D-Link DCS-2670L IP-camera with audio in Blue Iris (howto)

D-Link IP cameras are fairly OK and available IP cameras. On several of my sites I have video surveillance with AI and motion detection incl. thermal and night vision. However the D-Link DCS-2670L wide angle camera is known to be difficult to get working with Audio. Either the audio is crackling, there is no audio or there is distortion. The solution was simple: use DCS2030/21xx RTSP profile in Blue Iris

DCS-2670L setting in Blue Iris
DCS-2670L setting in Blue Iris. Audio and video works.

How to do export and import of Excel files with CSV firmat in Chirp

  • Program a couple of memory channels in your radio (in my case Icom Ic-2725) from the RADIO menus
  • Connect chirp to the radio
  • DOWNLOAD the data from the radio
  • Export from Chirp to a CSV file
  • Study this CSV file and use it as a template
  • Copy paste frequency and ctcss and offset info ++ from ANOTHER XLS file to the CSV file you made above!
  • Save as CSV from Excel (this is now your frequency list to import to the radio)
  • Check with Notepad ++ that there is COMMA (not semicolon) separation saved when you save as CSV from Excel. If this is not the case, go to regional settings / additional and set list separator as , (as opposed to ;). Start and stop Exel and a reboot wont hurt to make the settings take effect
  • Now you import this CSV list into Chirp
  • Upload to the radio
  • If you get error message that Chirp cant convert floating point in the tone settings, make sure to format EVERYTHING in your Excel sheet as GENERAL (not text, not number)

 

How to control the plane when using the rectangle tool in Sketchup

Sketchup is a nice 3D drawing program. It is also free. (Lets hope it will stay that way after Trimble bought Sketchup from Google).

One very annoying “feature” of Sketchup that makes many new users abandon the tool is that there seems to be no way to control the plane you draw a rectangle onto (when using the rectangle tool). The arrow buttons don’t work (why?) and it seems arbitrary what  plane the rectangle ends up on. Thanks to the nice people over at Sketchuation, I learned a secret: the rectangle locks on to the PLANE THAT IS MOST PARALELL to the PLANE OF YOUR SCREEN! TRY IT!

image Now the rectangles are drawn on the blue-red plane.

image Now the rectangles are drawn on the blue green plane.

By the way, the shift lock doesn’t seem to work properly even if the Sketchup documentation seems to indicate that it should