I want to set up a system for watching birds, seeing when visitors come to the door, and keeping an eye on the kids.
To that end, I picked up a Panasonic network camera (bl-c210a) and a Lenovo q150 net top.
So far, I’ve just unpacked the q150. The documentation is sparse, but the device is fairly simple. The version I got has the nvidia ion graphics, so in theory this will stream and decode some excellent video, but thats not my primary application (yet), so comments on that area will have to wait.
The q150 came with a spiffy little micro keyboard/trackball, and absolutely no documentation. I had to read the description on the web about 20 times to finally figure out the the USB micro dongle is stored in the battery compartment! Plug in and a reboot and away it went.
Next step is to hook up the camera. The bl-c210a I bought came with a PoE (power over Ethernet) adapter, so I’ll only have to run an Ethernet cable to wherever I put it. I debated running power and going 802.11 wireless, but this felt like a better compromise. At some point I might set up some 802.11 cameras at the bird feeders and see if I can run them from solar, but that’s for the future.
I’ll follow up when I have the camera running.
Homarne 