June 24, 2024 – Mark's Blog

Monday

Good morning. It took about 2 hours to run a wire to the car’s tire and get it up and running.

This is looking west from the Ford Focus’ rear tire.

To give you an idea of what I can see here is where Silver Creek and Hillcrest are.

I thought it looked pretty good until a car came by.

The headlights blur out the entire vehicle, Boo.

I had half a juice glass of whisky, and it went right to my head yesterday. This morning, I am tired from working on the camera for several hours. If the camera can’t be in the wheel well, I am back to putting one on the trash can. The trash can is black and all my cameras are white. One other piece of engineering is that I need to be able to turn OFF the Power. The 48VDC powering the camera will destroy the Ethernet cable if it gets wet.

Mom’s off to the Gym while I work on upgrading the driveway camera. The old camera came with the Digital Video Recorder and cannot operate independently. The new one is like the cameras I used in Vegas, it records to an internal memory card and does not flood the network with traffic 24/7. *Two up and running.

On ladder 20 Ft up, maybe I should not have had that glass of Whiskey last night.

Now I can see the entire driveway AND the lawn!

And with excellent resolution.

This is the view from the roof camera, I finally took the protective plastic off.

The old camera had a 10 stop neutral filter on it to protect it from the sun.

Breakfast was two hard boiled eggs and breakfast sausages with CranGrape juice.

11AM, Time for a NAP, I am bushed!

We had ham and pea tetrazzini—spaghetti for dinner today. (We were supposed to have Taco’s)

We wrote letters to our CF children tonight, all four of them can read/write English.

Watched Hallmark movies until she went to bed. I worked on the two new cameras tuning their nighttime settings while it was dark.

Tuesday

Up at 7AM because we have routine Doc appointments at 08:30 and 09:00. I managed to get a few sips of coffee before leaving. The tubs and insulated bags are in the car for groceries. Doc appointment went well, and she was hungry, so we pulled the braces and went to Longhorn’s for lunch.

The food was terrific, and so were the Margretta’s.

Wally World for groceries and we’re headed home.

We met the man who built the large house across the street today at Wally World. He said some time ago a bullet came through his Livingroom ceiling and fell to the floor near where his granddaughter was playing. Gee Wiz!

Nap Time!

We had to toss the leftover chicken that we made on Friday because we didn’t eat it by yesterday. When she looked, she couldn’t find in her Daytimer when she made it. We also didn’t annotate it as a meal when she inventoried the refrigerators on Sunday.

We’re eating leftover ham and pea tetrazzini—spaghetti that was made on Monday for our evening meal. We watched the original Ghost Busters for a bit of entertainment.

Wednesday

I am still trying to capture as much information as possible so that the Police can arrest someone before we get injured. I bought the black camera so that I could put it on the trash can and it wouldn’t be obvious.

The camera is just underneath the handle under a pair of gym shorts.

It’s hardly noticeable from the sidewalk. (Not sure about the shorts.)
You cannot see the trashcan from silver creek because of the car.

I put it on a hook so I can deploy it quickly, I have a grey pair of gym shorts that hide the side of the camera. The single wire on the back helps to point it properly.

Here’s a tow truck headed west, good picture of it.

A car passed me this morning that lit up the entire street with Infra Red light.

Here’s that same car using daylight lens using the camera on the trash can.

Trying to capture a car with a daytime lens gives mixed results, here you can see the car is stretched out for some reason in the driveway camera. It also depends on how fast they are traveling.

Breakfast for both of us was frosted bran flakes with raisins on top. We stopped buying “Raisin Bran” because the raisins are all dried up. I went back to bed after having stayed up all morning working with the new black camera. (I now have 4) The DVR still has access to three old cameras with audio. I have two of the new ones mounted.

It is HOT here today.

Opened the trunks to let some of the heat out.

Up from our nap, sent in our monthly contribution to the church. Tried to read the news, that was a bad idea. I don’t have the mental strength to delve into this diverse menagerie of strange news. We watched the end of the original Ghost Busters movie before getting ready for tonight’s midweek church service.

I’ve set out the wire that powers the camera after closing up the cars. I’ll set the camera on the garbage can around 9PM when it’s getting dark, and my actions won’t be noticed as much.

Thursday

2nd day that I left the trashcan camera deployed, I did put a waterproof connector on the ethernet cable to the camera. I totally dropped the camera this morning, I am a bit clumsy right after I wake up. The memory card for the fourth camera should arrive today, I may put that camera on the west side of the home. I checked in on the WW net this morning, the propagation is pretty good to them today.

I found out this morning that the Wife had not seen the “Aunt Jemima” spatula scene in the movie “Stripes“. It was on YouTube for us to laugh at this morning…

Two boiled eggs and breakfast sausages with Cran Grape juice is a great breakfast. Top that off with Frosted Bran flakes with raisins and coffee. It’s going to be a strange day with the debate here in Atlanta. I am certain groups are going to make a nescience of themselves while Atlanta is in the spotlight.

