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Net Work Alan Winstanley Lights, camera, action! This month, Net Work returns to the complex world of IP security cameras. B ack in Net Work from the December 2015 issue, I explored the emerging market of IP security cameras that were designed for home network users. After suffering mixed results with several cheap unbranded ones, I chose a UCam 1080p bullet camera. It was a sturdy mid-priced product that offered IP67 protection, infrared, one-way audio, Wi-Fi and Ethernet, along with an SD memory slot. Snapshots and short video clips could be saved to a NAS drive (there was no cloud storage at that time) and the UCam app allowed video to be viewed remotely on a mobile phone, via a wireless hotspot. Camera set-up Using the UCam became quite a learning curve, so this month’s Net Work outlines a few IP camera practicalities that I stumbled on over the years. This type of camera needs initialising using an Ethernet cable. Once the Wi-Fi SSID and IP address are configured in the camera, then in theory Ethernet is no longer needed and the camera should operate wirelessly. Despite this, it isn’t necessarily a great idea to mount it high up in an inaccessible location (see later). Also, when locating a camera, consider how the sun travels through the day and site the camera to avoid direct sunshine; at night, a camera’s IR illuminator will cause dazzle if it’s, for example, indoors on a window ledge, because the IR light reflects back off the glass and washes out the video. It’s sometimes better to disable IR and rely on ambient street lighting or consider a separate (possibly external) IR illuminator lamp (eBay). I found that many cameras of this type sprout a clunky power and Ethernet block, with maybe a paltry 12-inch long lead. The connector block might need a 1-inch hole or so to pass through a house wall, possibly needing an SDS drill followed by some sealant or cement. Otherwise, pencil in a weatherproof junction box to house the camera connectors, before routing the wiring indoors. I also plugged the camera’s Ethernet port with an RJ45 rubber dust cap (eBay) once setting up was completed. 12 And of course, the camera requires a DC supply, for which DC extension leads are commonly bought: mains outlets are seldom located where they’re needed! Network camera practicalities Looking at some software setup snags, this camera’s settings are accessed by logging in with a desktop web browser, which highlighted the next problem: ‘Live View’ stopped working because popular web browsers stopped supporting the legacy Flash-based viewer, so separate desktop software (supplied) is used instead. This camera’s settings menu also configures motion detection zones, but I found that birds or trees blowing in the wind triggered false alarms. The software might offer scheduling and alerts by email or uploading snapshots to a web server, along with the usual arcane network and storage settings. It proved best to give both the camera and the NAS their own static IP addresses. That way, if the router was powered down or reset, the IP camera and NAS would still handshake properly once the network was restored. My camera has built-in optional storage, although you can still record images to a NAS. One problem is the risk of data loss if the camera is stolen! Many modern camera systems now promise cloudbased storage, but free services might only have a short file retention period. Typically, subscription-based cloud storage is offered (assuming you’re satisfied with third-party security) but watch for charges levied for additional cameras. One risk is that makers will not future-proof apps or software, and products may become crippled at short notice. On 30 June, Belkin pulled the plug on its WeMo NetCam range as its cloud-based video platform was shutting down, leaving ‘many users of the WeMo NetCam with a product they can no longer use,’ as Belkin helpfully recognised. Also, last November, the US chain Best Buy dropped support for their own-brand Insignia smart device range, leaving owners of their ‘smart’ appliances (including smart cameras) stranded. This kind of product uncertainty does not endear users to the smart-device sector. Apart from using Wi-Fi to hook up an IP camera, an Ethernet lead can be used on some (but not all) home cameras. Where Wi-Fi coverage is dodgy, if a mains outlet is available then Homeplug powerline communications (PLC) adaptors such as the Devolo range can conveniently create Wi-Fi access points and/or provide an Ethernet port, by using the ring mains to carry Internet traffic. Devolo has been covered extensively in Net Work in the past and there are plenty of used Devolo devices on eBay. A cheap way of implementing PLC networking at home would be to try some second-hand Devolo DLAN 500 units – remember you need to connect one mains ‘transmitter’ directly to your router, and plug in separate Wi-Fi Add-On Adaptors around the home or outbuildings (up to 300m away). Note the new generation Devolo ‘Magic’ mesh range (offering up to 2.4 Mbps) is not compatible with these earlier DLAN devices. In fact, the author installed some extra DLAN 500 repeaters recently for some trials, but after a while it was found that the IP camera had stopped responding for some reason. Checks showed that the NAS had also stopped recording a few weeks earlier! Eventually, it looked like a total camera reset might be needed: that’s one good reason not to site