hardware

HikVision HWP-N2404IH-DE3 PTZ controls

Recently I came into the possession of a HikVision HWP-N2404IH-DE3 mini PTZ camera. It has POE, RTSP, ONVIF, can pan/tilt/zoom remotely, has optical zoom etc.. Hardware wise the camera is great. Proper build quality, nothing to complain about here. But the IT part looks better on paper than IRL. Worst thing is that I could not use the PTZ controls in the webinterface, because they require some Windows .exe to be installed to get that working.

Thinkpad T420 - CMOS battery replacement

A long time ago I bought several Lenovo Thinkpad T420 laptops (used of course). But my wife’s laptop gave her the dreaded error (after power loss): Real Time Clock Error - Check Date and Time settings. Press Esc to continue or F1 to enter Setup. Finally I got fed up with it, so I swapped out her old CMOS backup battery with a new one. Then I also did the same for my other T420’s.

Evoluent Vertical Mouse 4 - Disable blue LED light

For a while I’ve been using the Evoluent VerticalMouse 4 Right. At first I had to get used to this type of mouse, but after a day or so, I already got used to it. The strain on your wrist/arm is much less with a vertical mouse, so I can really recommend it. But I cannot recommend the blue LED light at the front of the mouse (facing the user). It’s a very bright LED with no added value to the user.

Current microphone setup

Today a friend asked me what my microphone setup looked like. He saw the mic arm and it peaked his interest. So why not share it in general… History My gaming headset broke and I had to fall back to my Sony MDR-7506 headphones and well, they are really comfortable and the audio quality is great. I looked around at the prices for a new gaming headset and was quite shocked at how much they nowaday cost.

UPS power distribution soldering

At home I have an APC Back-UPS CS500 UPS (BK500) to ensure my systems have just enough time to power down gracefully when a poweroutage occurs (or keep working until the battery runs out). It includes a USB cable which you can connect to a machine (works perfectly with apcupsd) so the Operating System knows that the power is gone and you are running on battery power. CS500 - picture from APC

Sansa Clip Sport

A while ago I bought a Sansa Clip Sport to replace my old portable music player. It is not the cheapest around, but I wanted one with a display so I can see and select specific files (since I also listen to audiobooks, as well as music). With 8GB of storage, MP3/WMA/AAC/Ogg/WAV/FLAC support, micro USB connectivity, a microSDHC port to add more storage space, pretty decent battery life and at a price just below 50 euro's, it seemed to to be the perfect match for me.