Archive for category Photography & Images
City of Poughkeepsie Police Armor
Posted by Ed in Oddities, Photography & Images, Recumbent Bicycling on 2019-08-17
Returning from a long ride, we spotted an unusual sign at the Vassar Farm entrance (clicky for more dots):
Even more unusual was the sight of a matte black MRAP jouncing across the field:
I hadn’t noticed an uptick of the insurgency around here, but I suppose it could happen.
It looks like a Cougar HE 6×6 MRAP on loan from the DLA 1033 Program to the City of Poughkeepsie Police Department. The flat top suggests they dismounted the CROWS gun, which seems a definite step down in no-knock capability.
Some poking around showed the Poughkeepsie Police Department acquired a 107 mm Mortar Carrier some years ago:
The M106 is an impressive hunk of tracked armor, although it seems unsuited for urban warfare and would certainly scuff up the streets pretty badly. I don’t know if they scrapped the M106 in favor of the MRAP.
I’m hoping they don’t collaborate with the Dutchess County Sheriff’s Department to patrol the Rail Trail, even within the City limits.
Logitech “QuickCam Pro 5000” Ball Camera Disassembly
Posted by Ed in Machine Shop, Photography & Images on 2019-08-16
Another alignment camera contestant from the Big Box o’ Junk Cameras:
It’s a Logitech QuickCam Pro 5000 with a native 640×480 resolution. For no obvious reason, it seems to work better on a Raspberry Pi than the Logitech QuickCam for Notebooks Deluxe I ripped apart a few weeks ago, where “better” is defined as “shows a stable image”. I have no explanation for anything.
Remove the weird bendy foot-like object by pulling straight out, then remove the single screw from the deep hole visible just behind the dent in the top picture:
The stylin’ curved plate on the top holds the microphone and a button, neither of which will be of use in its future life. Unplug and discard, leaving the USB cable as the only remaining connection:
Inexplicably, the cable shield is soldered to the PCB, so the connector doesn’t do much good. Hack the molded ball off of the cable with a diagonal cutter & razor knife, taking more care than I did to not gouge the cable insulation.
A glue dot locks the focusing threads:
Gentle suasion with a needle nose pliers pops the dot, leaving the lens free to focus on objects much closer than infinity:
Now, to conjure a simpleminded mount …
Monthly Image: A Tree Full of Turtles
Posted by Ed in Oddities, Photography & Images, Recumbent Bicycling on 2019-08-15
Spotted along Robinson Lane:
A closer look at the same number of pixels:
The little one way over on the left is definitely having an adventure!
I’d read of goats climbing trees, but never turtles.
Xiaomi-Dafang Hacks: FTP Server for Camera Files
Posted by Ed in Home Ec, Photography & Images, Software on 2019-08-09
Since the PiHole runs all the time, it now hosts an FTP server to stash snapshots from the cameras onto a 64 GB USB stick. I installed ProFTPD, which Just Worked with a few configuration tweaks:
UseIPv6 off
ServerName "PiHole"
DefaultRoot /mnt/cameras
RequireValidShell offThe cameras use the BusyBox ftpput command to stash their images (with the hostname prepended), which requires a few changes to motion.conf in the cameras:
ftp_snapshot=true
ftp_host="192.168.1.2"
ftp_port=21
ftp_username=$(/bin/hostname)
ftp_password="make up your own"
ftp_stills_dir=$(/bin/hostname)The last line uses a separate directory for each camera, although they quickly ran into the FAT32 limit of 64 K files per directory; reformatting the USB stick with an ext3 filesystem solved that problem.
Fortunately, nothing much ever happens around here …
Logitech “Quickcam for Notebooks Deluxe” USB Camera Disassembly
Posted by Ed in Electronics Workbench, Machine Shop, Photography & Images on 2019-08-07
My collection of old USB cameras emitted a Logitech Quickcam for Notebooks Deluxe, with a tag giving a cryptic M/N of V-UGB35. Given Logitech’s penchant for overlapping names, its USB identifiers may be more useful for positive ID:
ID 046d:08d8 Logitech, Inc. QuickCam for Notebook DeluxeIt works fine as a simple V4L camera and its 640×480 optical resolution may suffice for simple purposes, even if it’s not up to contemporary community standards.
The key disassembly step turned out to be simply pulling the pivoting base off, then recovering an errant spring clip from the Laboratory Floor:
The clips have a beveled side and fit into their recesses in only one orientation; there’s no need for brute force.
Removing the two obvious case screws reveals the innards:
Three more screws secure the PCB:
The ribbed focus knob around the lens makes it more useful than a nominally fixed-focus camera.
Reassembly is in reverse order.
I miss having obvious case screws …
Monthly Image: And Then There Were Two
Posted by Ed in Oddities, Photography & Images, Science on 2019-07-15
The turkey hen who once had nine chicks, then seven, now has only two:
We haven’t seen the fox since it nailed the previous chick, but it may be responsible for taking a chick a day, every day, for a week.
We wonder if she misses the rest of her brood as much as we do …
Taken through two layers of 1950s window glass, zoomed all the way in, with a phone camera.
Monthly Image: Turkey Hen and Chicks
Posted by Ed in Photography & Images, Science on 2019-06-15
Mary saw a fox trotting behind the garden, gripping a (dead) turkey chick in its jaws, with the hen in hot pursuit. The fox dropped the chick, circled the pine grove, picked up the chick, and departed stage right. The hen eventually led her remaining chicks into the yard, but gathered them underneath while watching for danger:
She settled down for a few minutes:
With the fox safely departed, she released the chicks:
Then they returned to foraging, with one chick trying out its wings:
Two days earlier, she led nine chicks through the yard; we think the fox picked off a chick a day. She lost two more during the next four days, suggesting they rapidly improve their ability to scamper out of harm’s way.
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