such an IP camera too far out of reach – setting it up again would mean hooking it to an Ethernet lead and initialising it all over again. Then the penny dropped: after adding those Devolo DLAN Wi-Fi units, I’d also renamed the Wi-Fi SSIDs, HeimVision’s range is typical of current battery-operated home security cameras. Practical Electronics | September | 2020 thereby accidentally cutting off the IP camera’s Wi-Fi access in the process! I reset the camera after rigging up a temporary Devolo Ethernet port a few yards away, and the camera burst into life on Wi-Fi once again. Network camera innovations Today, there is more choice than ever and some of the latest user-friendly smart cameras address some of these drawbacks to make installation and operation far simpler. Amazon’s Blink XT2 starts at £99 and is typical of the latest wave: it’s a compact weatherproof 1080p Wi-Fi camera with two-way audio. Lithium batteries promise up to two-years life (but very much less – reportedly as little as a month – if you use video and audio monitoring extensively, and swapping batteries is fiddly). For indoor use, a micro USB power port allows mains operation (adapter not included). Blink is intended for smaller areas and is Wi-Fi only. It uses a proprietary mains-powered ‘sync module’ (hub) to broadcast video. Some users complain about time lag, but what it lacks in performance it makes up for in ease of setting up. It’s possible to go further and view on an Echo Show LCD or link multiple cameras with the Alexa app as well as using voice control. Furthermore, an Amazon Fire Stick would enable viewing on a TV (as seen on https:// youtu.be/gty7XfUsBf0). Free limited online storage is included. Google’s Nest Wi-Fi cameras require DC power and are surface-mounted using simple magnetic ‘universal joint’ hardware (see https://youtu.be/ wG3F8xzhPlo) so they are not exactly pilfer-proof. It has a speaker and microphone, and three hours of cloud storage is provided free; or choose ‘Nest Aware’, which costs from £5 a month covering all your Nest cameras. A single Nest Outdoor camera is £179. Cameras get a solar boost A plethora of similar-looking IP cameras is now available, often badged with unrecognised brands so, before investing, it’s really useful to see what other users say in product reviews. No consumer IP camera is perfect and whether a product performs well in practice and is well supported can be down to potluck. Several branded security cameras stood out, including Reolink’s Argus Pro outdoor camera with audio, SD storage, and a self-contained battery topped up by a solar panel. HeimVision’s HMD2 also seems well regarded and a solar recharger is available separately. The eufyCam 2C 1080p IP67 wireless camera promises 180-day battery life, anti-theft alarms and Amazon Practical Electronics | September | 2020 Simplisafe promises whole-home monitored protection, including a security guard call-out if needed. Alexa compatibility. Video is encrypted and stored internally on a memory card and technical support seemed to be highly rated. The US home security firm SimpliSafe has now entered the UK and offers whole-home protection with wireless sensors, glass-break alarms, smoke detectors, flood alarms, panic buttons and smart cameras. Uniquely in this market, SimpliSafe also has a professional monitoring option that can, following confirmation of an incident via cameras, send the police and a security guard to your residential property at a low cost. More details are spelt out on their website at: https://simplisafe.co.uk Doorbell wireless video cameras are also catching on, especially because some 40% of US households have been victims of doorstep package theft or ‘porch piracy’, according to Security.org (YouTube is full of ‘porch pirate’ entrapment videos featuring booby-trapped parcels). Wireless doorbell cameras include the Google Nest Hello and Amazon’s Ring, but there are many others. Huawei we go again After more political wrangling, Britain seems to be on the verge of cutting Huawei adrift. The UK had thus far chosen to ‘mitigate’ Huawei’s involvement in the country’s telecoms network through the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC) Oversight Board. This task force revealed some sloppy coding and security practices and broken assurances that the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) still felt were manageable, nonetheless. Further US sanctions on American chip design software and fabricators means that, ongoing, alternative chips might have to be sourced, making it harder to warrant the security of the 5G telecoms network. At the time of writing, the NCSC was revisiting Britain’s relation with Huawei. Meantime, Huawei’s plans to build a £400 million opto-electronics research site in Cambridgeshire has received initial approval by the local authority, despite American opposition: Britain’s local planning authorities never get involved with politics. SpaceX continues to lob Starlink satellites into LEO (low-earth orbit), with ten launches totalling nearly 600 satellites so far. The US FCC had questioned whether the network’s latency would in fact be low enough (100ms or less, according to them) for it to qualify for the US Government’s $20 billion ‘Rural Digital Opportunity’ programme intended to bring Internet access to rural districts. The FCC has since softened its approach to allow SpaceX to bid for traffic. Boldly going... SpaceX also launched a second GPS III