Resurrecting the Veo Observer

In my recent piece on RegHardware about home automation, I mentioned that one of the ways you can do some of this is via your own scripting, linking together different bits of kit that can be controlled via the web and even, in some cases, resurrecting devices that were originally designed to be Windows only.

One of those is the Veo Observer IP camera; I already had one webcam in the home, but wanted another to monitor a different room, and found the Observer tucked away in the corner of my office. The company that made it is long since gone, so there are no software updates, and the built in software relies on a plug-in for Internet Explorer to stream images. So, at first glance, it seems like something that isn’t going to be much use now that most of the computers I use at home are Macs or portable devices that don’t take kindly to being told to install an ActiveX control.

To the rescue

Thanks to some handy scripts, the Veo Observer rides again, and lets me see what's going on in my living room

Fortunately, I’m not the only person to have had this problem in the past, and Google is your friend in situations like this. There are a few pages around explaining how people have managed to work out the format of the images, and the controls that can be sent to the camera. Start at Kahunaburger for a brief overview, and sample Perl code, though it’s worth noting that there are more up to date versions of the scripts available, which offer more control over the camera.

In particular, visit Acacia Projects, where you’ll find download links to two important things – the Veo.pm perl module, and a cgi script, which can sit on your webserver. These seem to be the most up to date versions. I’ve put both in a folder on a hosted web server, and then in the cgi script (which I’ve named veo.pl) you need to edit a few lines at the top, with user name, host and password information – if you can find a Windows machine to run the Veo software – which can be downloaded here – then you can create extra user names and set their permissions.

Since the web server is outside my firewall, I have opened port 1600, which is the one used by the Veo Observer, allowing requests only from the web server to pass through to the camera, which has a fixed IP address on my home network. This means that the only way to access the images is via a page on that web server; you might prefer to do things differently, but it suits me.

The other thing you need to do is change a line in the cgi script that tells it where to return to when it’s finished executing; mine says:

my $URL= "call.php";

as call.php is the name of the page that I’m using to control the camera, though it could equally well be a plain HTML file, or whatever you fancy. Although the script says you don’t need to edit anything further, you may want to change the path in the &SendImage lines the display a ‘busy’ image – I found it most reliable to add a full path to my image.

Camera controls
A quick skim through the code for the script will reveal the various commands that can be implemented, which I’ve used to put together the control page shown here.

First, to get the image, I simply use this tag:

<img src="veo.pl?action=getimage" />

Obviously, if the script isn’t called veo.pl on your server, or it’s not in the same folder as the calling page, you’ll need to amend that accordingly.

The link to move up is simply

<a href="veo.pl?move=up">&uarr;</a>

and similarly there are move commands ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘fullleft’, ‘fullright’, ‘down’,'fulldown’, ‘fullup’ – though the ‘full’ versions of each one actually just seem to move a large chunk of the way, rather than to the furthest extreme on my camera.

Setting the light level to Daylight is done with a call

veo.pl?action=setlight&val1=0

and you can change the last value to 1 for Backlit, or 2 for Night.

Another useful command is setstatuslight, and which allows you to turn off the light on the front of the camera with

veo.pl?action=setstatuslight&val1=0

or use 1 to turn it back on. Similarly, image brightness can be set using setbrightness and values of 0, 1 or 2 for val1.

It’s not wonderfully slick, and the camera’s prone to hanging if it gets too many requests, but you can get moving images of a sort with frequent refreshes, and I’ve even set it up using the ‘getimage’ command as a generic IP camera in the software I run on my iPod touch. So, despite being ‘Active-X only’ in theory, in practise, thanks to the work of the people I’ve linked to here, you really can resurrect a Veo Observer and make it do useful things.

So long, Google Plus

I have a Google Plus page; like a lot of people, I don’t tend to go there that often, because I’ve not yet found anything compelling. And, thanks to the latest changes that Google has made, giving it a new look, I’m even less likely to go there in future.

Because Google has made it just too much hassle to log in to their site.

I have a couple of Google accounts; the one that I use most is the one for my AdSense account, but my GooglePlus page is actually a different account, with my Gmail address; I can’t remember exactly why that happened – I think at the time it was open only to Gmail addresses, or something like that. Anyway, AdSense is on my ‘real’ email address, and I seldom use Gmail anyway.

