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04-13-2002
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#1 (permalink) |
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Registered Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 7
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X10 Cameras?
Now that everyone has 2.4Ghz omnis with decent reception, and yagis with pretty high gain, has anyone looked into attaching an N connector to a X10 A/V reciever? While out stumbling, it would be entertaining to see what people are using these for. Apparently the popunder campaign they've been running has been pretty successfull, so there should be at least some around.
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04-14-2002
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#2 (permalink) |
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Registered Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Southern Indiana, USA
Posts: 45
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X10 & popups
Great, just what I need to get into now. Sniffing out X10 video! Yea right. This hobby is breaking me up already and now you suggest this.
 I just ordered a 15dB omni and 75' of LMR 400 coax. In a couple of weeks it's gonna be an amp. Looks like you have the opportunity to be the first on the X10. OneGuy  |
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04-15-2002
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#3 (permalink) |
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Posts: n/a
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Logical next step, huh? Stumbling video points!
Slashdot had a thread on this (from the NYT article) Saturday: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0...21&mode=thread |
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04-16-2002
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#4 (permalink) |
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Registered Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Northern Suburbs, Chicago, IL
Posts: 142
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Anyone actually strumbled X10??
Okay, to stumble X10 Video (shitty video... oh well)
you would need at minimum the following: 1 - X10 Receiver - A/V Mono# VR31A [$49.99] Video Only# VR36A(Tiny) [$39.99] 1 - Video Display Monitor with RCA Inputs. (Tv) [$??] 1 - RCA A/V Cable ($5.00) To do this on a laptop, you need: 1 - X10 Reciever (See above models) 1 - Video2USB Adaptor - #VA11A 1 - Laptop with USB (See X10.com for min Specs) 1 - Display Software (Multiview, Xray, Other??) The only problem I see is that the VIDEO/USB cable doesnt allow you to scan the 4 channels on the camera's... the software doesnt provide any way either... So i think you would have to manually switch it on the reciever unit. Or remove the switch and wire it to a serial/parallel/usb controller to autoswitch it. Personally I would want to tear the reciever apart, add an external Ant jack, maybe wire the PC Cable in permanent, keep the connections down to a minimum... maybe see if the USB unti has extra unused conenctions to wire the Channel switch to it... Anyone help me out here? Am I wrong?
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-Jeffrowe |
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04-16-2002
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#7 (permalink) |
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Registered Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 13
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As for the receiver sensitivity issue, I know Icom makes a pretty sweet handheld radio/video scanner receiver. This covers up -> the x10 frequency range and allows for external antennas also....has a cool little color lcd screen too....sweeet
http://www.icomamerica.com/receivers.../icr3main.html is it just me or did my previous account get totally screwed up? Permissions and all that jazz... |
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04-16-2002
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#8 (permalink) | |
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Registered Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Tampa, FL
Posts: 47
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Hum....wonder what 802.11b signals...
Quote:
...look like. This has GOT to be a cool toy. Tron Of Borg (of to Toys-R-us)
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Tron Of Borg |
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04-16-2002
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#9 (permalink) |
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Registered Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Tampa, FL
Posts: 47
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Found some info...
...on the IC-R3.
"NOTE: Unblocked (cell phone frequencies -- 816-901MHz) version available for government and export. ***IC-R3 -- ICOM Handheld Portable Video/Audio Receiver ----- $459.00 ***IC-R3-U -- ICOM Handheld Portable Video/Audio Receiver (unblocked) ----- $599.00" Notice that it can be unblocked. Whether this is a different chip or what I don't know. Also, you can hook a VCR up to it! Tron Of Borg
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Tron Of Borg |
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04-17-2002
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#10 (permalink) |
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Registered Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Tallahassee
Posts: 43
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pirate TV? Hams do it legally!
I actually have a 10 watt television station (http://www.hamtv.com) on 434.000MHz. You see as a ham you can do these things! You can broadcast anything you want as long as it's to another ham and not commercial in nature. Pretty fun stuff. I get about 7 mile coverage. Been using a 21 element beam antenna about 70 feet up. Got the space shuttle video from NASA Select running at the moment so my ham friends can catch the action.Hopefully we'll get the TV repeater up soon.
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04-17-2002
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#11 (permalink) |
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Registered Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 13
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I too am a ham but I think the thing interesting about the x10 is the same as with 802.11 stumbling.... even though we could use Packet for data, 802.11 is interesting and challenging because people are using it in a commercial environment, thinking that it's secure.
Just as with 802.11, we are proving that most AP's are not secure, we can do the same with x10!  |
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04-17-2002
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#12 (permalink) |
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Registered Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Northern Suburbs, Chicago, IL
Posts: 142
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A Good use for those WINwifi's
Consider this... an 802.11b card cant be used to pull direct 2.4ghz signals, because the whole platform/standard is built into chips on the card... meaning there is not way around the structure of packets and communications the card uses.
(my take on what ive read) Imagine that maybe these special chips will be pulled and the packet building and such will be given over to software drivers/etc... effectivelly givign us a 2.4ghz radio that can be controlled by software... get a Spread Spectrum program that lets you try and pick up Cordless phone conversations... pickup the X10 camera's... hell even any future encrypted units would be effectively sniffable if not at first crackable... As for the X10... doesnt anyone knwo if the channel switching is controlable by software? My assumtion is still that it is a physical switch and cnnot be 'scanned' in the multiview type software...
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-Jeffrowe |
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04-17-2002
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#13 (permalink) |
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Registered Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 7
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Reciever mods...
I started looking into this a bit more.. Looks like there's a 4 position switch that controlls channel selection. It would be relatively simple to put in a PIC to control switching through channels. A circuit similar to this http://www.qsl.net/kd2bd/vor.html could be used to detect the valid video signal, then stop on a channel until sync is lost..
Any good electrical engineers out there? I can spec it out, but I can't put a circuit together worth a damn... |
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04-17-2002
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#14 (permalink) |
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Registered Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 11
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Switching channels
I would imagine you could hook up a simple 7400 series binary counter IC to do the trick. Of course depending on the encoding of the rotary switch it may not switch in A->B->C->D order, but who cares? If you do care, you can hack the binary counter with some XOR gates. Have that driven by a 555 timer IC with a pot to adjust your timing and a switch to stop the timer and you're set. Adding sync detection in place of a manual stop would really be cool.
Next week I'll order up some X10 gear and let you guys know what progress is made. If anyone else is interested in a project like this, drop me a line in here. Steve |
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04-18-2002
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#15 (permalink) |
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Registered Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 7
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I just ordered an AV reciever and cam combo.. ($89 or something like that, comes with a *free* tripod and battery pack ..whoopdeefreakingdo..).. Hopefully the damn thing is IR sensitive. I've got a groundhog I've been meaning to deal with. I'll post some pictures of the boards when I get it. From what I've seen, its not a rotary switch, just a simple 4 position rocker, in a DIP pinout. Should be pretty easy to fake out. Adding the external antenna should be cake. I'll probably do it up just like my D-Link with RJ74 and an SMA connector. That way it'll either work with my omni, or the parabolic.
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Linear Mode
