Monthly Archives: March 2019

Hardware

IP Camera doorbell without a cloud subscription

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I’ve been on a quest to find a decent looking doorbell camera that is easy on the wallet while also allowing for local storage recording (no cloud subscription.)

What I ended up with was the Hikvision DS-KB6003-WIP. It’s been great so far. The OEM version I got had a different firmware on it, so I flashed the official HikVision firmware just to stay proper.

Spec sheet:
HikVision Website
Alternate Link

Manual:
HikVision Website
Alternate Link

Device as listed on HikVisions website:
https://www.hikvision.com/Products/Video-Intercom/Wi-Fi-Door-Bell/DS-KB6003-WIP

Note this doorbell will ONLY work with MECHANICAL wired chimes. I could not get it to work with my digital chime (it would just chime incessantly or not power up the doorbell camera properly depending on how I used the dummy resistor provided.)

Installation was pretty straightforward. Make sure you have a good transformer and not a terrible one like I had. Connecting it to your WiFi network is a bit different. You have to use the Hik-Connect app to create a QR code with your wifi settings. The you simply need to point the QR code to the camera, and after a moment it will announce it connected to your network.

Once connected you can access the device via web browser by IP address (or continue using the hik-connect app.) The web interface requires a stupid plugin to work properly. Make sure you use IE or older Firefox version for plugin to work. The default username is admin, and the default password is admin+verification code found on the device sticker. For example, “adminHLPVTL”

Sign in on https://www.hik-connect.com/ and register device with hik-connect to get the doorbell button to do something instead of just saying “no account found.”

To configure with Zoneminder or other DVR software, the RTSP URL is as follows:

rtsp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@IP_ADDRESS:554/ch1/main/av_stream

CLI, OS, Virtualization

Fix Proxmox swapping issue

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I recently had an issue with one of my Proxmox hosts where it would max out all swap and slow down to a crawl despite having plenty of physical memory free. After digging and tweaking, I found this post which directed to set the kernel swappiness setting to 0. More reading suggested I should set it to 1, which is what I did.

Append to /etc/sysctl.conf:

#Fix excessive swap usage
vm.swappiness = 1

Apply settings with:

sysctl --system

This did the trick for me.

CLI, Hardware, OS

Rasbperry Pi as a dashboard computer

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Here are my raw, unpolished notes on how I set up a raspberry pi to serve as a dashboard display:

Use Raspbian OS

Autostart Chrome in kiosk mode

Eliminate Chrome crash bubble thanks to this post

mkdir -p ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/
nano ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

Add this line:
@chromium-browser --kiosk --app=<URL>

Mouse removal

sudo apt-get install unclutter

in ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart add

@unclutter -idle 5

Disable screen blank:

in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf add

[SeatDefaults]
xserver-command=X -s 0 -dpms

Open up SSH & VNC

Pi / Preferences / Raspberry Pi Configuration: Interfaces tab

SSH: Enable
VNC: Enable

Increase swap file

sudo nano /etc/dphys-swapfile
CONF_SWAPSIZE=2048M

Configure NTP

sudo apt-get install openntpd ntpdate
sudo systemctl enable openntpd
sudo ntpdate <IP of NTP server>

edit /etc/openntpd/ntpd.conf and modify servers lines to fit your NTP server

Disable overscan

Pi / Preferences / Raspberry Pi Configuration: System tab
Overscan: Disable