Published on
August 5, 2008 in
Techie.
Those boxes of old photos we have in closets around here are great. Before our director of programming left a few years ago she dug through all sorts of archive boxes to pull together lots of old photos and items from the churches history. She had been here for 18 years, starting as the children’s minister.
There were a lot of pictures, but not piles of them. They were taken on film cameras and only the best ones were saved. Many of them had been lost or glued onto big poster board displays where they were linked into context.
This came to mind today as I was looking through the directory of our missions department. The director of missions recently went back to work at a church closer to where his family lives. A lot of things have changed over the 7 years he has been here, and one of them is noticeable by the pictures he left behind. Lots of them. As more and better digital cameras went out on missions and service trips our number and size of photos increased.
Between our missions and sports ministries we have more than 100GB of photos and videos. Our student and children’s ministry has a large collection, and our adult ministries have quite a few as well. We are starting to update our Arena database with many of the plain images of individuals, but that still leaves a lot of photos that we don’t want to just delete.
Is there a program out there to help us manage all of this content? Something we can dump it into and find it in the future?
Published on
January 18, 2007 in
Security.
I enjoy web cams. No, not the dirty ones, the scenic ones. With a little searching in Google you can find all sorts of amazing views.
The widespread use of web cams has not been missed by the government. The Department of Homeland Security has a study on using face recognition and anomaly recognition software with public web cams to determine if something has happened based upon whether there are many fewer people or many more people in the scene than statistically expected (one study can be found here: PDF file). There have been several papers in the FBI concerning home web cams left open to the world. There was even a recent FBI notice concerning web cams in sensitive areas.
If you are like us then you probably have cameras looking at areas where there is not a good physical presence much of the time. Having this available for people to check out gives them an opportunity to see patterns of activity and vulnerability.
If you have cameras accessible outside your network just make sure you have them on a password. Perhaps do some “site:” searching in Google on the domain name or IP address you view the cameras on.
Warning: the following post was written in several odd sittings and may seem a bit disjointed. If you are not interested in this camera then you will want to skip this item. If you are interested this will serve as an intro to hacking its controls to make it work the way you need it to work.
I recently installed a DCS-5300 in the Worship Center and I thought I would share information on it with others.
Continue reading ‘DCS-5300 Pan / Tilt / Digital Zoom Network Camera’
This might be Mark Schultz, but I’m not sure. I’m here doing security rather than for the concert itself. However I do have a more live picture here than they do on the official site (until they update their site). It’s low quality, I edited it and zoomed a bit using the graphics editors little secret MSPaint. They keep it a secret in hopes nobody ever uses it.
I’m sitting at the security desk watching security cameras and listening to a looping video of a violinist (perhaps more like a Celtic Fiddler?). I’m not sure how the person at that booth stands listening to it loop for hours on end. She must hear it in her sleep (note: This is not a judgment on the instrument, the player, or the music).
The Worship Center is pretty full. 1800 people, maybe? They all get to exit through a few doors, but the signature tables are in the way of a hasty exit.
We finished with Intermission alittle while ago. I am surprised at the number of people who asked about where the concession stand is, and the number who were surprised that a church wouldn’t have one. I don’t think we could keep up with the clean-up caused by a concession stand at a concert in our main worship center.
Anyway, I need to go lock some doors. In addition to the concert at one end of the building we have a volleyball tournament at the other and they just finished up. That means its time to secure some more areas and turn out lights.
Published on
September 18, 2006 in
Security.
“Seven cameras in Middlesbrough town centre have a facility, which allows operators to bark orders at those involved in anti-social behaviour.” -Â BBC News UK
Our DCS-3220g cameras have this ability.
I have been tempted to use them in different areas of the church with the speakers mounted above the ceiling tiles. Then I could not only tell people to close doors, but maybe even cause a few “religious experiences.”
I could collect a list of open volunteer positions and then recruit via talking camera. So far I have had a few people respond positively to the idea. Mainly people who need to recruit volunteers.
I have been checking out Mach Speed TV5 from Trio.
