Control Computers Remotely

NoMachine is very similar to VNC Viewer. However NoMachine has two advantages over VNC:

Faster performance (requires less data to be transmitted over the network)

Is more secure (Uses SSH as a default transmission)

Here’s how I got it up and running on my network…

Here’s how to control an Ubuntu 9.04 machine from a Windows 7 Laptop.

*Like any tutorial, read it first, understand it, then do it*

Install SSH on the Ubuntu Machine.

In terminal type > sudo aptitude install ssh
(Or use synaptic package manager)

Download the NoMachine (freeNX) client,node,and server from the website to the Ubuntu Desktop
In the ubuntu terminal browse to the folder you downloaded the files to.
cd ~/Desktop
Once at the directory, issue the following commands>
sudo dpkg -i nxclient_X.Y.Z-W_i386.deb (Replace _X.Y.Z with the actual .deb filename)
sudo dpkg -i nxnode_X.Y.Z-W_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i nxserver_X.Y.Z-W_i386.deb

* When you are typing commands in the terminal in Linux, you can hit the tab key and Linux will finish spelling out the file name for you*
So, to do the above commands quicker and to avoid spelling mistakes type

sudo dpkg -i nxclient[hit the TAB key now]

Linux should finish typing the rest of the nxclient file name for you.

Reboot your ubuntu machine.

Go to your Windows Machine and install the NoMachine client onto it.

Click here and read through the manual. You should be off to the races.

You be the Doctor!

Today is Sunday. Very few of you will be burdened with the choice I’ve had to make today. I hope you never will. But I am here for you and here it is… I do all of my work from my IBM Thinkpad. When I purchased the laptop it was was one of IBM’s flagship series models (Lenovo Thinkpad T61p). I’ve owned the laptop for 2 years. It goes on road trips (California), on the Table (onto the floor), In a backpack (jossled), On the car seat (sat on). It even survived a full bottle of beer falling off the couch straight into it like a drunken missile. The laptop is not “Shiny and Twinkly” like a Macbook. It didn’t have the most “Bang for it’s Buck” like a Dell. The Thinkpad is a Flat Black Always Up Always Working Tough As Nails Don’t Cry When Wet Get The Job Done Go For Beers Go To Sleep Wake Up And Do It All Again Workhorse. This laptop has earned its keep and my next laptop will be another Thinkpad.

Gone are the days of lifting up your 57 Chevy’s hood or opening up the back of your Yamaha Tube Amp to fix or replace a broken part. Modern technology such as ipods, digital cameras, and laptops are collaborations of engineering feats that have followed Moore’s Law closely. Chances are, if you open up any modern electronic device today (with the exception of changing the battery) you’re not getting it back together without access to an electronic technicians lab. By the way, I am never responsible for any damage your laptop incurs if you decide to follow what I have done. That being said, today I turned on my Thinkpad this morning and saw THIS!

THE HORROR!

Peering at the laptop screen under some light it appeared to be a HAIR! I thought, “How can a hair that long manage to get sandwiched behind my LCD screen?” A quick google turned up this story. Good luck at the Mac Store pal! I then thought to myself, “There’s no way I’m sending my laptop off to IBM’s repair shop! The foreign technician might interpret remove the screen imperfection as remove and clean partition DOH! So like anyone’s first time making love, I proceeded with caution trying not to damage anything…

I removed the bezel by following page 108 to 112 in THIS online manual. I placed some folded up paper behind the screen to raise it up while I removed the screws that held the LCD in place.

Bezel removed

I GENTLY pulled out the sleep ribbon from it’s slot with some tweezers. Once the ribbon was loose, I gently lifted up the screen and placed paper (non conductive) behind the screen to raise it up out of the back plate. I had to remove the antenna that is attached to the left side of the screen. Small screws held the LCD screen into the silver frame. I removed all of the screws so the White Tape around the edges of the screen could be accessed.

The 'sleep' switch. Pull it out gently with tweezers

That big warning sign on the LCD is for the Lab Technicians at IBM not Do-it-Yourself MEN that are about to void any sort of warranty this thing had left on it! Joking aside, behind that white tape is an extremely delicate electronic fabric that cannot be cut or disturbed. So I gently took a razor blade and ran it against the metal frame and peeled back the white tape exposing the side of the LCD.

I touched the white tape (Don't tell anyone)

I cut the white tape and verified I didn’t destroy the green circuitry ribbon underneath it. I then gently unclipped the corner where the hair was stuck. I then beckoned my fiancee with the vacuum. While I held the LCD apart, my elegant assistant placed the vacuum against the side of the bezel and the hair sucked right out. Nicely done!

