[Dave Rice]

It’ll be in the street and could be several streets away. They might even be going to the exchange or a manhole somewhere.

What they are trying to convey is that they are working on the problem and that they don’t think it’s on the premises.

If there’s no fault there they will move to the premises and make an appointment when they will contact the customer because they’ll have to to get access.

I can only think of one occasion where an engineer has actually had to attend the site itself and that was when (it later became apparent) the charity’s telecoms supplier had screwed up the settings on their Draytek router. I’m sure OpenReach will have charged them but the charity never had to pay a penny.

All the other faults I’ve been involved with have been at the exchange, more usually the green box (ever seen the spaghetti inside one?) and lately a corroded connection on the telegraph pole in the street.

[Dave Rice]

If there’s no need to be at home they’ll be testing stuff in the green box or the exchange.

Change ISP all you like, with copper you can’t avoid OpenReach and it’s them that are the issue not TT. Your only alternative would be Virgin if they have cabled your estate.

[Dave Rice]

It’s a hardware problem for sure. Somehow you are shorting the power switch lead. I’d suspect the switch itself.

One trick I do in this situation is wire the power switch lead to the reset button – just move the socket at the motherboard end.

I have a similar annoying issue in that my i3 rig with an Asus mobo keeps waking itself up. It’s in my sons bedroom I now use as an office (he’s at Uni) so user intervention is definitely not an issue.

[Dave Rice]

My good mate Paul who does all the website design and hosting for my customers has just been told he has less than a year to live.

Bowel cancer that has already spread to his liver. He had a poo test 6 months ago that was clear.

[Dave Rice]

I had a similar problem with TalkTalk at the charity I look after. My experience couldn’t be more opposite.

We didn’t know the user credentials as the manager who set it up had left under a cloud. TT did all they could to help us regain control of the account and it was sorted in a day or two. Calling in the fault we had the warning of a similar charge if the fault was caused by us. This is totally normal and is a condition that BT Openreach impose on all call outs even though ours showed a line fault (there could still be another fault that comes to light after their fault is resolved).

The Openreach engineer will only attend by appointment and if he finds the fault is yours you will be told there and then exactly what it is.

Having worked in a support situation I can tell you that your attitude as a customer can have a huge effect on how the supplier deals with you. Go in all gungho “it’s all your fault not mine” and you will get what you deserve. Start threatening journalists and lawyers and you’ll just put the backs up even more. If it comes to it, TT can afford bigger lawyers than you can, but what exactly are they going to do to TT? You don’t need a lawyer for small claims court and if you go there better hope Openreach offer no defense or you will be stuffed.

Journalists? Yeah I know a few, one of them is a mate and he broke the Fred West story. It’s hardly going to be national news is it? Look Mr Ed I have a new story, some cadets having problems with their phone line. Yee bloody har. Feck off and find me some real news.

Get real, start treating the people who are there to help you as people who can help you not as obstacles to be bludgeoned out of the way. A little bit of civility goes a long way. I can tell you from their side they can spot BS a mile away and they can dig their heels in way deeper than you can.

That’s 30 years of being on the wrong end of know it all customers speaking. Try being nice not macho, it works. Openreach will not attend without the possibility of a charge no matter how pissy you get, but in all my years I’ve not actually been charged yet. Make the engineer a cup of tea, that’s worth more than the threat of a journalist or a lawyer IMO.

[Dave Rice]

Binary, 65536 is 2^16. 16 bits = 2 bytes. So the range is 0 to 65535. For a daily backup that’s 179 years ?

The compression and deduplication algorithms are very efficient but 31 days is good enough for me. You can also manually lock a backup, which I have done in anger when about to do a major infrastructure change.

If you want the ultimate “who cares about wannacrypt” solution, this is it. The problem with most sync services is the lack of versioning. It also comes in handy for every day user cock-ups.

From the backup and sync perspective Google is catching up with Synology, from the photo app perspective the reverse is true. But I am coming across more and more businesses that do not trust “the Cloud” and are willing to spend a modest amount to be in control. It’s not the “spying” that really bothers them (although it does), it’s the user login data breaches. With the data protection laws about to ramp up whether we leave the EU or not, they are right to.