Until the recent change, this didn’t make much difference. I tend to be signed in to the AdSense account most, but when I go to Google Plus, there used to be, alongside the offer to create a G+ account with the account I’m signed in as, the option to switch to another account. I could click that on the dropdown, select the Gmail account, enter the password, and I’d be in.

Not any more. This screen is what I see when I try to go to Google Plus now, when I’m signed in to my AdSense account:

No sign out button; the new G+ start screen makes it just too much hassle for me to bother logging in

The only thing I’ve done to that screenshot is blur the email address; there are no links off the page that I’m hiding. In case it makes a difference – but G+ isn’t so crucial I’m going to change my browser to find out – I’m using Firefox on the Mac.

What’s missing? There’s not only no switch account option, but there’s also no sign out link. Google knows I’m signed in to an account that doesn’t have a G+ profile. It wants me to create one, and that’s the only option. The About Google+ link tells me how wonderful it is, and has more links to information about G+, and to Google’s main pages. But certainly within a couple of clicks, I can’t get to a page with a signout link.

So, what I have to do instead is go back to my bookmarks, or the address bar, and navigate back to AdSense, then click Sign out. And then come back to Google Plus, and type the Gmail address and password for the account that I used when I created my Google Plus page.

And, frankly, that just makes me think, “Why the hell should I bother?”

Zennox USB internet TV and radio player

My colleague Chris Bidmead mentioned this gadget on Twitter today. It’s advertised as a USB stick that gives you access to thousands of internet radio and TV stations – just plug it in to your computer and you’ll be able to listen to or watch loads of stuff, absolutely free.

All for the amazing price of just £29.99 – saving you £50 over the RRP. Yes, really – this is, apparently, something that’s worth £80 normally. So it’s a real bargain, clearly. And lots of people might buy it on that basis, and think that they really do need something like this to access internet TV and radio.

It’s not worth it!

The Zennox branded device is being sold by the reader offers sections of, at least, the Daily Mirror, the Star, the Guardian, The Scotsman, Daily Express and the Daily Telegraph. In each case it’s described as an “ingenious USB stick” and I’d suggest that the true ingenuity lies in persuading people that they actually need to spend £30 on something like this to access internet TV and radio.

They don’t. The product is, in each case, supplied by a company called Clifford James, who seem to have written the original copy that’s used by all the newspaper offers. Head over to their site, and you can download the manual or follow a link to a video.

What’s clear from that is that this is not a particularly ingenious USB stick. It’s just an ordinary USB stick which contains internet radio software, that doesn’t need to be installed on your hard drive to run.

I’m a little unclear how exactly this is worth £30 of anyone’s money, let alone the claimed £80 that’s used to justify the massive saving. Even as an ordinary consumer, you can buy a 2GB USB stick for just over £3 – and in large quantities, they’ll be much less than that, even with a fancy ‘Zennox’ logo printed on them. And, frankly, I would be surprised if the one that carries this software is even as big as 2GB.

What about the software? Won’t that cost a lot? Well, true, there is internet radio software out there that costs money – I even found one package that cost about $30. But the video and the manual for this don’t show anything terribly special, and if you head over to PortableApps.com you’ll find quite a few internet radio player apps that don’t need installation on your PC, and cost precisely nothing.

In fact, you could grab yourself a copy of iTunes, and use the radio functionality built into that, completely free, or visit WindowsMedia.com for Microsoft’s directory of online stations, or perhaps visit Shoutcast.com instead, for another directory.

What you most emphatically do not need to do is to spend £30 on a USB key, while fooling yourself that you’ve really saved £50 and got a bargain. You don’t need a USB key to listen to internet radio, whether it’s from Zennox or the similarly oddly described Manhattan equivalent – you just need an internet connection and some free software; many people will already have software on their computers that provides access to lots of internet radio.

Ultimately, products like this are misleading. The less knowledgeable believe that they need something special to receive internet radio; selling them a USB key with software on it is cheeky and unnecessary. When you don’t make it clear that all you’re getting is a program, dressing it up with terms like “ingenious USB key,” that comes pretty close to disreputable, in my opinion. And it’s certainly not the sort of reader offer I expect to see in newspapers that readers might turn to for information and opinions on gadgets.