Don't cut the green tape. You'll be sorry.

I then sealed the side up again using some packaging tape. I carefully laid everything back into place. Before buttoning everything up, I booted the laptop to ensure everything was still intact. Everything looked proper again so I reversed all my steps putting everything back together how it was. And the Thinkpad continues working for me…

Taped up again. Good as new.

A word of warning: if you find yourself in the same predicament and don’t have a technical background such as myself, seek a second opinion! I was prepared to eat the cost of a $2000 laptop, are you? The Reckless Redneck’s last words, “Watch this guys!” applies here. If you don’t have the tools readily available around the house, you probably aren’t someone that does this type of work, seek a second opinion. Did I mention I did the entire procedure while the laptop was turned on and running? Why you say? Well, if I made a mistake during the procedure and wrecked something I wanted to know exactly when and where I did it. By the way, if you have epilepsy and your fingers are larger than Hungarian sausages, don’t even bother attempting this. And if you can just ‘live with the hair’, I don’t want to know what else you ‘live with’.  This blog is open 24/7.

Good night.

I'm watching you...

Pros
POE (Power Over Ethernet)
Pan and Tilt
Built in Web Server

Cons
Impossible for most people to setup without included CD

Overall, I’m very satisfied with this camera. Read about the specs here

Here’s how I setup the camera…
Let me say that it’s worth investing in a network switch that has POE. This eliminates the need of having a 120V receptacle nearby. And if you put your POE switch on a backup UPS, the camera will continue operating during a power outage. It’s just smart to do it this way.

Usually when a a new device is plugged into my network, I am able to see it’s IP and MAC address whether dynamic or static. When I plugged in the camera, it did not show up in the routing tables, so there was no way for me to go into it’s browser setup. For some odd reason Panasonic does not provide instructions on how to setup the camera without the included CD-ROM. This pretty much cornered me into using the CD-ROM and setting the camera up in a Windows OS.

Booted into WinXP
Ran the CD-ROM.
The software detected the camera as 192.168.0.253

I then opened up a browser and entered it's IP address into the browser.
I entered the username and password I wanted and went from there.

If you buy the camera second hand and you don’t have the CD-ROM you can still set it up:

The camera bridges itself to the network it gets plugged into from it’s factory state. So, start off by factory resetting the camera. Then in a browser access the camera by using the following methods:
If your network is: 192.168.1.0
then the camera should come up as: 192.168.1.253
If your network is 192.168.0.1
then the camera should come up as:192.168.0.253
See the pattern?
10.0.0.0
10.0.0.253....
and so on.
If you want the cameras time and date to stay accurate you need to open up port 123 in your routers firewall and go into the camera setting and enter in an NTP server such as ntp.pool.com.

Something worth noting is that you should set the camera up with a static IP. If you have a DNS server on your router or network add the static IP of you camera and name the camera something easy to remember like cam1. Then you can quickly look at the camera by typing http://cam1 in your web browser

The camera has a built in microphone and a plug in for speakers. It will be nice to tell thieves they have only a moment to put the TV down gently before the Police come through the door.

A surveillance image I pulled from my server of the camera monitoring the vehicles outside the house during the night.

Night time Capture w/ Floodlight

Here is an image I pulled from the camera in the morning with no sunlight.

Daytime Capture with Overcast

I will have to reposition the flood light for a better image at night. Day shots are nice and clear.

I will setup a control sequence on my HA system such as “When the camera detects motion, turn the light on, start recording, and upload the image to my email account/cellphone also send me an SMS”.

You can also save current positions of the camera. Because this camera pans, I have it setup to have it look over the vehicles outside, and also swivel sideways and have a look at the inside of the room. So in fact the camera is doing double duty. More to come as I play with it…

You can add external sensors/triggers hardwired into the camera. Here is a photo of the schematic.

Remote Triggers

Ethics At The Garage Sale

Spring cleaning. I am selling the items in the link below. Please email admin@mybarachois.com if you’re interested in any of the featured items. I also have many Computer, Video, Audio cables and connectors.

You will need the Cool Iris / PicLens plug-in to view the Gallery.

View the Gallery by clicking the link below:

Love you Obama. Call me.