The salmon had too much spice on it, they were so strong that I couldn’t finish it. The vegetables were good even though the pan ran out of water at some point.

The garbage camera is working out pretty well. The camera is not as level as I would like, but it doesn’t really matter as long as the cars are visible. (The wide lens captures the cars in the driveway and the garbage can anyway.)

The thing I need most from this camera is the description (Actual Color) of the car. The nighttime cameras only capture shades of grey and we really need to know if the cars are yellow or blue. I tried using the daytime sensor in the chimney camera and there’s just not enough light at that distance to make it work. Putting the camera any closer reduces how long the car is visible and it’s only four to eight video frames as it is. (Depends on the car’s speed)

Bingo and then the debate if we can stay up that long.

The fourth memory card came in and I installed my third camera on the house. I was going to wait until the chicks had flown, but the support for the nest didn’t include the Ethernet cable for the camera.

It’s not perfect, but it is good enough. *I need to wait until the chicks fly off.

This is the view from the new camera, I can still see the front door.

We went to a senior center to play bingo with them and then came home and watched the debate for a few minutes.

Friday

Two hard boiled eggs and breakfast sausages to start my day along with a nice hot cup of Dominican coffee.

It’s an overcast morning here in Lilburn Georgia.

It’s been a little over two weeks since the shooting and I’ve installed three of the five new cameras. They have replaced two of the four Reolink DVR cameras. I am on the fence whether to retire the Reolink cameras or repurpose them. (I still need one or two cameras with microphones.) One thing I am NOT going to do is put illuminators anywhere near the cameras to keep the bugs/spiders out of the camera view.

The new “Front Lawn” camera can see the color of the cars just fine.

I may need to rethink IR because of the poor resolution of that mode.

We went to Longhorn to get a Margaretta and a snack to settle our nerves a little. I think I’ve come up with an unusual way to be humble when things like this happen and we’re on the defense.

On our way to Longhorn, I had an unusual occurrence of a pedestrian and another car blocking my turn for the second time in my lifetime. The lanes in the parking lot are not wide enough to make a turn into them with a car facing me. The car blocking my turn can see the pedestrian, but the pedestrian is outside my left window where I would have to turn my head to see her. When I decided the only move for all three of us was to abort the turn and drive straight forward, I finally saw her at the curb on the left side of me. (Scary, if she would have walked forward, I wouldn’t see her until she almost reached the car.)

Still making albeit slow progress on my toes.

It poured after we got home making it a good time disconnect my HAM antenna’s and to take a nap.

We watched Hallmark Teagarden murder mysteries until we went to bed.

Saturday

Well, I spent a lot of money on 4 more IR illuminators, and I won’t need them.

As it turns out the cameras work much better using visible light. I turned on the white porch and driveway lights, they didn’t seem to make much of a difference. There seems to be enough illumination from the streetlights to get a good idea of the color and make of the car.

You can clearly see the color of the car.

here are the three new cameras, at night, daylight mode.

I’m up, my heart rate was a little high and my CPAP was getting low on water. I changed out my CPAP tank and hose this morning. We needed to wash more hoses since we’re out of clean ones. Then I needed to take a shower to clear off the bleach that splattered on me. (Almost got into my eyes today.)

I use the dehumidifier to dry out the inside of the hoses so they can rest in the closet.

Had to boil more eggs this morning for breakfast I am out of milk to have cereal. That and breakfast sausages make a great meal.

Painless way to make hard boiled eggs.

I realized yesterday that I was not putting any medicine on the ends or the sides of my toenails. I can feel the medicine on my feet after about 30 minutes.

The center of the nail is doing much better… Fungus is tough!

Mom’s hands are still getting red during the day, it’s not the hand soap… (We stopped using the Wally World refill to see if that was the cause.)

We still don’t know why her hands get red and itchy during the day.

We did figure out how she’s getting bit at night, mosquitoes are following me in through the door when I was working on the cameras…
Oops, Nap Time!

She woke me to help with the rice and steaming the veggies. The rice cooker is hands off about like the egg cooker. Rinse the rice and push one button. The veggies are almost as simple in the Insta-Pot, fill and push the steam button.

Took a good long nap.

Sunday

We both got up around 7:30 and meandered around the house while we ate breakfast. I checked into the HAM radio net while I was checking the weather. She was making egg salad for our lunch we’re having at a friend’s house. Church went ok, the speaker we were using gave out during the service. It sounded horrible, but there wasn’t anything I could do in short order.

We took a good LONG nap after we got home. I gave some thought to having a camera in the driveway. The trashcan camera worked ok, but i didn’t want someone to walk up and take it. The old cameras I am removing from the home are disposable. They are also a little smaller and harder to see.