While I hate the current Trio I am using, this one looks more interesting.
I like the camera and DVR features built in. I also like that it has 512 internal + an SD expansion slot so I could buy 512 of Kingston flash for about $15 and get a gig or buy a few extra for more storage.
I’m not sure it has the best picture quality, but I would rather have a so-so camera with me all the time than the best camera in the world with me only on rare occasions. Even a crummy picture will bring back memories in the future.
Drawbacks:
- No FM
- No flash
- No zoom
- Uncertain about its focusing capabilities (doubtful)
- The instructions show a picture of the screen where they spell Calendar as “Calenda” and I may be Southern, but I can still spel.
I am also interested in having a portable item with a wifi capable web browser so I can check out church security cameras while walking around the building. This is making the phone option look better, but I have already been issued a phone that is rubberized and durable since there are many opportunities for it to fall while working (Motorola i530).
I don’t keep the “Security” catagory very straight laced sometimes, but I do have an interest in where security cameras make it into the news in interesting ways.
Man steals a maltese puppy by hiding it in his pants.
I am surprised the puppy didn’t fall out the bottom of his shorts. Unless he placed it in his underware. AAAGH! Maybe he had two pairs of underwear on to allow a space for the dog.
Crossroads Christian Church in Grand Prairie got a positive note in the press about security in their building.
- Limited access to children’s area built into the plan.
- Cameras keeping an eye on the classrooms
- Guardians checked before even reaching the area
Our building was not designed to this level, but we are able to keep kids back behind doors until pick-up. However, it is something to consider with our new building.
I have 2 cameras mounted on their holders but just setting on high platforms (the mounts give them better aiming and let them dissipate heat better). Another one is screwed down into a high platform. I have several mounted to walls (you can see examples here). We even have a DCS-900w mounted to a ceiling tile (the 900 series has a mounting hole on the top in addition to the standard bottom mounting hole to make this very easy). However, there are two camera mounts that seem to elicit the most interest.
We have a large worship center. The ceiling of the room is not really accessible nor available for camera mounting. The walls are foot thick steel reinforced concrete and I am not mounting anything into them. Most other mountable areas would cause the cameras to be distracting. There is, however, a catwalk. That is where I decided to mount these cameras.
Continue reading ‘The Gaffer Tape Cams’
Published on
July 21, 2006 in
Techie.
You would normally think that the only arguments a printer would have with a camera would be over color depth or image quality. Not so.
I have been taking some time lately to better document our network. Lanspy has been a very helpful tool for this, as have Excel and my tendency to be a bit of an anal neat freak when it comes to organizing information.
One of the DCS-900w cameras suffered a blow recently, and I believe it was from a severe power hit we took at the church. The camera still works when cabled, but the wireless connection is most likely toast. We have other locations where it can be used with an ethernet cable so even if we are unable to fix it I can still put it to use.
The interesting part of the problem was that when I went to test it by visiting its IP address with my browser I found a printer there instead. The printer had been used by an employee who left back in November and apparently nobody had been using it since then. It was hooked up to a new employee’s computer earlier this week and its wireless capabilities were unkowingly activated and it took its place on the same IP address as my camera. I reconfigured it to another address until I could determine whether it needed network address and then moved the camera as well.
A similar event happened today as a computer on the system was assigned the IP of another camera that was being worked on. I had to wait until the person left for the day before I could pull that camera out into a better IP range.
It is amazing how quickly the IP range has been filling. We have several VOIP phones at the office annex, our new smart switches to maintain VOIP QOS, wireless access points, network based security cameras, network printers, network routers and server, and of course all those workstations.
On another note. While scanning the network for a piece of equipment not found on the IP list I was surprised to find a new computer on the system names “christ.” I know we want to have Jesus at the center of our church, but I didn’t think he needed a work station. If he did then I am sure it would be an XP, and definitely not an Apple. A moment later I realized that it was the computer of a new employee. Because we base email addresses and computer names off of first name and first letter of last name there will be a little confusion with Chris T.