If you have multiple Aastra phones in the house. You can easily keep all of their directories up to date. Here’s how:

create a text file named directory.csv
In the text file enter names in the following format:
Joe Smith, 8885551234 ,1 ,Home ,private
Maggie Smitth, 8885551111 ,1 ,Cell ,private

You can change the categories, Home or Cell or Office or Work etc.
Maggie Smitth, 8885551111 ,1 ,Home ,private
Maggie Smitth, 8885551111 ,1 ,Work ,private
Maggie Smitth, 8885551111 ,1 ,Cell ,private
Maggie Smitth, 8885551111 ,1 ,Office ,private

When sifting through names on the phone, you will not have to scroll through 4 Maggie Smiths. Using the above format you will see only one entry for Maggie Smith and then you can choose to scroll through her sub categories. You can also change which number is shown on the display first. So if you find yourself calling her cellular phone the most, you change it so when scrolling through names, her cellular number is shown by default.

The other variable to take note of is the privateand public. The cordless handset that you can optionally purchase with the Aastra 57i can only hold up to 50 contacts in it. All the numbers whether public or private will be shown in the Aastra 57i Corded phone. But only public numbers will be shown in the Cordless Handset. I used the public variable for any numbers I would find myself calling while gardening or watching a movie and I’m not near the lobby phone.

Okay so you’ve added all your contacts into the directory.csv file. Save the file and upload it to your asterisk servers TFTPboot directory. Or more specifically the directory you Aastra phones look to for provisioning.
In the TFTPboot directory you should see a file namedaastra.cfg.
Open aastra.cfg with a text editor and at the very bottom of the file enter in the text
directory 1: directory.csv
Save and close the file.
Reboot your Aastra phones and their directories should now reflect your file.
The above method is a very ‘manual’ way of updating the directories. I may write a script so that when the directory.csv file is updated on the server, the phones reboot auto magically.
Have fun!
*I found a bug. You may have to delete the phones directory list using the phone’s menus. And then reboot the phone for it to pickup on the directory changes.*

Whos says Office phones are boring?

This weekend I’ve rearranged the soft keys for my VOIP Lobby Phone to be a bit easier and intuitive for family and friends.The phone’s default key layout is structured for an office environment, but because it’s being used in a home I’ve had to make some minor adjustments. Here’s how I did it:

After using the Aastra 57i for the past couple of months, I found the default key layout didn’t work well in a home environment. I am currently running various scripts provided by Nerd Vittles that auto provisions the telephone for me. Auto provisioning allows you to setup many phones very quickly with a standard setup. The default scripting provided by Aastra and improved upon by the community makes the Aastra 57i hard to beat.

Here’s the steps I took to change the key layout:

To change the default soft key layout you need to locate a file on your Asterisk server

/var/www/html/aastra/asterisk/demo-user.prf

Open up the demo-user.prf file in a text editor and look for the title of your phone.

My bit of code for the Aastra57i now looks like this

[Aastra57i]
###############################################################################
# Top Key 1: Services
# Top Key 2: Calls
# Top Key 3: Voice Mail
# Top Key 4: DND
# Top Key 5: Day/Night
# Top Key 6: Presence
# Key 1: Phonebook
# Key 2: Call Forward
# Key 3: Park Call
# Key 4: Intercom
# Key 5: Extensions
# Key 6: Meet-me
# Key 7: Queues
# Key 8: MP3 Player
# Key 9: Speed Dial
# Key 10: ACD
# Key 20: Logout
###############################################################################

# SIP Lines
sip line1 screen name 2: Ext. $$AA_SIPUSERNAME_AA$$

# Intercom and Paging
sip intercom type: 2
sip intercom prefix code: $$AA_INTERCOM_CODE_AA$$
sip intercom line: 3

# Global Park
sprecode: asterisk;$$AA_PARKINGLOT_AA$$

# System Softkeys
topsoftkey1 type:services
topsoftkey1 label:Services

topsoftkey2 type:callers
topsoftkey2 label:Calls
topsoftkey2 states: idle, connected, incoming, outgoing, busy

topsoftkey3 type:xml
topsoftkey3 label:Voice Mail
topsoftkey3 value:http://$$AA_XML_SERVER_AA$$/$$AA_XMLDIRECTORY_AA$$/asterisk/vmail.php?ext=$$SIPUSERNAME$$
topsoftkey3 states:idle

topsoftkey4 type:xml
topsoftkey4 label:DND
topsoftkey4 value:http://$$AA_XML_SERVER_AA$$/$$AA_XMLDIRECTORY_AA$$/asterisk/dnd.php?user=$$SIPUSERNAME$$
topsoftkey4 states:idle

topsoftkey5 type:xml
topsoftkey5 label:Day/Night
topsoftkey5 value:http://$$AA_XML_SERVER_AA$$/$$AA_XMLDIRECTORY_AA$$/asterisk/daynight.php?user=$$SIPUSERNAME$$