(Updated to add Telegraph and Express reader offers too)

WTF … should I pay to download BBC programmes?

The outgoing Director General of the BBC recently announced plans for something called Project Barcelona, essentially a download store for material from the BBC archives.

At the moment, you can watch most BBC programmes for seven days after broadcast, free of charge via iPlayer. In a few cases, a whole series may be available for a little longer. But after that initial catch-up window, it disappears. If you want a copy after that, you’ll have to wait until the DVD comes out, or buy a digital download from a store like Apple’s iTunes store.

Besides iTunes, there are a few other stores that have BBC content, but between them what’s on offer still adds up to a tiny fraction of all the material that the BBC has in its archives. There’s a wealth of material that people remember fondly, which has never found its way to video or DVD, let alone download stores.

Project Barcelona will, hopefully, make much more of this available. If you’ve ever been to Cadbury World in Bourneville you’ll see what this means – there are more types of chocolate available than you can shake a stick at. A huge range of things, many that you struggle to find in other stores, because perhaps they don’t sell in large enough quantities.

Of course, a digital store, supposedly, doesn’t care about that. You can have the ‘long tail’ items – those that don’t sell many, but add up over a long time, and it’s still worth supplying them. But even so, I suspect that, if the BBC offers a shop of their own, it’s likely to be much more comprehensive than those on offer elsewhere. And with their knowledge of the programmes, they can probably provide much more interesting ways to navigate the content than you find on, say, iTunes.

But why bother?

Over on the Which Conversation blog, they’ve asked the question “would you pay to download BBC programmes?” and a surprising number of people have selected “No” as their answer. Or perhaps it’s not so surprising – we all like to get something for nothing. In part this post is an expansion of the comment I added there, so apologies if I’m rehashing old ground.

We’ve all (or most of us, at any rate) paid for the BBC, right? So why the hell should we pay to download programmes. They’re ours, aren’t they? We own the BBC, we pay for it, so we own the things it makes. If you have a TV licence, then you should get a code that validates you to play any content you like, whenever you like.

On the face of it, that’s a pretty appealing argument to some people; it appears clear and simple to understand, and thanks to some of the bizarre actions of BBC management over the years, it’s no surprise that there are people who are so thoroughly exasperated with the Corporation they’d love to get back some of the money they’ve put in.

Rights and wrongs

There are, I’m sure, some who’ll be reading this who take the attitude that copyright shouldn’t exist, and it’s wrong for people to be paid over and over again for some of their work. That’s not an argument that I’m going to get into, beyond saying that copyright is a fact; wishing it weren’t won’t make it any less so. You may not approve of it, but that doesn’t actually mean you have an inalienable right to ignore it.

Of course, many people are technically breaching copyright already – when you record from broadcast TV in the UK, you’re allowed to do so for the purposed of time-shifting. What you are explicitly not meant to do is to put recordings in an archive for repeated viewing. So, while a modern Freeview PVR makes it easy to record a whole series, if you were to burn that to DVD, or store it on a media server, so you can watch it whenever you want, technically, you’re breaching copyright. (The details, from the Intellectual Property Office, are here).

It’s most unlikely that you’d actually be prosecuted for doing so, of course, because it’s virtually impossible to detect. But that’s the legal situation.

This sets an interesting challenge for anything that’s broadcast now – with ever larger hard drives, and little chance of being caught, why should someone bother to pay for content that’s been recently broadcast, when they could record it from Freeview or Freesat, and watch it whenever they like? Certainly, a high price will put many people off, for recently broadcast material at least.

Don’t we own it anyway?

What of this argument that we own material anyway, so we should be able to download it free? Especially since we can grab it free when it’s broadcast?

Well, the fact is that, though you may pay your licence fee, and that does indeed fund the BBC, you don’t own the material. We may, in theory, own the BBC collectively – but just as we could be said to have owned British Telecom collectively, that certainly didn’t stop the government selling it to some of us all over again. Nor does owning shares in BT mean you can just borrow one of their vans when you fancy.

