remote calving monitor

oldsmokey

Hi would really appreciate a little help here, calving starts in a months time, need a monitoring set-up , but its not straightforward...calving pens are in line of sight of old farmhouse, which has a phone, but is not occupied, could get broadband to it. I live about 2 miles away. Ideally I'd love to be able to keep an eye on the pens by night, I gather its possible by the magic of my pc, a broadband connection, routers and lord knows what else...I enquired of a couple of advertised fitters, but the money they were talking was a bit silly.
Could somebody here explain how to go about it in laymans terms.what hardware i need, and the pc / broadband connection side, where to source the gear too ..I've no problem fitting / setting up the stuff...thanks for reading..

vanderbadger

oldsmokey wrote: »

Hi would really appreciate a little help here, calving starts in a months time, need a monitoring set-up , but its not straightforward...calving pens are in line of sight of old farmhouse, which has a phone, but is not occupied, could get broadband to it. I live about 2 miles away. Ideally I'd love to be able to keep an eye on the pens by night, I gather its possible by the magic of my pc, a broadband connection, routers and lord knows what else...I enquired of a couple of advertised fitters, but the money they were talking was a bit silly.
Could somebody here explain how to go about it in laymans terms.what hardware i need, and the pc / broadband connection side, where to source the gear too ..I've no problem fitting / setting up the stuff...thanks for reading..

1. get broadband, ask for fixed IP address, may cost slightly more
2. get wireless gear to connect old farmhse to sheds
something like 2 of these
http://www.ebay.ie/itm/UBNT-NanoStation2-Loco-/150927890050?pt=UK_Computing_Networking_SM&hash=item232400d682
3. buy good camera, some people go for 2 or 3 fixed cameras which are cheap as opposed to 1 good PTZ camera, it depend on your setup, the fixed camera might suit you better if you have multiple areas to cover


the camera will connect wireless device on shed side, the wireless device on the house side will connect back to modem
thats the bare bones of it, there are heaps of old threads here covering the same topic

oldsmokey

Thanks vanderbadger, tus maith leath an oibre...what about the last bit of the puzzle, once the gear's set up, how do i view whats happening on my pc 2 miles from the farm? Am i right in saying i dont need a monitor / pc in the old farmhouse?..just the router?

vanderbadger

oldsmokey wrote: »

Thanks vanderbadger, tus maith leath an oibre...what about the last bit of the puzzle, once the gear's set up, how do i view whats happening on my pc 2 miles from the farm? Am i right in saying i dont need a monitor / pc in the old farmhouse?..just the router?

yes you dont need anything in farmhouse except broadband modem, that why i mentioned the fixed address. lets say for example you have eircom broadband and a fixed IP address, that means your broadband modem will always have the same address, lets say something like 159.134.110.59
now when you connect your pc or camera etc to the modem it will pick up something like 192.168.1.2 or similar which is an internal address and not access ible from the internet, so with some simple configuration on the modem you can set it up so that when you put 159.1134.110.59 into a web browser anywhere in the world it will hit your modem which will direct to to the camera on the internal address, its a kinda mapping of the public address to the internal address
hope that makes some sense

6480

do i need a broadband connection to the farmyard its 5 mile from where i live

agricamera

oldsmokey wrote: »

Thanks vanderbadger, tus maith leath an oibre...what about the last bit of the puzzle, once the gear's set up, how do i view whats happening on my pc 2 miles from the farm? Am i right in saying i dont need a monitor / pc in the old farmhouse?..just the router?

You don't need a pc in the old farmhouse, but you will need one to set things up. Once it's setup you can just have the camera plugged into the router on it's own.

You will be able to connect back to the camera from your house over the internet, but you will need to setup port fowarding on the router and check that your ISP don't block incoming ports.

The difficulty comes in getting everything setup and working (reliably!). If you're up for a bit of a project you will save a few quid going the DIY route but you will have to learn a bit about networking, especially when it comes to setting up the wireless bridge and the port forwarding (the bit most people struggle the most with).

We have put together a range of kits that make the whole job as easy as possible with everything you need. We have also got rid of the need for static IP addresses and setting up port forwarding on your router with AgriCamera Anywhere. You literally just plug the camera in to your router and type your username & password into an app on your phone or the program on your computer. The camera video stream along with the audio then appears as if by magic :cool:

[Snip]
Advertising or promotion of products not allowed.

agricamera

6480 wrote: »

do i need a broadband connection to the farmyard its 5 mile from where i live

Yes, unless you have line of sight from where you live (so you could do it wirelessly) or if you have good 3G signal (then you could do it with a gsm signal instead of fixed broadband).

