Seoulscapade

First, many will advise to forget all about adding a wireless router to a wired router and simply buy a wireless router to handle all of your networking needs. They’ll say don’t complicate things with two routers. They mention that speed might be an issue (yeah, perhaps in nano seconds).

Well, each to his own. I added a wireless router because that’s what I wanted to do. These are basic instructions, which I didn’t follow quite to the letter. But I’ll include them here first before explaining my variation on the same method.

• Power up the wireless router, but do not connect it to your network, although this is not critical.

• Attach one computer using a category 5 network cable to one of the wireless router’s LAN ports. Just have this computer configured to automatically receive an IP address from the wireless router’s DHCP server.

• Access the wireless router’s configuration settings via its IP address in a browser. The IP address should be in the manual. It’ll be something like 192.168.10.1 or 192.168.1.1. The address in my case was the wireless router’s LAN address.

• Once that is done, it is time to make changes to turn the wireless router into a wireless access point. The WAN configuration in the wireless router can be empty, but don’t worry if it doesn’t let you empty it. The WAN part of the wireless router won’t be used anyway.

• Now set the LAN IP address of the wireless router so that it is compatible with your wired network. For example, if your current wired router has an address of 192.168.1.1, then give the wireless router an address of 192.168.1.2 or similar, as long as it follows the 192.168.1.x format and is not the same as the wired router.

• Fill in your chosen wireless network name or SSID (for security purposes, it’s better not to leave the default) and uncheck the DHCP setting on the wireless router. The only DHCP server on your network should be the one on the wired router. The gateway address you want to use is that of the wired router, not the wireless router.

• Set up your wireless security settings, such as configuring a WEP password or key. Search the Web for more info if you’re not sure what security settings you want to use. Here’s one site and here is another.

• Now your wireless router is basically a wireless access point. The only step left is to connect it to your wired router. You do this by connecting a Category 5 cable between the LAN port of the wired router and a LAN port of your new wireless router or access point. Do not connect it to the WAN port of the wireless access point.

Depending on your wireless router manufacturer, you may need to use a crossover cable instead but more than likely you’ll be OK.

OK, what I did was have the wireless router connected to my wired router the whole time. I actually had a cable leading from the wireless router’s WAN port to a LAN port on the wired router. A wireless network was already enabled and I could access the Internet. What I could not access was any of the machines on the wired network. So, I had the wireless router connected to a PC in wireless mode, and the PC was configured with a static IP.

Where this creates problems is that once you update the wireless router’s configurations in your browser, you find that you’ve suddenly lost access to the configuration pages because your machine’s configurations no longer match the wireless network’s ones. You have to then go in and change them.

Make sure you don’t forget what you entered in the wireless router’s configurations, or you will probably have to hit the reset button on the router.

But where this may be of benefit is that you can get things working, step by step, solving the setup of each configuration before moving on. I did not really know how to set things up. However, though this method I actually learned more, and with each step if I had a problem, I only had one issue to deal with before moving on, not several possible issues. At least, that’s how I saw it as a first timer at it.

After I’d changed the LAN address, I did switch the cable to one of the wireless router’s LAN ports. I got that working with a new address, then created the network, saved the settings. Went to my PC and updated the settings in the wireless properties there. Then refreshed the browser to get everything the configuration pages back again. Provided everything was done right.

A couple of things that turned out to be important was to ensure the gateway address is the wired router’s, not the wireless router’s. In fact, the wireless LAN address is irrelevant except for accessing configuration settings, and the WAN address totally irrelevant. You won’t need these for your PC’s wireless config.

Also, make sure you have the right DNS addresses of your service provider in your PC’s wireless properties and in the wireless router’s configuration settings, where they will probably appear by default anyway.

As a last note, I had links setup on my main desktop to access other computers on my wired network. I found that these still worked even though the other computers were put onto wireless, when I ensured that those computers had the same static network IPs they had before. A warning message appears in Windows, when you do this, but just ignore it.

Once it was all said and done, I look back on it as quite easy. Everything just worked. Now, for the first time, I can surf the net or make a call on Skype with my laptop from anywhere in the apartment. Wow, I feel so modern. I’ve finally caught up.

One of the better webcam models I use.

It amazes me that the support for webcams is still patchy for Mac and Linux. I guess Mac has iSight, but what about people who don’t want to pay for that. With Linux there is often way too much fiddling around involved–this works, that doesn’t work, maybe the other works, if you do this and tweak that, and so it goes on.

I wanted to run 4 webcams of various models and to do it effortlessly, so I would not have to be continually be configuring files all over again after every reboot. I tried doing everything on the Linux box, using the Motion program. The program is great and does a good job of running multiple cameras, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it assign a video port to a specific camera and stick to that. I had to reconfigure the file names and details in each thread file with every restart because they were being assigned to the wrong cameras.

Other problems I had were that some cameras were giving me flaky performances. I had two Logitechs but you can’t run two at once on the same PC, no matter which OS you are using. That meant one was out. I incorporated my old Mac iBook, but some cameras wouldn’t even work on it, and that little iBook seemed to be generating too much heat with only two cams.

I needed a one fix for all solution.

What I did in the end, to end all of the time wasting, was resort to Windows. There, I’ve confessed it. It was just a matter of convenience. I set up an old PIII with Windows XP as a devoted webcam machine. Its job was to do nothing else but run 4 webcams. I found out that it kind of struggles just doing that.