topsoftkey6 type:xml
topsoftkey6 label:Presence
topsoftkey6 value:http://$$AA_XML_SERVER_AA$$/$$AA_XMLDIRECTORY_AA$$/asterisk/away.php?user=$$SIPUSERNAME$$

softkey1 type:directory
softkey1 label:Phonebook
softkey1 states:idle, connected, incoming, outgoing, busy

softkey2 type:xml
softkey2 label:Call Fwd
softkey2 value:http://$$AA_XML_SERVER_AA$$/$$AA_XMLDIRECTORY_AA$$/asterisk/cfwd.php?user=$$SIPUSERNAME$$
softkey2 states:idle

softkey3 type:xml
softkey3 label:Parking
softkey3 value:http://$$AA_XML_SERVER_AA$$/$$AA_XMLDIRECTORY_AA$$/asterisk/park.php
softkey3 states:idle

softkey4 type: icom
softkey4 label: Intercom

softkey5 type: xml
softkey5 label: Extensions
softkey5 value: http://192.168.1.2:80/aastra/asterisk/directory.php?user=$$SIPUSERNAME$$

softkey6 type:xml
softkey6 label:Meet-me
softkey6 value:http://$$AA_XML_SERVER_AA$$/$$AA_XMLDIRECTORY_AA$$/asterisk/meetme.php?ext=$$SIPUSERNAME$$
softkey6 states:idle connected

softkey7 type:xml
softkey7 label:Queues
softkey7 value:http://$$AA_XML_SERVER_AA$$/$$AA_XMLDIRECTORY_AA$$/asterisk/queues.php
softkey7 states:idle connected

softkey8 type:xml
softkey8 label:Music
softkey8 value:http://$$AA_XML_SERVER_AA$$/$$AA_XMLDIRECTORY_AA$$/asterisk/music.php?user=$$SIPUSERNAME$$
softkey8 states:idle

softkey9 type:xml
softkey9 label:Speed Dial
softkey9 value:http://$$AA_XML_SERVER_AA$$/$$AA_XMLDIRECTORY_AA$$/asterisk/speed.php?user=$$SIPUSERNAME$$

softkey10 type: xml
softkey10 label: ACD Agent
softkey10 value: http://$$AA_XML_SERVER_AA$$/$$AA_XMLDIRECTORY_AA$$/asterisk/agent.php?agent=$$SIPUSERNAME$$
softkey10 states: idle

softkey20 type:xml
softkey20 label:Logout
softkey20 value:http://$$AA_XML_SERVER_AA$$/$$AA_XMLDIRECTORY_AA$$/asterisk/logout.php?user=$$SIPUSERNAME$$
softkey20 states:idle

###############################################################


Now go into your TFTP or FTP boot folder and remove the MAC.cfg file associated with the phones you’d like to update the keys on. In my directory was a file named 00095E121C43J.cfg. I backed the file up and then deleted it from the tftpboot folder.
I then went to var/cache/aastra/ and opened up a file named startup_asterisk.cfg. I deleted the bits of text associated with my extensions. So in my case I deleted:
[1000]
mac=00095E121C43J
ip=192.168.1.167
model=Aastra57i
Once everything was removed. I saved the file.
I then rebooted the Aastra phone.
When the phone was done rebooting I was presented with my new layout.
Done

I embedded the video in HD by adding &ap=%2526fmt%3D22 to the end of the url.
This
http://www.youtube.com/v/ImwHHdI8s0A&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0
became
http://www.youtube.com/v/ImwHHdI8s0A&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&ap=%2526fmt%3D22

You’ll have to edit a few things manually to your own tastes. I won’t go into that depth.
I’m very new to blogging, so please all you guru’s out there share your Word Press Pro-tips and help me Pimp My Ride.

I just sold your soul for this car

Here’s how I got the theme up and running
____________________________________________
.Download your new theme to a directory on your PC. The theme usually comes zipped up. The file I downloaded was hybrid.zip
.Log into cPanel and go to the File Manager.
.Go into your word press blog site directory. Should look something like /public_html/blog/yourblog/wp-content/themes.
.Upload the hybrid.zip file into the /public_html/blog/yourblog/wp-content/themes directory.
.Unzip and upload the files included in the zipfile to blog/wp-content/themes/hybrid
.Once all the files are in your word press themes folder, Log into your word press account as admin.
.Click on “Appearance” in the left hand column of WordPress.
.Select the new theme.
Done

_____________________________________________