhone 3G S

...Regarding my problem syncing my 3GS iPhones with my iMac G5 - I finally figured out the solution by doing all of these, in order:

1) Completely remove iTunes files: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1224
AND
2) Remove Apple Mobile Device Service files: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1747
BEFORE rebooting. Then:
3) Reboot
4) Empty Trash
5) Reset sync history: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1627
(ran the perl script in Terminal thus: /System/Library/Frameworks/SyncServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/resetsync.pl full )
6) Reboot again
7) Reinstall iTunes from the current download (v. 8.2 at this time)

Lots of wizardry here, including resetting the sync history.

Things for task and project management: fastest product evaluation ever

My evaluation of Things - task management on the Mac went like this:

1. Visit site: note price $50
2. Download trial and launch: 2 min
3. Look for (missing) import and export functionality: 2 min
4. Open empty help file: 1 min (might be OS X bug)
5. Delete app

Who would be crazy enough to put all their tasks and projects into a tool that had absolutely no data mobility options?