[Dave Rice]

TBH I can do all this sort of thing with my Synology NAS with a lot more control.

Cloud Station Backup lets me backup individual folders from a PC to the NAS. Cloud Station Drive lets me sync folders across multiple PCs or even multiple NAS. You can have multiple folders as the target and decide which PCs will sync with what and each user has a private “home” folder. They both have versioning i.e. up to 32 levels of history.

Mobile wise, DS Photo allows you to do what you can do with Google Photos including auto backup when in WiFi and sharing with others. DS File lets you do the same with files.

I can then back all this up to an external USB drive (or a Cloud drive like Google drive) with up to 65535 versions saved with cross-version deduplication. You can plug the USB drive directly into a PC if necessary to restore the data.

But what the heck, for home users it’s all free and great if you have the bandwidth. For businesses that demand more security and control the Synology can do more for a couple of hundred quid.

[Dave Rice]

It’s not that he doesn’t like Photos, he just doesn’t see why he needs a copy of every photo he’s ever taken copied to every device.

I agree, the places for photos is on the google server not the device. You just temporarily pull down what you need to see there and then.

[Dave Rice]

Greeted by 34 degrees and thunderstorm but that was all over by the time we left the station for 100 metres walk to hotel. Local restaurants great. Grosser special beer was most welcome. Schnitzel was perfect.

28 degrees today, overcast a.m now scorchio. Been sightseeing, did the ring tram (well worth it) 30 mins with commentary.

Wachau (danube) Valley 3 hour cruise tomorrow. E55 each with return train travel. Melk to Krems. Forecast 30 degrees and sunny, but a thunderstorm can come out of anywhere (and go as quickly).

Did I mention the beer is wonderful ?

[Dave Rice]

Well I’m on my way to Vienna, sat in the airport lounge. Google reminded me to leave within 30 minutes to get on time and gave me directions avoiding the real time traffic.

It told me of a delay to my flight before easy jet (but only by a minute, ej are on the ball with their app).

It knew that we were at the airport and provided maps and where to eat and shop. It has offered do the same for the area around the hotel it knows we are staying at.

Right at this moment I cannot see what use this will be to HMG or the NSA but it’s bloody useful to me.

Just booked at table at the restaurant sperl 5 mins walk from the hotel.

Marvellous.

[Dave Rice]

Exactly. Your phone company knows which mast you’re associated with. Use an ATM or pay for anything by card and that pinpoints you to a time and place.

[Dave Rice]

If you’re not paying tax things are a lot more affordable.

[Dave Rice]

I think Bobs calling me a pikey! Now you know why I cropped it at Holyhead ?

[Dave Rice]

I’ve just been playing with the new Surveillance Station 8 and one of my Hikvision cameras. It’s come a long way since I last looked at it.

There are all new analytics. Basically you draw a zone(s) on the live view preview and set the sensitivity and type. You can set that on top of any motion detection being instigated by the camera (or just have all motion detection done by SS too).

The live view will dynamically switch streams to reflect the resolution being displayed i.e. if the camera is full screen it’ll go for the high quality stream and if it’s one of many it’ll switch to the balanced stream. It will suggest settings for you or you can set your own.

You can also decide which stream to use for mobile viewing, by default it’s the Balanced stream as that makes most sense. Two way audio works too if the camera supports it. You can use your microphone or have it play some predefined clips.

I was at a Synology training course on Tuesday and asked if it supported the cameras i/o circuits and was told no, third party i/o units only, but they were wrong. My camera has a PIR on it which (in theory) can be used as an event trigger and a white light which can be used as an alarm output i.e. PIR detects something which starts a video recording and turns on the light.

You can set quotas, retention settings (in days) and archives for each camera. These are set by default so if you forget it won’t eat all your disk space.

So it’s quite capable these days and if you already own a Synology is probably worth looking at. With cameras licences at £50 a pop after the first two, if you’re starting from scratch then an DVR makes more sense.

