Bandwidth The ADSL connection in the barn is currently only providing 256kb up and 2mb down. This is less than BT suggested it would do and it turns out that BT did no enable ADSL2 for our line like they promised. Andy is chasing the man from BT to see if [...]

Webcam ok The software we use on the VERA server to relay the video stream and capture motion crashed. I have written a script to restart it if this happens, there was nothing wrong with the kit on site.

Camera up your pole Today I customized one of our webcams so we could use a DC extension lead to power it and with Emma’s help installed what we hope is a permanent camera up the pole attached to HQ. I didn't want to run 230 volts (straight from a generator) up the pole [...]

Webcams are go Today we set up a webcam in HQ as a test. The camera can be viewed over the Internet while the generator is on and the software I wrote should create videos of each day for the site. The live webcams and the recorded videos are all available from this [...]

ITS FTW Andy has completed the site infrastructure. This post contains the details of the last few bits and bobs that were sorted out. We have the WiFi access ready to use from the trench. We had a temporary cable running out to HQ which has now been replaced with a permanent cable [...]

Todays score was ITS 1, cows 0 Our ITS engineers returned to work on the WiFi and among other things we now have an 802.11b link to the barn. I arrived after the Silchester training day lunch to lend some moral support, here are some pictures of the new infrastructure. One of the things which has been causing [...]

Simple on site tests of the webcams While the ITS guys were hacking at the local WiFi link I tried out the wireless cameras we have for the site. This post has some un-exciting videos that at least proove the cameras work in the great out-doors. I used the same ffmpeg settings as the motion captured movies. ffmpeg -i [...]

ITS vs cows (dig setup day 2) Today we finished sorting out the Ethernet LAN, generators and electrical cabling. The ITS staff continued to work on the problems with the WiFi link to the barn. Here are some pictures of what we have been up to. This is the LAN connection to the classroom. It runs out the [...]

Setting up at the dig Today was the IT setup day for the 2008 dig. At the moment we have no local WiFi or WAN Wifi link, we do have LAN to all but 1 PC and we have the IT generator going. We have had a number of technical issues with the new WiFi [...]

Silchester Server moved today - lets not do it again! Today we moved the IADB and the silchester website to a new server. The idea being that we can better look after them if they are closer to home. Did it go smoothly?

How to unpack a deb or rpm package Under Debian or Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install atool aunpack -F a packagefoo_i386.deb Using RedHat or similar: rpm2cpio packagefoo.i386.rpm | cpio -idmv