The ownership of creative work is very seldom absolute – there are lots of people involved, including writers, directors, actors and more. All of them will have contracts, and in many cases, those contracts will long predate the internet, and the idea of downloading material. In some, they’ll even predate the idea of home video sales.

And often, when those contracts were drawn up, there was a concept of “residuals” or fees which are paid when something is broadcast, each time. Some people, I know, object to this as a matter of principle, and while it’s true that some stars may make a lot of money, just as not all authors make as much as JK Rowling, so many people in creative industries are poorly paid, and residual fees are a vital part of making up for poor up-front payments.

In some cases, too – and increasingly now – the BBC may not even own all the rights to the programmes that they’ve broadcast. As governments have sought to ‘open up’ the broadcasting market, independent producers have been used increasingly, with certain quotas specified. So, programmes that you may think are indelibly linked with the BBC, like Spooks, are not actually made by them. They are made on their behalf, by production companies – and those companies also own some of the rights. That’s one reason why things aren’t always available on iPlayer. And these reasons are why we don’t really own the content ourselves, no matter how many years we’ve paid the licence fee.

So, even when the BBC does provide downloads of material from the archives, it’s not free of cost. There may be a whole raft of different fees that have to be paid to people, and time spent negotiating those fees in the case of programmes made so long ago that none of this had ever been thought of.

Why not ignore it? Well, you can’t just do that, as print publishers found when they first started to put writers’ words on the internet, without offering any additional compensation. Just because a contract doesn’t mention the internet, you can’t pretend you have the necessary rights without paying.

You might want the BBC to ignore all this, but that’s not really going to happen. “Stand up to the studios” will be the cry of some anti-copyright campaigners. But it’s not just the studios, it’s ordinary working people, like actors and writers, who have contracts that entitle them to be paid. And if the BBC were to unilaterally say “You know, we’re not going to honour these contracts any more” it would seriously damage their reputation. Would you feel happy working for your boss if you were suddenly told that all the benefits you’d been promised had been withdrawn, without compensation? Whether you’re in the creative field or not, I doubt many people would like that.

Format shifting and infrastructure

There’s something else to remember too. While a lot of the programmes in the BBC archive have already been converted into formats suitable for online delivery, so that stores like iTunes can sell them, many more have not. Some will be in other digital formats, while others may still be on analogue media that has to be digitised.

That takes time – in the case of some older material, it will also require many hours of restoration, as has been done with some Dr Who recordings.

Then there’s the delivery infrastructure; if Project Barcelona takes off, it will require a huge infrastructure of servers, and bandwidth to deliver material, all of which has to be paid for somehow.

Put simply, digitising and converting content, and distributing it on the internet, is not without cost – even if the problem of residual fees and rights can somehow be avoided.

Who’s paying?

If you really want BBC content to be available for download free, “because I’ve paid the licence fee”, then I’d argue that what you’re actually arguing for is this:

that the BBC ignore any rights people may have in that content, and tell people they won’t be paid; that they fund the conversion of material to appropriate formats out of their current licence fee income; that they provide the download infrastructure out of their current income

And that, ultimately, means that there will be less money to spend on making new programmes. People complain enough about repeats as it is – besides, of course, complaints about star salaries. Do you really want to force more cost cutting, so that you can download programmes free, and in the process urge the BBC to ignore its contractual obligations?

I hope that, when it comes to thinking of it like that, most people will realise that, no matter how much we all like to get something free, it’s not really a practical proposition for the BBC to give free access to the archives – certainly not if we want them to continue to be able to attract creative people to work for them, and to have money for the new material that results.

Heatmiser WiFi thermostat range

I don’t normally keep people so up to date, but the HeatMiser WiFi thermostat that I reviewed for RegHardware seems to have attracted quite a few questions.

Today they’ve put them on their website for pre-order, and there are three versions. The PRS-TS version that I reviewed has the combined timer and thermostat. There’s also a thermostat only model, the DT-TS, if you have a timeswitch already, and the PRTHW-TS, which is the same as the one I reviewed, but with the addition of another output to control a hot water cylinder.

All are available either on their own for £154.99, or with the RF receiver for £199. And there’s good news for Android users too – there should be an app available on the 16th.

FreeviewHD’s leap year problem – check your timers!