How was it done? Well, the PIII only had two USB ports, so the first thing I tried was a USB 4 port hub to give me 5 ports; however, the most webcams I could get running at any one time was 3. I tried every combination I could with the computer’s 2 USB ports and the 4 port hub. Some hardware geek might be able to explain why it wouldn’t work. I didn’t know, so I contemplated another solution.

Then, when out shopping for some computer parts, I spotted a 4 port PCI card and immediately thought that this would do the trick. It was so cheap, and what a buy it turned out to be! As soon as I got home I plugged it in and it did everything I’d hoped for. Now I have all 4 webcams plugged into that card and the other 2 standard USB ports are taken up with the mouse and keyboard.

It wasn’t all straight forward to get everything working, however. To get the webcams recognized when plugged into the PCI card’s ports, drivers seemed to need reinstalling over and over again. (The same thing had happened with the hub each time I switched a webcam to another port.) This became a bit fiddly with multiple reboots and plugging and unplugging things. It took a while but things were sorted out in the end.

The other crucial part of all of this, of course, is the software involved. I narrowed it down to 3 open source programs: Fwink, Yawcam and Dorgem. They’re all good, but Yawcam’s interface and options drew me to that one.

The question was would it run multiple instances? A search of the web couldn’t reveal any conclusive information. Some people said it may have to be installed twice. So, once I could ensure the cameras and hardware weren’t misbehaving, I experimented and found that you simply just run Yawcam again and again and edit the settings each time, as you would expect.

(Spot the rabbit . . .)

Yawcam wasn’t designed for that, but it does handle it. The only problem is that when you reboot or close Yawcam down and start up again, you have to edit the individual settings again for each webcam. It will only remember one set of settings, which is a pain.

I guess, in way, I’ve still got one of the problems I started out with, having to reconfigure config settings. But the difference now is that with a devoted server, I rarely have to reboot it, even if it is running Windows!

Finally, two issues I haven’t been able to resolve are 1) Firefox’s image caching and 2) a clash between the webpage’s image refresh and the software’s image update, or when no image is available to load. Those aren’t too serious, though. The former wouldn’t matter to most people because they wouldn’t have their browser open at my site all day, as I do. The latter would probably be solved by a faster cam server.

For the code to display the images, just view the source on one of the webcam pages on the Ubantu Home site. It’s pretty straightforward to follow. Other ways to do the same thing exist, but the code I’m using is the first I tried that worked, and I see no point in changing it just yet.

There may come a time when you absolutely cannot delete files from the .Trash folder Linux places on your USB. You try in Windows and they disappear, but when you refresh the folder, they are back again. You try in Linux but you simply get read only errors. No matter what you do you cannot delete those damn files. And if you have a look at what the hell is holding up the works, you may very well see something like this:

(Click for a larger image)

No, this is not a new file naming convention I have adopted. They just end up that way. The solution? It’s time to reformat your USB, as FAT, of course.

This one of my old PIII servers, which I still have for backup and for my webcams, but that is definitely not my monitor, so no abuse please.

I had two Pentium IIIs. But I had to get rid of the clutter with the arrival of my new Dell Optiplex 745 and UltraSharp wide screen. I sold them to one of these guys in open back trucks who cruise around apartment complexes in Seoul, advertising that they’d buy old computers. We contacted one of them and he came over. The monitor you see in the picture went for around $3! The PIII not picture went for $2. I made the grand sum of $5 on the deal. It was a bit of a shock to discover how little they were worth on the market. And what does the guy do with them? He sends them to the Philippines.

I ordered my Dell Optiplex through Dell Korea and was very satisfied with the service. I did it over the phone to an English speaking Korean, rather then online, because there were a few things I wanted to have clarified. The machine was built quicker than expected, and I was kept up to date every step of the way. Moments after the machine was delivered to the guard at our apartment building, my wife received a phone call about it, and around the same time, I received an email from Dell.

Within a few days, I’d converted my Dell to a dual boot system by partitioning the disk and allotting half of it to Ubuntu Linux—the 64bit version with the 2.6.20-8-generic kernel. I then set about configuring it to work as a server.

OPTIPLEX 745

Processor – Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor E6600 (2.40GHz, 4M, 1066MHz FSB)

Chipset – Intel® Q965 Express with ICH8

Operating System - Ubuntu Linux 64bit 2.6.20-6-generic; Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional SP2,

Video - 256MB ATI Radeon X1300PRO, Dual Monitor DVI or VGA (TV-out), FHA)

Memory - 2GB DDR2 Non-ECC SDRAM,800MHz, (2 DIMM)

Networking - Integrated Broadcom 5754 Gigabit Ethernet LAN solution 10/100/1000 Ethernet Remote

Standard I/O Ports - 9 USB 2.0 (2 front, 6 rear, 1 internal), Line-in, 1 Microphone-in, 1 Speaker/Line-out, 1 Headphone (front)

Hard Drive SATA 3.0 Gb/s HDD: 160GB

Chassis - Minitower:
16.2 x 7.3 x 17

Flat Panel Display - UltraSharp 20” 2007FPW TFT Flat Panel

Keyboard - Dell USB Entry QuietKey Keyboard, Dell USB Enhanced Multimedia, Keyboard, Dell

Speakers - Dell AS501PA Flat Panel Speakers (Sound Bar)

Removable Media Storage Devices - – USB Floppy Drive, CD-RW/DVD Combo

Click for a larger view

The hard disk is bottom left, sitting in a very easy slide-in-and-out slot. The large black object in the middle is the fan, which hums along very quietly. I’ve been really please at how quiet the Dell is regardless of the strain it is put under. Quite a contrast to my old Pentium IIIs.