I'm Robert Marshall, director and senior consultant at SMSMarshall Ltd who's specialism is in the Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager product and all of its dependent products covering all aspects from Architecture, Implementation, Migration to Break-Fix.
I've been using computers for over 30 years, beginning as a programmer and now a senior consultant in an enterprise product. I only count my career as starting 17 years ago when I began my first serious role as a deployment engineer. I've seen 8 bit through to 64 bit, the rise and constant refinement of the GUI, the rise of the Internet from land-line based modem access to the powerful broadband connections we have today, mobile phones come into existence, and I've seen Microsoft evolve from a handful of employees to the company it is now while pretty much tinkering with every OS they have released; As well as seeing an industry that has evolved around those humble beginnings to become what we have today. You could call me an IT Dinosaur but I'm still as mentally able as I was back then, perhaps even more adept now since I've had broad exposure to so much and seen trends come and go. I'm a keen technical puzzle solver, which sets me apart as I love to solve gnarly problems around my area of specialism.
I like to share, i do so by blogging here, and helping out when I can as a moderator and answering questions when I have time on the TechNet Social forums for ConfigMgr 2012 and ConfigMgr 2007. I am a guest poster on TechNet UK Flash magazine and an MVP since 2009 (Most Valuable Professional) in the ECM (Enterprise Client Management) exclusively dedicated to ConfigMgr. the MVP status helps me to help others in more depth due to the closeness to the product group and access to other MVP's the program affords me.
The blogs pretty much about ConfigMgr, but on the odd occasion I also use it as a platform to express my random urges to post something I've stumbled across, be it technical or non-technical, and which I imagine would entertain you or what not as equally as it did me.
(2013)
I’ve been looking in to setting up a home pc security system.
I just need to monitor the car parked outside the house and the entrance hallway, the first to catch anyone damaging the vehicle, the other to spot burglars coming or going ... so i just need a couple of cameras and some home security software to manage them.
I found this, Zone Minder, free bit of software, runs on any Linux distro and is seriously feature packed, even more features than some of the commercial software out there.
http://www.zoneminder.com/documentation.html
I also found a few wifi cameras but wasn’t impressed by their price or spec really, but when you do find some good ones you just need to locate these wifi cameras near a power source and they can feed in to Zone Minder as a managed camera. Depending on whether the manufacturer has obeyed standards, Zone Minder can also “manage” custom features such as Tilt\Pan\zOOm ... motion detection is included in the software so this isn’t a camera-specific feature, also you can create zones for motion detection taking to stop false alarms, very clever. Auditting seems quite good, key thing for me though is ability to upload videos to an out of the house system in case the security PC gets stolen during a break-in!
What I’m looking for is a camera without bells and whistles, what does that mean? Read on ...
This wi-fi camera supports live viewing of video from anywhere in the world - it has a built-in CPU and web server. Movement can be recorded and saved to SD card, hard drive or a VCR. Supports infrared for night-time viewing.
What this really means is the manufacturer has a relationship with a company, or has this in-house (unlikely), so that you’re camera is pretty much just sitting on your network and using the router to contact the service to store pictures. You subscribe ($$$ or free) and to view your camera you visit an external URL, huh!!!! I’ve read a fair bit about these services and most reviews are very poor indeed, as are the comments regarding most wifi cameras quality to be honest unless you start looking at real commercial solutions.
If anyones interested in building out a prototype system with me, feel free to get in touch ... I want to bring whats available now with a view to being rugged, getting the job done, producing crisp\clear video output with no real fancy features, supports NAT and doesn’t want to hang off a DMZ or directly off the internet, and for less than £100 per device (I’d sacrifice here and go higher ....), all managed by this Zone Minder.
Simple search showing some of the cameras available:
http://www.google.co.uk/products?hl=en&q=wifi+security+cameras&safe=on&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=siFcTInVJYz24AaS5biFAg&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=title&resnum=3&ved=0CD4QrQQwAg
Looked at this:
http://www.alertme.com/
It doesnt seem to be about wireless Cliff but thx anyway