The broadband tend to be a lot more reliable than using 3G in my experience (and not a lot different in cost).

6480

agricamera wrote: »

Yes, unless you have line of sight from where you live (so you could do it wirelessly) or if you have good 3G signal (then you could do it with a gsm signal instead of fixed broadband).

The broadband tend to be a lot more reliable than using 3G in my experience (and not a lot different in cost).

no it couldnt be done wirelessly , so if i have a good 3G singal wat do i do next

ki

I used this to connect my shed to my house.
Its 750 metres with line of sight.

[SNIP]
It says upto 10km on the spec.

SHED
Wireless PTZ IP cameras I picked up on ebay.
Linked these top a Wireless Access point in the shed.
Plugged one end of the 10km wireless link into the Access point.

House

Plugged the other end of the 10km wireless link into the Eircom/Broadband router in my house.
Then I could access the IP cameras via Internet explorer on my PC.


Hope its helpful!

oldsmokey

Sort of answering my own question here..this lot cropped up on BFFs site.[SNIP] website with piccies makes the thing a bit more comprehensible...i see the cheeky buggers have a post on here too.. good for them...no word from the Irish boys?

pgjk

oldsmokey wrote: »

Sort of answering my own question here..this lot cropped up on BFFs site.[SNIP] website with piccies makes the thing a bit more comprehensible...i see the cheeky buggers have a post on here too.. good for them...no word from the Irish boys?

Sent you a PM their earlier chief :cool:

SoJoMo

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=81666149#post81666149

Lofty0990

sorry to intrude!


Santy brought ipod and kindle so router went wireless last Xmas . Despite being a bogger and with help off wireless board put in an access point in an upstairs bedroom as router at pc was the far side of old farmhse thick walls.. Have since got Nokia Lumia and it picks up both router and access point outside across yard. Next step is to replace av calving camera with ip camera for viewing on Nokia anywhere. Camera in calving boxes is 25 meters into shed and outside wall of shed is 20 meters from dwelling house .

So if an ip camera goes in the shed with a cable coming to outside wall , does it need external antennae or nano station to pick router or access point ?

Is the configuring of the camera to inside wireless tricky?

Any camera suggestions (100 - 150 so there wont be too many tears if it gets fffed)

Many thanks.

oldsmokey

vanderbadger wrote: »

yes you dont need anything in farmhouse except broadband modem, that why i mentioned the fixed address. lets say for example you have eircom broadband and a fixed IP address, that means your broadband modem will always have the same address, lets say something like 159.134.110.59
now when you connect your pc or camera etc to the modem it will pick up something like 192.168.1.2 or similar which is an internal address and not access ible from the internet, so with some simple configuration on the modem you can set it up so that when you put 159.1134.110.59 into a web browser anywhere in the world it will hit your modem which will direct to to the camera on the internal address, its a kinda mapping of the public address to the internal address
hope that makes some sense

I'm getting there...but am happier with a pike than fighting with electronic head-wreckers...am in the throes of ordering the 'schtuff'..i won't go with your fancy camera, bit too expensive, these Foscam cameras seem well recommended..one question...is it much extra bother and/or an advantage to have a second camera set up?..what extra stuff required? we've 3 pens to keep an eye on at peak..thinking it might be useful if front and backs of the pens were covered...finally is getting the thing configured a ball=breaker or could a numpty like meself have a go at it?
thanks...

vanderbadger

oldsmokey wrote: »

I'm getting there...but am happier with a pike than fighting with electronic head-wreckers...am in the throes of ordering the 'schtuff'..i won't go with your fancy camera, bit too expensive, these Foscam cameras seem well recommended..one question...is it much extra bother and/or an advantage to have a second camera set up?..what extra stuff required? we've 3 pens to keep an eye on at peak..thinking it might be useful if front and backs of the pens were covered...finally is getting the thing configured a ball=breaker or could a numpty like meself have a go at it?
thanks...

not much more effort, you might need a little hub on the shed end if you have more than 1 camera, basically all the cameras will need to be networked up so network cables from each camera would run back to hub/switch,
eg http://www.amazon.co.uk/8-Port-Unmanaged-Gigabit-Desktop-Switch/dp/B000N9B688/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1353436773&sr=8-3
the hub would join them all together and then the hub would also be connected to the wireless device on the shed end. each camera would have an unique ip address
i suppose it depend really, if you have no experience of the ip addressing or networking it might be a bit of a chore but sure i can help out anyway here so we should be able to figure it

oldsmokey

Instead of things becoming clearer!!....why does this lad include a recorder in his proposed setup?