Surveillance with old CCTV Cameras

It seems that most of the time I go dumpster diving, I find a CCTV (Closed-Circuit Television) camera or two. Or three. I've picked up quite a few, and left many, many more to rot in the landfill. Some have worked well. Others haven't. We're going to have some fun with them. As more and more companies go high-tech with snazzy digital recording systems, you can often find older CCTV cameras on eBay and Craigslist for cheap. Or in dumpsters for free.

The Broken Ones
There are always broken ones. You can get them for cheap or free as mentioned above. Surf eBay for "Parts only" when looking at CCTV cameras and you'll find a suitable one. The easiest thing to do is to make it look like a real CCTV to give would-be bad-guys the impression that they're being recorded. While this is much akin to security through obscurity, making a fake camera out of one that used to work is a lot more convincing than this:



Compare that piece of crap to my finished product at the end of this section.

First, take the old, broken CCTV apart and gut it to make room for a battery and LED. See the following photos.







Then, drill a hole in the front plate for the LED.



For the next part, I taped a low-brightness 1.7v red LED to a AA battery. Let's face it, this whole fake camera idea is pretty shifty. There's no point in putting a whole lot of finesse into it. LEDs like this one usually drain between 10 and 20 mA, so a plain old AA battery without a resistor should keep this LED lit up for more than a week.



Then, tape the battery/LED down inside the chasm left in the camera and re-assemble it so that the LED sticks out.





It looks real because it IS REAL (well, it used to be!)


Hang it up somewhere and hook all the cables up. They don't have to be actually hooked up to anything on the other end, just tuck them into the ceiling or run them to a wall plate. No one could tell this isn't real by just looking.





The working ones
Although these cameras all have BNC connectors on the back, the signal they put out is typical composite NTSC -- The same thing most VCRs put out. You need a BNC-to-RCA adapter (shown left) and then an RCA video cable and a monitor to view it on. This can be an RFU-adapter hooked up to a TV, or in my case a portable DVD player with A/V inputs. You could just as easily get a video capture card or USB adapter to record the video straight to your hard drive if you felt so inclined.

First, hook up the RCA adapter, RCA cable, and power cables to the camera and mount it somewhere.

Then, hook the other end of the RCA cable up, and enjoy your working CCTV system!

Upgrade your mobo BIOS without Windows or DOS.

Sometimes you find a nifty piece of hardware that you just can't let go into disuse. This time around it was a Tualatin Pentium 3-S 1266MHz CPU new-old stock, new-in-box. I got it some time ago to upgrade a PC for family that it turns out just upgraded the whole system instead. Thus it sat around in the box until I ran across a mobo to drop it in. Recently I found a system at my favorite shopping destination (Surplus Exchange) that had a Tualatin capable mobo; the DFI CM33-TL just so happens to max out a the 1.26Ghz P3-S I already had. Even nicer is that it is the Rev C board which with the newer BIOS updates can boot from USB and can do 48-bit ATA addressing. Alas, no AGP slot. So why all the love for an old P3 server chip? The later P3-S could outperform the early P4 chips and use half the wattage! So what do we do when all that we have to boot the system with is a non-Microsoft OS and most BIOS update utilities run in Windows, or use disk creation software the runs in Windows/DOS? Luckily it seems that is is possible to update some mobos without having to resort to using an unwanted OS. DFI has made the CM33-TL able to boot from a floppy or run a program under Windows to flash the BIOS - or enter an update mode that simply reads the flash utility and BIOS file from a floppy. It turns out that it is a good thing they enabled all three. Under a fairly standard Ubuntu Linux install I was able create a floppy the the DFI board could update from by combining the BIOS update features in a way DFI didn't document.

