Pelco's DS software seems to be running very smooth and has been stable for the last month on a VM server. We only have a few cameras on it but seems to be running flawlessly.
Recently in Projects Category
RA and other student activity groups will now have access to a new Portal application where they can request electronic equipment from Housing. Students can pick a day and see a list of equipment that is available; they then can select multiple items to checkout. This app with then notify housing so the equipment can be ready for pickup. This process also helps create a history of item checkouts for the student as well as the housing office.
Myron and myself have been working on a system designed to find and track rogue routers here on the WOU campus. We are setting up a program to detect, gather information, and report these routers to us. We have tested some preliminary aspects to confirm concepts we have talked about. We are still in the planning phase and plan on talking to Paul regarding the integration of this system with What's Up gold.
Moving from 17.0 to 17.5
This upgrade was again hounded by errors like the previous CBORD upgrade. However we were able to eventually get this upgrade finished and working.
The upgrade process took about 1.5 hrs before it would fail and let us know we were a "No Go". All attempts to upgrade failed at the point of enabling the database triggers. Only once did we get an error message that resembled an error code, all other failed attempts just stopped or said "FAILED" with no codes or indications of why.
Luckily the Tech team at Computriton seemed knowledgeable and was ready and willing to help. The upgrade ended up starting at 1pm on Thursday and finished at 11:15am Tuesday, We were closed Sat, Sun, and Mon.
This term I assumed a new role as a programmer, my first project was “making some simple changes to the layout of an existing program”. So I jumped in head first, bad idea. First off the scope of the project was much larger than I realized, since I had not seen the code behind the application, nor had I used the application. As I changed one thing 2 others broke, and so on, not to mention we were about to start our fall term, and I was very busy with that and a new hire. I had about 40hrs of work to do each day, too bad there are only 24hrs in a day. To compound the problem, users were actively using the application as I was trying to update it, causing more problems, not the best model to work on live cone, but had to be done. Finally comes testing, and not knowing the application or process testing was a bit difficult at best, and between adding new feature/changes and fixing bugs as some users reported them testing was not getting done in a timely manner. I will remember next time not to agree on a project until the full scope is given and is time is given to work on the project… trial by fire
Today I wore the telecom hat, I went around with Bill Kicks installing and troubleshooting some of the new network drops. We were in a hurry as Michael and the guy from CBOARD was right behind us installing the new cash registers. Even with the few networking problems the setup went good and all the cash registers were online by the end of the day. These new registers are nice, and will one day allow debit/credit transactions, crossing fingers.
I spent a good portion of the day today installing power adapters for the 3com mini switches in Heritage, I am tying them up so students will not accidentally take them with them on move out. This will take another day, but for now I am caught up to the paint crew so I will give them a day or two and the finish this project up.
It that time again.. It seems like I just removed the switch power adapters and now it is time to reinstall the adapters again. Michael and I took an adapter and tested out the method of how we want to secure the adapters. Our goal is to install the adapters in such a way as to detour students from removing the adapters from the room on move out. We are going to zip-tie the adapters to the mounting plate. This will in all likely hood take a few days, timing is critical since we want to get in after the painters and before the new furniture arrives. We are also about to start another project, new registers for Campus Dinning.
Every year at this time we get the opportunity to collect, evaluate and process around 900 yellow Ethernet cables that were used by students in the residence halls last year. I would guess I am about half way through them. Each cable is checked for broken connectors and any cuts in the line. Then the cable is wrapped, twist tied and placed in a box for distribution next fall. Also a running count has to be made so we know how many need to be ordered for the new year. This is very time consuming. It is a hard and dirty job and I can not wait till its done. At least it is only a once a year project!!!
The help desk program is used by the Landers Computer Lab to track student resident computer problems. This new version is not a total re-write of the original code. The original cone has performed well over the last few years, however we have found a few areas that we feel can be improved upon. Here are some of the areas we are improving on:
The Student Search has been expanded from not only looking up First/Last name but we can now lookup students by room number/ building/ and phone number. We get a lot of messages where students do not leave us their names of their cell phone cut out and it makes it hard to get back to them so we feel this will improve communications with them.
The Call List now has an icon system built into it. Now based on the call service we can easily see is a computer has been checked in, if a room call is needed, if the call has been competed and so on. This makes it easy to see where the call is, and what still needs to be done at a fast glance.
The View call screen has some added features like call Status, so now we can see if the call is open, or competed, an email address for the student has been added for better communication, and we have integrated the closed calls with the open calls and rearranged the interface.
We plan on using this new system next fall term. I am hoping this will improve communication with students and fellow lab staff members.