satellite into orbit for the ‘US Space Force’, making three satellites in total. These latest-generation GPS satellites have higher accuracy and anti-jamming technology – see: www.spaceforce.mil Britain has been sidelined by the EU in its Galileo satnav programme, despite being an investor in the past. Earlier this year, in pre-Covid-19 times, the UK trumpeted a hard-to-believe £5bn programme to build its own satnav network, but these ambitions have since been downsized. Instead, the UK has bought a £400 million stake in the bankrupt OneWeb satellite network which may be a fast-track alternative to building a GPS system from scratch – if the technology allows. India’s Bharti Global has matched the bid for this LEO Internet service, though reports mentioned nothing about offering GPS. 13 In other news Anycubic’s UV Photon Zero is a low-cost introduction to 3D UV resin printing. China has polished off its own GPS system with the 35th launch of a Beidou Navigation Satellite at the end of June, in a programme intended to make China self-sufficient (the EU said the same about its own dependence on US GPS, which prompted the EU Galileo programme). GET T LATES HE T COP Y OF TEACH OUR -IN SE RIES A VAILA B NOW! LE Amazon has launched the Echo Auto, an in-car adaptor allowing drivers to access Alexa services while on the road. Powered by a cigar lighter socket or USB port, Echo Auto connects to the car audio via Bluetooth or a 3.5mm lead, and uses the Alexa app on your mobile phone. It has eight microphones and has been optimised to work well over road noise, Amazon says. It’s available for £49.99 from Amazon and major retailers. After killing off its five-year old Dash stick-on hardware buttons that enabled seamless re-ordering of goods, Amazon has ditched their barcode-scanning Dash Wand, a quirky product-ordering gadget that never really caught on. Virtual Dash buttons live on in the Amazon app. The world’s most powerful offshore wind turbine, the 12MW GE Haliade-X (see Net Work, January 2020) has been granted a type approval certificate by the global certification body DNV-GL based in Norway. It’s a milestone that allows GE to bring the wind turbine from prototype to serial production, says GE. UV-curing resin printers seem to be catching on, with small 3D printers available for as little as £200. The Anycubic Photon Zero UV Photocuring 3D Printer, for example, is available from Order direct from Electron Publishing PRICE £8.99 (includes P&P to UK if ordered direct from us) Amazon and prints objects up to 95 × 54 × 150mm. Single-colour UV resin typically costs £41 per litre. Readers are reminded to be vigilant when receiving SMS PIN numbers for 2FA authentication (described in previous months). It was recently reported that one scammer, described as ‘being from a bank’s fraud prevention unit and very convincing’, knew his victim’s account and cellphone number and called to glean from him a 2FA PIN number, after the bank alerted the victim of an attempted hack. Revealing the PIN that way would have enabled the crook to finish off the fraudulent transaction. PayPal has introduced Honey, a discount voucher ‘bot that automatically applies the best promo codes on Internet checkouts. You can install the Honey extension for your browser and it has already saved the author a few valuable pounds shopping on a wellknown coffee pod website. Sign up free at: www.joinhoney.com That’s all this month – see you in the next issue for more Net Work! The author can be reached at: alan<at>epemag.net EE FR -ROM CD ELECTRONICS TEACH-IN 9 £8.99 FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF GET TESTING! Electronic test equipment and measuring techniques, plus eight projects to build FREE CD-ROM TWO TEACH -INs FOR THE PRICE OF ONE • Multimeters and a multimeter checker • Oscilloscopes plus a scope calibrator • AC Millivoltmeters with a range extender • Digital measurements plus a logic probe • Frequency measurements and a signal generator • Component measurements plus a semiconductor junction tester PIC n’ Mix Including Practical Digital Signal Processing PLUS... YOUR GUIDE TO THE BBC MICROBIT Teach-In 9 Teach-In 9 – Get Testing! A LOW-COST ARM-BASED SINGLE-BOARD COMPUTER Get Testing Three Microchip PICkit 4 Debugger Guides Files for: PIC n’ Mix PLUS Teach-In 2 -Using PIC Microcontrollers. In PDF format This series of articles provides a broad-based introduction to choosing and using a wide range of test gear, how to get the best out of each item and the pitfalls to avoid. It provides hints and tips on using, and – just as importantly – interpreting the results that you get. 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We’ve kept the cost of these projects as low as possible, and most of them can be built for less than £10 (including components, enclosure and circuit board). © 2018 Wimborne Publishing Ltd. www.epemag.com Teach In 9 Cover.indd 1 01/08/2018 19:56 FREE COVER-MOUNTED CD-ROM On the free cover-mounted CD-ROM you will find the software for the PIC n’ Mix series of articles. Plus the full TeachIn 2 book – Using PIC Microcontrollers – A practical introduction – in PDF format. Also included are Microchip’s MPLAB ICD 4 In-Circuit Debugger User’s Guide; MPLAB PICkit 4 In-Circuit Debugger Quick Start Guide; and MPLAB PICkit4 Debugger User’s Guide. ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY JUST CALL 01202 880299 OR VISIT www.electronpublishing.com 14 Practical Electronics | September | 2020