New Hardware Installed
I have installed new hardware at the Covey Command Center®
I can’t remember if this is revision three or four of the hardware design since it has been developed over a three-year period. In this version, I added a new camera with a telephoto lens, a more powerful solar battery, a new cellular modem, and other hardware tweaks. There were also numerous modifications to the software, including code I wrote for the RTC (Real Time Clock), the archiving of images and other housekeeping, and extended heartbeat and keep-alive functionality.
Frequently, the challenge with new hardware is that all the instructions, installation, and configuration are based on a display attached to the device which runs the GUI interface. My hardware runs headless – no display – and the device runs a very lean and mean version of the OS. All display processes, programs, and code have been removed without breaking anything else since as a solar-powered device, it is resource-constrained.
I figured out what was happening under the covers and manually brought up new devices to work with my system. There is a delicate interplay between the cellular connection being up before the onboard video camera starts capturing the video stream, and software determines what is actual motion vs. false positive, and images are compressed and sent via email over cellular. A case in point is the new cellular modem… I figured out the bare-bones configuration required at the lowest level in the system, and of course, the modem people have requested my configuration files. I may get around to sending them someday…
This hardware version is so impressive and badass is so passe, I am thinking of naming this hardware version either Roly Poly or Rootie Tootie.
Covey Command Center Hardware
