[Dave Rice]

I agree, You Tube is the choice these days. I’d forgotten all about Vimeo.

[Dave Rice]

After going down! It’s back where it was when I went on holiday.

[Dave Rice]

Vedett IPA on offer @ Tescos. Went down a treat with the tandoori chicken.

There’s two bottles of Aspall’s Imperil Vintage Cider in the fridge waiting for the predicted 30°C tomorrow afternoon.

[Dave Rice]

That was just a public showcase so had to be showy, but the point was to test the different layers to see what was required.

It’s not just 5G and plug things into it, there’s a whole load of other processing needs to happen and it’s all got to work together and quickly. This one was necessarily a lash up but it worked. What we haven’t seen are the results of the urban management as that’s not sexy enough for headlines but is the most important part, the legs paddling furiously away under the swan keeping it moving.

[Dave Rice]

Don’t forget storage and backup.

[Dave Rice]

I think a lot of the benefits of 5G will be where we can’t see them.

Bristol has been involved in an “urban trial” of 5G for several years, lead by the University who host the back end. 5g has been installed in the street furniture around the centre and docks (for those who don’t know Bristol, like London the docks are now for leisure). This isn’t for consumers, it’s to test the infrastructure for managing a city and what they call “Smart Tourism”.

Some idea of what was required to provide a public showcase experience in Millenium Square this March can be seen here.

[Dave Rice]

VOIP needs very little bandwidth, what it needs is priority – QoS.

Modern consumer routers can now accommodate this, even detect it from the default ports used, and IP TV which needs the same. I say “needs” they don’t, but it makes them less susceptible to delays from competing traffic. In the early days my ex B-I-L tried installing VOIP for an SMB customer and failed to understand this as he didn’t have a data networking background. This lead to him dismissing VOIP as crap, an attitude that’s plagued the switch from analogue to IP in so many areas.

In the home you don’t need to embrace VOIP and SIP (with it’s cost model for accessing POTS) to achieve the same result, but BT etc. aren’t going to tell you that – yet. Line rental? They’ll say you’ll still need a cable of some sort to the premises, the question is with competition from 4G / 5G will they / how will they disguise the cost you don’t need to pay? They will play on the ignorance of the customer for sure. We’ve seen that on another thread with Virgin exaggerating bandwidth requirements.

The router provided with the 3 HomeFi – the Huawei B311 – has an RJ11 socket to attach a POTS handset to. It’s what I intend to do, attach my DECT base station to it, but there are other ways to use your own POTS handsets in this way too. That means I need a phone SIM (for call minutes) and that’s now not a problem. Unlimited everything for £24.

So my old home phone will have a new “mobile” number but we’ll all be using our own phones with sufficient minutes – probably unlimited – so it’s not going to get used much. Probably use it as the “bucket” phone number and let the call minder deal with the spam calls.

QoS on the calls? Well they’ll be on the Three network as mobile calls, not VOIP, so I can’t see an issue. So connecting to whatever BT decide will be the national backbone won’t be my problem.

This is all making a 4G ISP solution looking even more attractive.

[Dave Rice]

I think you’re being a bit pessimistic Richard. Early adoption will be expensive, but the timescale to the likes “3 unlimited” deals will be quicker than it has been with 4G. The genie is out of the bottle.

Personally 4G on the move would be fine for me, I have no interest in downloading video on the go. However a portable device, such as my £45 Huawei “pebble” with a PAYG has been useful for work and on family holidays so a 5G version would be of interest. I can see a fixed WiFi enabled device, such as we’ve been talking about in another thread, taking over the ISP job for SOHO and small business.

For me FTTC is dead now if I can get a decent 4G signal, which is nearly always the case in urban and semi-urban areas. The same Draytek routers I use in businesses can already take a USB dongle so there’s no compromise involved.

[Dave Rice]

Unmanaged switches are plug and play devices, they do what they do and are all you need in most environments.

There are several levels of “managed”. My TL-SG1024DE is described by TP-Link as “Easy Smart” and provides basic network monitoring, traffic prioritization and VLAN features. It also allows you to aggregate up to 4 ports into a single one (with the correct hardware at the other end) or as fail over. So with a high end Synology NAS with 4 x Ethernet ports I could give it what appears to be a single 4GB feed,

The Netgear ProSafe I use at the charity is described as “Smart Managed” adds routing and more detailed monitoring and QoS. There’s no way I’d have specified that myself, but a 3rd party looks after their internet connection and SIP phone system and it’s their switch of choice. And so it goes on up the scale to the Corporate Cisco kit that can be programmed.

So, unmanaged it is and a metal case is indication of a better build. I like the TP-Link SG10x series and would go for a TL-SG108 for £20 as it’s only £4 more than the 5 port.