I spent some time this last week updating everyone to the new Conference programmer software. This update requires users to go to the Oracle 10g client. The upgrade went smoothly on say 8 of the 10 users. The most significant problem was during one of the installs of the Oracle 10g client. There are some registry entries that were not getting made and made it impossible to connect to the database. This was really caused by the upgrade of the Oracle 8 to the Oracle 10g client. Here are the setting that the Oracle 8 client made, however when I updated to 10g the registry entries did not change.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSDTC\MTxOCI]
"OracleXaLib"="oraclient8.dll"
"OracleSqlLib"="orasql8.dll"
"OracleOciLib"="oci.dll"
So I had to manually change these registry entries to reflect the new Orical10g client. Here is the new registry entry.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSDTC\MTxOCI]
"OracleXaLib"="oraclient10.dll"
"OracleSqlLib"="orasql10.dll"
"OracleOciLib"="oci.dll"
I was getting an error saying that the username/ password was not correct. At first I thought it was the Client not having the proper tnsnames.ora file since you get that same error in this situation. I ended up calling the Seattle Technology group and after going over the setting we were almost at a dead end when the guy just decided “Hey we should check out this registry entry? I guess it has happened before but usually going from Oracle 7 to the oracle 8 client. We long story short, after the update to the registry entry there were no other issues.
New help desk system for the Landers Lab Staff. I have been working for the passed few weeks on adding the helpdesk system to the portal and giving it a few tweaks. The Landers Lab staff including myself reviewed the current HD system and found areas we would like to change. I added a few more filters, took some away, the ones that are not used. We are also going to introduce an icon based system so it will be easy for the tech to see what is still pending on the call without having to open the call all the way up and read all the notes. Also by adding it to the Portal we are continuing to make the portal a more robust functional and important tool.
We installed the Bradford Campus manager on the 7th. This last week I have spent hours upon hours decoding and writing custom pages for the Bradford box. Basically the CM works by redirecting a computer to a v-lan that is blocked to outgoing web traffic. A user has to meet the specifications we have set for the network in order to gain access to a live v-lan. This is all done through web page interaction. Users only need to setup their computer and try to get on the internet and it will redirect them, install a client, and check their computer. If they pass they get access. If not they are redirected to a remediation area where they can see the results of the scan and are given links to files or to out AV product to install. So far I have made about 16 pages and spent hours testing various conditions to get ready for our fall term move in. So far it looks like we should not have too many problems. Still keeping fingers crossed.
Well I’m still at it creating and refining the Housing and Dining web site. I have created 20 php pages so far, still a few more to go. Now I am in the process of moving content from the live pages and reorganizing it on the new site. Our intention is for students to get to whatever information they are looking for with-in 3 clicks and keep the page content to a minimum for ease of use.
This week I have been designing and adding content to the new web site for Housing and Dining. The new layout is going to be great. I can already tell there is a significant increase in the usability and flow of the new site. I can get to more information faster and easier. I seen that the new CSS color scheme went live and a few php files. Looks good and can not wait for them all to be done.
After Reading Mike Ross’s Blog on Oracle 10g XE I wanted to take a look at it. I figured I would replace my personal collection of various MS Access databases and my own MySQL database. But first I had to get the http interface to work and get SQL Developer working with it as well before I go destroying my old databases. I downloaded the 165 MB database and the client on my home computer. Not too bad with a 1.5 M/b connection, but could be better. Here are the steps to get the database hooked up to the http interface, I will use the built in HR Schema as the example.
(Steps 1 -3 are done from SQL Developer, step 4 is done on the Oracle Web interface)
Step 1:
Create a package speck and body, I used WEBTEST as mine.
Spec:
create or replace PACKAGE "WEBTEST" IS
procedure list;
END;
Body:
create or replace PACKAGE BODY "WEBTEST" IS
procedure list is
begin
htp.print('Hello World');
end list;
END;
Step 2:
grant execute on WEBTEST to anonymous;
Step 3:
Login to the System user
Go to ‘Other Users’
Select FLOWS_020100
The select the function ‘WWV_FLOW_EPG_INCLUDE_MOD_LOCAL’
Comment out or remove the “return false;’ statement
Find the ‘if upper(procedure_name) in ( ‘ and add your procedure.
Example:
if upper(procedure_name) in ('HR.WEBTEST.LIST') then
return TRUE;
else
return FALSE;
end if;
Step 4: (required for user to see from internet)
Log in to the Databse Web interface.
Under Administration select the task Manage HTTP Access
Select ‘Available from local server and remote clients’
And apply changes.
You should now be able to see the package online.
Sample path:
http://www.something.com/:8080/apex/hr.webtest.list
The Streamcam server has found a new home with all the other servers in UCS. We took advantage of this downtime to install a 1.0 Gbit network card that will make the server a little more snappy. The combination of the move and new NIC solved one of the camera delay issues we were having. So I will call today a very successful day. With more and more cameras coming day by day, month by month we will need every bit of speed and bandwidth to keep these cameras at peek performance.
We assembled some new Axis 232D network PTZ cameras. These Cameras will be nice additions to the overall security for the campus. The cameras were build by Bill, Michael, and myself during staff development. These we not typical camera setups, they had new housing they were installed into, with heaters and fans. They also required a unique power cable since they are going outside. The power cable had to be wired into the power junction box. We worked as an assembly line getting several of these cameras done during our limited time.
