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For set­ting up a low cost home sur­veil­lance sys­tem, noth­ing beats the Pana­sonic Net­cam BL-C131A. I keep the cam­era on the win­dow sill, but had to prop it up on top of a book so that the focus was on what’s out­side and not the win­dow sill itself!

I tried a mini tri­pod, sure it solved the height prob­lem, but some­how didn’t feel sta­ble espe­cially when I pull up the blinds and the cam­era fell a few times. Luck­ily, no damage.

After some search I found this per­fect tool! The cam­era can be attached to any tri­pod and this one comes with a clamp so I could secure it to the win­dow sill. No wob­bling and I don’t have to worry about the cam­era falling off each time I pull up my blinds.

Seri­ously a good buy!

Snow Leop­ard doesn’t include dri­vers for the MF4370dn printer. Nor would it carry over the dri­ver from Leop­ard upgrade. To get the printer work­ing again, goto this site (more…)

Fly­ing car — sorry. Jet­pack — nope. Per­sonal Robot — check!  And it’s called the Roomba!  Seri­ously this is the clos­est you could get to an afford­able per­sonal robot today that actu­ally does some­thing useful.

I recently pur­chased the Roomba 535. Being my first Roomba, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  When the Roomba actu­ally arrived I was even more skep­ti­cal.  This thing looked puny com­pared to con­ven­tional vac­uum cleaners.

I charged it, and set it loose.  I was pleas­antly sur­prised!  This is an amaz­ing device!  Not just from a vac­u­um­ing per­spec­tive, but from a geek’s per­spec­tive as well.  I’ve built robots myself and could relate to how it worked inter­nally and it was absolutely fascinating!

Here’s a review as a first time owner and an electronics/software enthusiast.

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This is the coolest part of own­ing a BL-C131A!  You could be in the other end of the world and yet get a live stream from your net cam!  You can even pan and tilt the cam­era remotely!  You can even do this with a Black­berry or an iPhone (or any phone that sup­ports html).

I ini­tially resisted writ­ing a howto for this, but look­ing at the num­ber of queries, one might be in order!  I have to admit, the doc­u­men­ta­tion from Pana­sonic is extremely con­fus­ing!  If you are not a net­work guy, you could get con­fused.  Ip4, Ip6, UPnP..!

So let’s get started!  I’m assum­ing at this point you already have the cam­era setup and work­ing from your local area net­work (home). If not, check out my pre­vi­ous post. (more…)