Vivotek PT7137 network camera connection problems
I use the Vivotek PT7137 network camera connected through wifi/wlan to my network. Even though it is located only 7 meters from my accesspoint (with a couple of walls in between) the camera lost connection once in a while. And it wouldn’t reconnect unless I rebooted the camera. Upgrading to the latest firmware (v2.6 2009-04-14) didn’t improve either.
At the time my accesspoint was a DLINK DI-624+ broadband router and before I had time to dig into the problem any further, the DLINK passed away permanently and I got myself a Linksys WRT54GL which I pimped with Tomato. Now I had much better control over the wireless environment. I could boost the output on my Linksys to 80 mW (from the original 42) and the wireless survey helped me select a good channel with as little interference with my neighbours as possible. This helped a bit – the loss of connection occured more seldom. But they did still occur.
Finally I bought a small external antenna for the Vivotek in my local computer store. It has a 5 dB gain and a magnetic mount so I could move it around without moving the camera. This finally solved my problems and my camera haven’t lost it’s connection in months.
I still haven’t found the reason to the loss of connection. 7 meters should be no problem in a wifi/wlan environment. All other gadgets I connect through the same wireless network works without any problems. Possibly my Vivoteks wireless is broken or something in Vivoteks implementation makes it really sensetive to interference? I don’t know and honestly, I will not spend more time on it unless it causes me a problem again.
Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III AF-2840 in Windows Vista
So, did you also try to get this negitive/slide scanner to work in Windows Vista? No success? Thought so. Unfortunately I have found that Minolta scanners seems to have kind of a short life cycle in the eyes of the manufacturer. Like many other computer accessories that are not professional grade, drivers are availible for the current operating systems but when new arrives there just isn’t being any drivers developed. For this scanner I believe it was Windows 2000 and possibly Windows XP it had drivers for. But the arrival of Windows Vista was the death for this otherwise perfectly good scanner.
Like cameras, a good scanner do have a longer life cycle than normal computer accessories, which means that updated drivers are needed. Hopefully manufacturers will pick that up. Even though this scanner is not a professional grade scanner it has good performance and when sold it was not cheap, more in the price class of a good camera. I think as a consumer you should expect a bit longer life than that. Enough complaining.
Pimp my router! Linksys WRT54GL on steroids… or at least on Tomato
I while ago I got my hands on a Linksys WRT54GL broadband router. This little fellow runs on Linux. Nice, I thought. After fiddling around with it for a while I found that the firmware had bugs.
I added timed access restrictions (to cut off my teenagers Internet access automatically in the evening). This worked fine until I added another rule that had nothing to do with the first and suddenly my teenagers had Internet access all night long. I also want an incoming VPN connection (PPTP) that I forward by using port forward. This worked fine for a week and of course, it stopped working when I was abroad and needed it the most. Apart from that, there is no telnet or ssh login to the router (it is running on Linux you know).
Linksys WRT54GL and inbound VPN (PPTP) forwarding
Before you read this entire post – this was posted after I just installed the router and configured it for VPN (PPTP) pass through. A week or so later, when I was abroad and needed my VPN the most (of course), it had stopped working. To make a long story short – my router is now running the Tomato firmware. So unless you like banging your head in a buggy firmware from Linksys, read my post about installing Tomato instead.
Scenario: You are using a Linksys WRT54GL broadband router to connect your LAN to the Internet. On your Internal LAN you have a computer that can handle inbound VPN connections (PPTP). This can be a Windows XP or Windows Server of some kind.
To make this work you must configure your broadband router to forward the inbound VPN (PPTP) connections to your PC. This is normally simple but some people (including me) ran into some problems trying to do this on a Linksys WRT54GL router.
Calibrate Vivotek PT7137 from URL
The Vivotek PT7137 is a pan-tilt network camera from Vivotek.
After panning and tilting for some time, especially after hitting the boundaries a couple of times, the camera is in need of calibration. You can see this if you have some predefined postition and selecting it doesn’t bring the camera centered to the selected position.
Calibrating the camera can easily be performed by logging in as the administrative account (root) and selecting the Maintenance in the menu. The Calibrate button will immediately calibrate the camera.
However, in some cases you would like to calibrate the camera directly by entering a URL or by using a script.
Siemens Gigaset WLAN camera vulnerability
The Siemens Gigaset WLAN camera is vulnerable for unauthorized users to gain access through telnet and ftp by logging in as the user root. The user can log in without any password. When logged in, it is possible to view the cameras configuration file where the administrator password is stored in clear text.
The vulnerability is verified to exist in firmware version 1.27 but might be present in other versions too. At present time there are no updates available from Siemens later than version 1.27.
It is therefore a recommendation to maintain the Siemens Gigaset WLAN camera only on a private network or behind a firewall and to use an administrator password that is not used anywhere else.
See also the Siemens web page for Gigaset WLAN camera.
Ubuntu eee: Asus EeePC 900/901 WLAN against DLINK DI-624+ router problem
When using Ubuntu eee 8.04 (‘Easy Peasy‘) on an ASUS Eee PC 900/901 and you try to connect to a DLINK DI-624+ wireless broadband router with WEP security enabled, the network manager in Ubuntu eee keeps displaying a dialog asking for the WEP pass phrase, even though is entered correctly.
The problem is the “Super G mode” in the DLINK DI-624+. Just disable it and the EeePC will be able to connect.