[Dave Rice]

Those Hikvision cameras include Line Crossing Detection: | Cross a pre-defined virtual line and Intrusion Detection: | Enter and loiter in a pre-defined virtual region. I use these to cut the amount of false recording right down. If you cross the line from left to right or there’s any motion in the box for > 1 second it records 5 seconds before and after.

[Dave Rice]

Totally agree with that, windows and IR don’t work, nor rain on the pane.

I’ve just noticed E-Buyer are doing Hikvision cameras at pretty much trade prices.

Hikvision 4 MP WDR Fixed Dome 2.8mm £88 http://tinyurl.com/y6u32mvy DS-1280ZJ-DM21 Deep Base £8 http://tinyurl.com/y9guzw2k They are IK10 vandal proof as well.

The other one I use a lot of (and is on my house) is the Hikvision 4 MP EXIR Bullet £106 http://tinyurl.com/yb5cfabv as it has 50 metre IR. It’ll be the 4mm version. DS-1260ZJ Deep Wall Bracket £11 http://tinyurl.com/ybh8582c

Or there’s the “pig nose” 4 MP WDR EXIR Turret £102 http://tinyurl.com/ya8n3rox which is like a dome but easier to point in the right direction and has EXIR like the bullet.

These are proper professional quality cameras and I use loads of them. They all have proper dual streams, you set up the second stream at a lower setting for use with mobile viewing (saves bandwidth).  All have a 120dB Wide Dynamic Range. You’d need a PoE switch or a 12v DC wall wart and use with the splitter / injector leads.

At these prices I wouldn’t touch anything else.

[Dave Rice]

This is where the site survey come in, without that I have no idea of what focal length (and therefore coverage) you want. Like photography wide lenses = more coverage but less detail and increasing the mega pixels doesn’t do as much as you’d think.

The calculator I use for this is https://www.theiatech.com/calculator as it’ll give you a picture of the detail you’ll get at the given distance etc.

Plumbing the specs of the Foscam in at 20 metres the horizontal field of view is 25m and and the detail is

At 10 metres the fov is 12.7m and the detail is

So you’re not going to be identifying anyone at 20 metres and probably not at 10. However these things rarely get to court as the coppers would probably see enough to confirm enough who they thought it was.

On the court side of things make sure your time is always with 10 minutes of what it should be. Shouldn’t be a problem with the Synology.

[Dave Rice]

Synology Surveillance Station will do the camera management and recording for you and use a PC or phone to view.

You just need to pick a supported camera, there are 1000s https://www.synology.com/en-uk/compatibility/camera

PoE will make the cabling easier, but is the shed attached to the property or not? If not it will need power. I’ll assume it is attached and you only need to run 1 Cat 5.

As it’s all close range stuff 720P will be fine and you don’t need mega metre IR range. H264 will need a lot less storage than MPEG.

Something like the £74 Foscam FI9853EP would do the job http://tinyurl.com/yawlfhn9  Amazon It says PoE but comes with a 12v power adapter so I’d use this £5 Passive Power over Ethernet PoE Adapter Injector + Splitter Kit Amazon You’ll also want an enclosure to put all the connections in such as this Amazon

Surveillance Station is pretty straight forward to set up and a DS216j can deal with 300 FPS @ 720p H264 so that isn’t going to be a problem. I would suggest you set it at 10fps at which it only need 1.3mbps (so viewing over the internet on your phone should be a doddle) and an hours recording would take up 0.6GB . Set it to motion detection and it’ll need hardly anything unless you’re in and out of the shed all day!

[Dave Rice]

Nothing wrong with Nottingham.

Everyone remembers the Toxteth and Brixton riots of 1981 but it was Bristol that started it all the year before. Buildings burned to the ground etc. But no-one thought of “Bristol” as being a violent place then or now. Sometimes trouble flares up but that doesn’t mean you tar the whole city with the same brush. That’s Donald Trump thinking.

[Dave Rice]

One things for sure, it’s a right old mess that needs sorting.

[Author]

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