There’s something funny going on with Freeview HD – at least from the Crystal Palace transmitter. I updated my DigitalStream recorder earlier today and in common with other users noticed the time was shown in the EPG as Saturday 3rd March.

So, I did a full factory reset, and still had that problem – and consequently my recording of Masterchef for this evening dropped, in favour of next week’s.

A little more digging, and it appears that it’s just the date on the HD multiplex that is incorrect. Tune to, say, BBC One, and go to the EPG on your box, and you’ll see the date appear on screen, 29th Feb. Now go to BBC One HD, wait a few seconds, and go into the EPG, and the date is shown as Saturday 3rd March. Similarly, the date on ITV 1 is ok, but go to the HD channel, and its back again, and the common factor is that when it’s wrong, you’re tuned to the HD mux.

Top right, the SD mux is transmitting the correct date

It’s not just a Digital Stream issue, either. I’ve dug out some of the FreeviewHD kit that I’ve tested, and reproduced this on each on – a IceCrypt, SagemCom, and Bush units (aka the Vestel T8300). Admittedly, most of these are running on their original firmware as they’ve been in the cupboard since I tested them, but even so, this does seem to indicate a problem.

If you’re using a different transmitter, please let me know if you see the same issue – remember to wait a little while after changing to an HD mux for the box to pick up the time signal.

And, if you have recording set, especially for HD channels, check carefully to make sure they happen, or consider swapping them to the SD alternative, and not tuning your box to an HD channel until the time signal is corrected.

The HD mux thinks it's Saturday, 3rd March

Updated: 1355. It looks like this is now resolved, and the time is displaying correctly, even when I’m on the HD mux once more, certainly on the Digital Stream. However, if you had timers set for days between today and Saturday, I’d advise checking them to make sure they are still there and haven’t been removed as past events.

Installing the iPlayer update on the DigitalStream FreeviewHD recorder

As I mentioned a little while ago, the Digital Stream Freeview HD recorders are being updated to enable iPlayer, via the Red button on BBC channels. The firmware update has been released today, and you’ll find it available for download from their support site at MIT London.

There are two versions, depending on whether or not you want a Dolby Digital output from the box, so do make sure you download the right one – 4.14r8683 for Dolby Digital, and 4.14r8684 for the PCM audio output.

Download the appropriate file, which is a ZIP. Unpack it and you’ll have a folder containing eight items; copy these to a USB memory stick; mine is formatted as FAT-16 and works fine with the Digital Stream. Turn on the recorder, then pull down the flap on the right hand side of the front panel, and plug in your USB stick.

Press the Menu key on the remote, select ‘Others’ and on the next screen, scroll down to Maintenance, press OK, and select Software Update, and press OK again, then enter your PIN.

Next, a pop-up will ask if you want Over Air Download or USB; choose USB and press OK. The display may briefly return to the menu and then show a message that things are being updated; don’t turn off your box during this process. Wait for it to restart on its own, which may take a few minutes.

Eventually the box will restart; when the TV picture appears, you’ll see a message explaining how to remove the USB memory. First, though, select Others from the main menu, press OK on Diagnostics, then select System Information and press OK again. About half way down the screen, the Application version should reflect the update you’ve just installed – 4.14r8683 for Dolby Digital or r8684 for PCM.

You’ll also see your net connection details below that; if all the numbers say 0.0.0.0, make sure you have the box connected to your home network. From the ‘Others’ menu, select Peripheral Devices, then Network. For most home networks, ensure that the option at the top of the screen says DHCP, then select Apply; you may need to turn off and on again after changing this setting.

When the connection’s up and running, you’ll be able to get BBC iPlayer by pressing the red button on a BBC channel, like BBC One – but not until the 2nd of March.

Update: I gather the service will now not be live on the DigitalStream boxes until 6th March, rather than the 2nd

Incidentally, I updated without any problems, and my scheduled recordings weren’t affected, but it’s probably worth checking just in case; you can also save settings using the Backup/Restore DB option under ‘Others’ / ‘Maintenance’, which will store your channel and schedule information to the USB stick.

When you’re sure you’ve finished, go to the Media list, press Func+ and choose ‘Remove USB’ from the bottom of the menu before removing the USB stick from the front panel.