Several steps that worked for me:
1. Nab the BIOS update of choice for your mobo & revision. Be sure your file is correct - close doesn't cut it with a BIOS. It's either an exact match or something won't work right. In my case I could nab the smaller download intended for a Windows-based update utility.
2. Extract the .zip file containing the utility and BIOS image. Many of the .exe files manufacturers supply are programs meant to run under DOS or a DOS shell to create a disk image. By having the .zip we can get around that.
3. Copy the extracted files to a freshly formatted and tested floppy (basic FAT12/MS-DOS format is fine). Having a good floppy is very key to a successful flash. GIGO is an important point to consider when doing something that can brick a system.
4. Reboot the system and be ready to press the BIOS flash key(s) when prompted. On the CM33-TL you press Alt-F2 just after the RAM test and floppy seek.
5. The BIOS will then enter the flash update mode and read the floppy. If it determines the BIOS image is compatible it will begin to flash it to the BIOS chip.
6. Once it's done enter the BIOS setup and "Load Safe Defaults". This will let the BIOS set any settings that might cause the system to fail to boot. Go though the menus and set things as you need.
7. Test boot to be sure it works as before. Test boot again using the new features and marvel at the sudden uses that have opened up.

I had been concerned about having to make a bootable floppy for the update but the BIOS option to enter the update mode does not need a fully bootable floppy to operate.

With a system like this it is possible to operate a NAS system with large drives on a chip that boots from a USB thumb drive, operate on older, cheap RAM and uses little power. Having a system that boots from USB allows you to configure the server to spin down drives that are idle and save more power; an OS on a USB device will not need to spin up the main/RAID drives to write logs, etc. Smart choices of hardware can make a cobbled together server operate more efficiently.

Dumpster Diving - TV Repair

-- OR --

One man's trash is another man's project.

Introduction
I dumpster dive. No, I really do. I do it quite frequently, and often find plenty of cool things. Locks. Electronics. Jackets. Tools. Jimmy Hoffa. Computers. All sorts of useful things.

This morning, it was a TV set, complete with the remote control. Throwaway TVs are so common that it's almost annoying. Usually, it's something minor that's failed. This day and age, people are always looking for a good reason to make the jump to some new 80-inch high-def whiz-bang wall ornament. If the most minor thing goes wrong with their current 5-year-old set, it's game over, and time to upgrade.

Warning about televisions and computer monitors
Devices with CRT screens can contain a dangerous amount of stored electricity. Keep your hands away from large transformers, thick red or black cables, and the soldered side of the PC board inside the CRT device. We don't want people getting hurt, so please do some research if you're unfamiliar with CRT devices.

My find and today's fun project
It was about 40 degrees this morning, so when I brought the TV set inside, it immediately began forming condensation. I left it alone until I could plug it in and check it out this evening. The last thing I need to do is destroy a good TV by plugging it in while it's soaking up moisture from the air in my apartment.

When I get home, I see that it looks to be in pretty good shape. Nice! I plugged it in, and it powered on with the power button. So far so good! When I went to plug the coaxial cable into it, though...



Great. So that's why this thing is in the dumpster! I went ahead and grabbed the coax cable anyways, and touched the center pin of the coax to the metal tab inside the hole, and to my surprise, I got a signal and a pretty good picture.

A quick trip to RadioShack should fix this pretty easily.



I plug in the Soldering iron so it's ready to go. Did you know I also found this soldering iron in a dumpster? That was about 5 years ago, but it's still going strong!



Then, I start hacking away...



Once the case is open, I see that the F-Connector's location is obscured within the tuner module, so then it's a fun game of "disassemble the tuner"



The back side of these F-connectors are too deep. To offset this problem, I put one more nut on the F-connector, then put the connector onto the tuner, hand-tightened. I leaned the old broken center pin against the new center pin tab.



I threw the trusty needlenose attachments onto my Gerber Evolution, and went to work actually tightening the F-connector to the tuner housing.



I then applied a little bit of solder, making sure that the solder "flows" well, so we don't get a cold solder joint...



Final re-assembly begins with putting the tuner back together again. See the nice, new, shiny F-connector?



By the way, it worked perfectly once I put it all back together. :)