I am currently in the process of moving some of our older systems out and replacing them with Dell 4500’s. So far a few RA computers, the Peer Mentors computer, and the conference computer in housing have been replaced. I still have several to go to finish this project. This rollout of Dells will help us keep computer up to date and working for a lot of folks who have endured the slower processing speeds. We are replacing Dell 4100’s and even older DFI machines.
We have done finished deploying Streamcam to all the camera operators. We still have BigBro in the background for the time being, but migration to the new camera system is under full speed. We are expecting more cameras and are looking for new ways to accommodate the new cameras.
This week we obtained another 11 Dell 4500’s for various parts of the housing department. We are planning on replacing any and all DFI and Dell 4100 computers still in use. We are going to try and move them all to the Dell 4500’s that we got from PDR. The computers we are replacing will be put into PDR. I have ghosted 6 of the 11 computers so far and set them up for deployment. Michael and I will most likely deploy these over the next week or two.
After talking to Axis the maker of out PTZ cameras I learned that they have a new firmware for the cameras that allow for a Guard Tour Mode (GTM). The GTM is a much needed addition to these cameras. In the passed a web page had to be opened and keep running in order to run a sequential scan of preset locations. Now with the new Firmware version: 4.30 we no longer need to keep a browser window open to achieve the sequential scanning of the camera’s preset positions. We are still running into some obstacles with having operators who need to manually PTZ a camera and stopping the camera from continuing its guided tour while they do the manual scan. After exploring the new interface options from the new firmware and reading online it looks like there is no way to temporarily pause the GTM for manual scanning so I am currently writing some scripts that will interact with the camera and give the operator the ability to start and stop the GTM when needed.
New Camera in the Landers Lab. It is an Axis 231D camera and a huge improvement over the previous one. Michael got the camera added to the server and I configured it yesterday. We are still planning some firmware upgrades for it. We have a few things we would like all the PTZ cameras to do and we believe that updating the firmware will help us with several of the tasks.
Over the Break we took the opportunity to make a new ghost image for our Dell 4100 computers. We took a lab computer Ghosted it with the image given to us by Rick and then configured it for the Landers lab, added the Landers printer, and updated the OS and all the programs (Fire Fox, flash, shockwave…). Now if we need to ghost a computer it is much faster and the image is ready for what we need.
UCS was given the distinct privileged of being my first Streamcam deployment test subject, hehehe. Streamcam provided us the ability to eliminate one of the monitors used to view the cameras. The only setback during this deployment was ActiveX giving us a hard time, but will a little turn here and a twist there it was back inline and working like a dream. I sat down with Joan and had her do the configuration and layout of the Streamcam program so she would be comfortable doing it on her own if she decided to make changes. I think it went really well and felt that Streamcan will live up to its expectations.
Still working on getting the Axis 231D camera’s imaging to look clearer when they switch to Black and White. They seem to be switching from Color To Black and white regularly, but I would like to see some of the quality go up. I am currently trying to reconfigure the setting on the camera to work better, may have to use the web pages I made to control the color swapping to make calls to change the focus and iris settings.
I was able to get the Axis 231D cameras to switch from Color to black and white using web scripting. Each camera uses two web pages one for color and one for B/W. There is also one controller pager for each color and B/w that sets all the similar camera web pages at the same time using frames. The process was working flawlessly, until we went from Windows XP to Windows 2003 server. We encountered a few problems that we are currently working on.
I have been looking into the CAT tools to see how we could utilize an application that checks a users system for proper updates and installs before letting then on the network. CAT tools look very promising from what I have seen. Our current requirements for students to access the network from their res halls is to have a registered MAC address, Sophos AV installed, and have SP2 installed. With CAT we can verify this is done prior to letting them register their MAC address.
Student gets a CD with CAT on it. The CD auto loads CAT and will direct them to a web page depending on if they PASS the test. One web page will allow them to continue with the registration process while the other web page will give them instructions on what is needed to pass the CAT test. And you thought you were done taking CAT tests.
TOP SECRET: CLASSIFID
If you do not have level 3 security access, please read with your eyes closed.
I was given the task of researching and tinkering with one of the surveillance cameras to try to get it to function the way we wanted it to. I did a lot of research and found that there were some settings that needed to be set in order for the camera to automatically do what we wanted it to do. I made the changes and we let the camera go do its thing. The next morning when we came in we checked the footage and it did in fact do what we wanted. Now to try it on another camera, to see if we can duplicate it. Fingers are crossed and now waiting.
I am in the process of designing a new web site for Residential Computing. The site will be more robust user friendly so student can answer more and more of their own questions. I have added the content from the NetConnect 2005-2006 CD to the site so students can go there for help. I have also listed the services we perform at the Landers Computer Lab and also a section on How To… I am hoping to get this live within the week. Still working on content as I get time.