[Dave Rice]

I’m glad it’s working for you, I suspect it would be fine on my house but I have a Hikvision solution to play with at some time.

[Dave Rice]

You may have to wait a while for Windows to offer 1903, but you can force it by going here

[Dave Rice]

One nice feature is that you can adjust the motion detection zones in the app.

The problem I had reading reviews was that it didn’t make much difference, especially with the pavement so close. It works on heat as well as movement. I couldn’t risk that amount of money + the cost of an alternative if it was unsuitable. The other thing was the Reolink take SD cards so no fees and the truly wireless with the solar option tipped it.

With even the cheapest Hikvision IP camera you can set up triggers based on line crossing or entering a pre-defined area and staying for x seconds. This is what I used to use on my “front drive” camera to cut down false alarms. On the latest camera I’m using Manything Pro for cloud storage as is Steve at the pub. That only has (configurable) motion detection but their algorithms are spot on, better than I can manage.

[Dave Rice]

So the politicians warn us of 5G being used for spying and the snooping agencies complain it can’t be used for that purpose. Can’t have it both ways. It was always bollocks when Trump said he would lift the ban if the Chinese played ball on trade.

I’ve always said it’s the Americans and UK politicians we have to watch, not the Chinese or Russians.

[Dave Rice]

I am impressed by the Reolink Argus but would still use a Hikvision camera unless there were cabling issues. In those circumstances the solar makes perfect sense as you’ll never have to worry about charging / changing the battery.

However they’re simple to remove from the standard mount which means putting up high or on a 3rd party mount, both of which are probably no brainers anyway.

[Dave Rice]

Lighting is very important and usually the last thing people think about. My door’s south facing so anything pointing straight out, like a Ring, risks getting the sun straight down the barrel. My CCTV camera is mounted above the garage, so further along the wall you can see, and even though it’s angled downwards can suffer from flare for 30 minutes or so each day.

The positioning of the test shots was determined by where there was already a handy screw in a location that would do. It was more to test the sensitivity of the motion detection, just hand holding the camera I was confident the quality was OK. I already knew that it would be mounted differently at the customers but in the same sort of location.

This is the customers house, the door on the right.

It can’t be mounted on the wall to the right, some sort of cladding, so it had to go between the doors. There’s a glass canopy above the doors too. The black downpipe was a handy place to hide the wire to the solar panel which went up as high as I could safely reach on the ladder. You can see from the picture that it’s in shade all day but produces enough even in the winter (which is when it was installed). A Ring in this location would be going off all day with pedestrians and cars passing by.

Close up IR lighting at night always washes out the subject but you would still recognise someone you knew. A normal outside light, such as you see I have, should produce enough light to not need the IR.

They don’t use the 2 way audio, I always treat it as a gimmick due to latency. In reality nothing is like you see on the adverts. You also have to realise that if you are say, washing the car, and going in and out your phone will be pinging away like mad!

Personally I rely on my CCTV camera covering the drive, it does all I really need. I could set a push notification but find them a PITA.

[Dave Rice]

It’s not a doorbell and doesn’t need to be. As they approach the existing doorbell they will trigger the motion detection.The motion detection pushes an alarm to your mobile device. This is how Ring works as well.

I tested it on my house before installing at the customers. This guy hadn’t rung the doorbell yet.

This is on it’s normal mount. At the customers it’s on a longer mount so facing more towards the door (and higher up). It would cover up to where my path turns left as that’s where their pavement begins.

[Dave Rice]

Latency and over sensitive sensors. You need a longish drive IMO.

I fitted a solar power Reolink Argus for a customer on a longer wall mount so it was just covering their door (they have no drive, the door is <2 metres from the pavement).  They had a BT Home Hub under the stairs, so withing 10 feet, and it was hit and miss. Their TV only had Ethernet so I used a TP-Link TL-WA850RE N300 Universal Range Extender to sort that out, and even though it was further away from the camera the issues went away. They now have a Three Huawei E5573Cs-322 4G MiFi even further away with no issues either, so it was the wretched BT HH.

There is latency, there always will be, but it’s not onerous. The solar panel is actually facing north but has no problem keeping the battery topped up so it is truly wireless. It was all set up from my Android phone and the customer uses an iPhone. False alarms are very rare.

[Dave Rice]

Wow. I remember upgrading our first network at work to get 100mbps. Cost a small fortune.

[Dave Rice]

Result.

[Dave Rice]

Is there a leader who isn’t a right tw@t? Angela Merkel maybe.

In the fictional Discworld land of Fourecks (previously known as XXXX or Terror Incognita) all politicians are locked up after they are elected, “because it saves time later”. Not a bad principle.

[Author]

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