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Domain: kahunaburger.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to kahunaburger.com.
Comments · 7
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Re:Licensing? Severs?
If you just pick it up and poke at it, it is largely a toy. A fun one, and visually interesting, to be sure; but 95% of the useful stuff can be done in a browser by google maps.
Where it gets more interesting, though, is if you have the interest, and the capability, to treat it more like a GIS program. ArcGIS isn't exactly quaking in their boots, nor are any of the other classic Real Serious GIS vendors; but Google Earth occupies a rather interesting niche: free as in beer, and quite easy for a noob to pick up and play with in 10 minutes; but capable of some fairly neat tricks if you start programmatically generating kmz overlays. is one rather cute example. -
Deny them access in the first placeHere's some handy Apache rules I've collected in my
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Also consider the SpamAssassin plugin for WordPress which has also been ported to MovableType.
RewriteEngine On
# Many robots do not handle SGML or HTML correctly. These rules catch them and
# punish them:
RewriteRule & - [NC,F,L]
# Active exploits out in the wild
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^(LWP) [NC,OR]
# Comment spammer software
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^(.*MSIE.*Win.9x.4.90|8484.Boston.Project|grub.cra wler|Indy.Library|Java.1|MSIE.*Windows.XP) [NC,OR]
# Miscellaneous suspicious software
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^(.*DTS.Agent|libwww-perl|POE-Component-Client|WIS Ebot|.*WISEnutbot) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^(Mozilla...0)$ [NC,OR]
RewriteRule
# Blank user agents, not a trackback
# Needed because WP before 1.5-beta doesn't include a user-agent
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^(-?)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^(.*trackback) [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !^{POST}
RewriteRule
</IfModule> -
Re:I try and try..
Try the WordPress SpamAssassin plugin, which has also been ported to Movable Type, to kill all that comment spam.
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Veo reverse engineered, wireless version availableThe Veo Observer protocol has recently been reverse engineered. The web link includes perl scripts for taking pictures at different resolutions, panning and tilting. I am running this code under Linux right now and can confirm that it works. You can also do things like make the camera operate without turning on the big blue light in the front, and control the motors to do things like make the camera shake its head "yes" and "no." Other features provided by the perl module which I have not yet tried include adjusting brightness and contrast, and recording the sound stream, although I do not know what the audio format is (the video format is JPEG for each separate frame).
That web site also provides a CGI script for your web server on that web page for operation as a web cam (since the built-in web server in the camera requires ActiveX, making it less useful). Note that this script could easily be modified to allow your to do the same with any Veo observer camera that is accessible on the internet if you know it's IP, user name and password.
Regarding the original submitter's question about wireless, there is a WiFi version of the camera for us$350 (probably 802.11b; I can't figure out from the web page).
It has been about a year since I checked, but at the time it seemed that there we no other cameras with a built-in pan and tilt for even twice the price of the Veo Observer (the ethernet version is us$200; I got mine for us$180 a year ago). The built-in microphone is also a big plus for potential uses (e.g., baby monitoring). Other minor features an external microphone jack (if you don't want to use the internal mic) and an external motion detector jack (I think the idea is to use an infrared detector or one with a wider field than the camera, otherwise why can't they just program the camera to do this?), ethernet/IP interface, making it easier to use away from a computer, and built-in flakey crippled web server (still, occasionally useful).
The Veo Observer at its price point would have been a killer product a year ago were it not for its protocol being undocumented, but it is a killer product today now that the protocol has been reverse engineered. The camera can finally be used for wide-scale deployments like security systems and customized web sites.
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Re: High Tech Baby Monitoring?
Long time ago I picked up a VEO Observer wireless camera (see http://www.veo.com/ ). I wrote a simple program to extract frames from the camera on a regular basis (see http://www.kahunaburger.com/blog/archives/000100.
h tml ) and also wrote a minimal motion detector in perl (see http://www.kahunaburger.com/blog/archives/000114.h tml ) to only capture "interesting" frames. Now that I've decoded the VEO TCP/IP protocol (see http://www.kahunaburger.com/blog/archives/000157.h tml ), I can do all this on my FreeBSD box. -
Re: High Tech Baby Monitoring?
Long time ago I picked up a VEO Observer wireless camera (see http://www.veo.com/ ). I wrote a simple program to extract frames from the camera on a regular basis (see http://www.kahunaburger.com/blog/archives/000100.
h tml ) and also wrote a minimal motion detector in perl (see http://www.kahunaburger.com/blog/archives/000114.h tml ) to only capture "interesting" frames. Now that I've decoded the VEO TCP/IP protocol (see http://www.kahunaburger.com/blog/archives/000157.h tml ), I can do all this on my FreeBSD box. -
Re: High Tech Baby Monitoring?
Long time ago I picked up a VEO Observer wireless camera (see http://www.veo.com/ ). I wrote a simple program to extract frames from the camera on a regular basis (see http://www.kahunaburger.com/blog/archives/000100.
h tml ) and also wrote a minimal motion detector in perl (see http://www.kahunaburger.com/blog/archives/000114.h tml ) to only capture "interesting" frames. Now that I've decoded the VEO TCP/IP protocol (see http://www.kahunaburger.com/blog/archives/000157.h tml ), I can do all this on my FreeBSD box.