Hurray for me!! We finally got the panda cameras installed and working (with quite a bit of technical support from Rob Cleminson at VideoSurveillance.com). I really cannot say too many wonderful things about their team! Even in China they were emailing me at 10pm their time to answer questions about my system. Talk about great costumer service!
The major problems I faced:
- I’m not a computer networker and . . .
- I’m not a computer networker
No, actually, the first major hurtle was getting the electrical setup in the breeding area which meant that I had to arrange a dinner with all the managers (nothing major gets done without discussing it over dinner first here in China). The dinner went off smoothly with everyone enjoying themselves, which meant that we were allowed to set up electrical the next day . . . or as it turned out the next couple of days. Finally, we had electrical running to the routers and cameras.
Toasting everyone at dinner. Good luck to my research!
Then came the actual setup which included lots of CAT5 wiring and making connectors on my part. Thanks to Matthew Maderios from Comcast cable for the donation of the CAT5 and the CAT5 heads. I was able to teach Lee how to do the CAT5 wiring and so it went a little faster. We got everything wired and plugged in and went to check the monitors and . . . .NOTHING! The cameras weren’t working, even though I had them working and networkded in the US something had changed on our flight over.
Running CAT5. That red wire . .. it's the electricity! Yikes! As far as I can tell there's not electrical code here in China.
Teaching my collaborator Lee how to put heads on the CAT5
Turns out I had the nano stations configured wrong (have no idea why they were working in the US by the way) and the cameras were also assigning themselves the wrong IP addresses. So after a little (3 days) manual IP assigning and frantic calls to the VideoSurveillance.com team. I managed to get the whole system up and running!
One of the cameras installed and recording Lu Lu. Later this week I'll post the "Panda a Week" about Bei Xue the female on the other side he's so interested in.
Can’t wait to share some video with you guys! Be on the lookout!
-meg
Your spider wire picture of Lee looks like he is being tasered. That’s exciting to hear that all the cameras and electrical nightmares are over. Let the panda mating rituals begin.
Oh my that set up looks complicated! Glad it is up and running. I can’t wait to see videos of panda matings.. (is that perverse or what?)
LOL, no it’s not THAT perverse! I look forward to it every season . . . maybe for different reasons though 🙂