•  ERC can support up to 16 live monitoring IP cameras
•  no channel license required
•  high quality images H.264 video streaming
•  one-click and fast installation

Installation

We can download the ERC application and its manual on the following link:  http://www.acti.com/product/detail/Video_Management_System/ERC_windows. Once we have obtained the application we can start to install it and start video surveillance.  Installation of ERC is quick and simple: extract the downloaded files and run the ACTi_Edge_Recorder_Client_Install_v1.0.01.exe. Accept the Software License Agreement and complete the installation. Once completed the installation a shortcut of “ERC” icon will appear on the Desktop. Double click the icon and the ERC login will pop out. The default username and password are admin and 123456 respectively.

Live View 

We can add up to 16 IP cameras using the Device Setup page/tab where we can search the device automatically or manually (we have to input the IP address of the cameras). Once we have added all our cameras we can start to see the live view of each camera using the Live View page/tab. There are four templates that we can use to view the cameras. On Live View page we can view all types of Acti cameras, doesn’t matter if it’s not capable of local storage. If we require saving footage, we will need IP camera that supports local storage in order to record a Video footage or Events.  

TSD Test Results 

We have conducted a test using KCM-3911 (Edge capable) with satisfactory results. We performed Motion detection and continuous recording using an 8GB SD card installed in KCM-3911. The 8GB SD card can record up to 2.5 hours of continuous recording and for 16GB it can record up to 5 hours of recording.  As the storage period is short, this approach is not for 24/7 video recording or any important recording as the SD card can get damaged or removed.

Camera Compatibility

END

Compucon CPD Seminar
Wed 7 May 2014
Compucon House Albany

4:00pm Computing Industry Trend Analysis
4:40pm Parallel Computing Technology and Products
5:20pm Entry Point to HPC (Ashish Rajput)  
5:40pm Exploration Journey into Non-Wintel Territories (Dave Fielder)
6:00pm Wine and Cheese

Trends

Is Cloud Computing a gift to IT practitioners and businesses in New Zealand in the short and long term respectively?  The answers are affirmative for consumers and small business operators, but are not clear for IT practitioners and serious business people.  This session will attempt to analyse industry trends for practitioners, professionals and serious businesses people.  We will employ 4 metaphors to explain the analyses: the iceberg of computing, frog in a flask, glass of water, and planting lucks.  Compucon has taken 22 years to learn about these 4 metaphors for business survival and growth, and we will attempt to convey our learning to peers in 22 minutes. We will attempt to prescribe a course of actions for peer involvements.

Parallel Computing Technology & Products

We would like to define high performance computing here as parallel computing and explain the current state of technology, software, and Compucon involvements.  Why is multicore CPU losing to general purpose GPU in claiming the crown of massively parallel computing?  The answer is complex and the success of Intel in CPU does not apply.  Hardware requires software to meet the end user.  Software is therefore a major piece of the HPC jigsaw.  It is not Windows 8 or Server 2012 ruling in this space.  The top two software application interfaces are CUDA and OpenCL.  Compucon has developed a reasonably large range of GPU systems over the last 3 years and we will briefly explain the special features and uses of each. 

Entry point

Applications of HPC systems fall into 2 broad categories: digital content creation and digital concept creation.  Content creation is for practical applications and concept creation is obviously more theoretical.  Underlying both is numerical simulation which is accepted as the third pillar of science after theory and observation in the 21st century (not exist or known previously).  We will explain how Compucon developed the core competence in this session and would like to introduce Ashish to the peer group herewith.  Ashish has completed 6 months of on-the-job training and will explain his direct works on N-Body and NAMD as the entry point to HPC.   

Exploration

The 4th session is a report of our hands-on exploration efforts of the non-Wintel world.  The hardware consists of ARM A9 2-core CPU and Epiphany 16-core co-processors.  The operating software is Linux Ubuntu Linaro.   The sample applications are Hello World and Matrix Multiplication.   Dave is our principal explorer.  He has experienced several moments of enlightenment so far in this exploration- when the hardware booted up for the first time, when an application successfully ran, and when he successfully installed an Eclipse based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) in a PC connected to the non-Wintel world.  This IDE is important because it is a base camp for deeper explorations.

Kamo High / Compucon Open Technology Seminar
Wed 16 April 2014
Kamo High School, Whangarei

2:15pm Reception
2:30pm Iceberg of Computing
3:00pm 4 Pillars of Computing
3:30pm New Zealand High Performance Computing
4:15pm Muffin Break 

We may perceive desktop PC, laptop, tablet, and now smart phone as the face of computing and computer servers in the backroom as the engine of computing.  This is correct and is herewith termed the tip of iceberg of computing which is clearly visible and is only a small part of the computing industry.  Below the water level is the bulk of the iceberg without which the tip would not have existed.  There are 2 major components of this iceberg bulk- a cloud infrastructure and high performance engines among other things.  The cloud infrastructure is the one that connects all people and provides storage and software services amongst others.  USA is presumably a dominant if not the sole provider of the cloud infrastructure with big brands such as Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.  It is therefore the virtual brain-work factory for the global village whilst most developing countries serve as physical sweat shops.   High performance engines are quite different as there are many of them located in many countries, institutions, and corporations.  They are in a creation and development mode and they create new icebergs and civilisation for the world.  New Zealand however is not yet in the league but this is going to change.   This session will provide more details to explain this picture.

For the cloud infrastructure to support mobile and stationary devices at the receiving end of the Internet, the communication protocols have to be standardised around the world so that bits flow around flawlessly.  TCP/IP is the name of the communication standard and the first pillar of computing.  Big data factories like Google have collected an ever increasing amount of data about people on the globe and Big Data is the 2nd pillar of computing.  Nature exists in parallel, that is, everything in the universe takes place simultaneously in parallel to everything else.   We only knew how to do parallel computing lately and it is the 3rd pillar of computing.  A factory turns inputs into outputs.  Humans turn inputs into outputs.   Computer vision provides the inputs of computing and it is the 4th pillar.   Robotics and astronomy are applications of computer vision. This session will explain what each is and where it is. 

As far as computing is concerned, New Zealand is a follower of other leading countries.  We import all laptops and tablets from overseas, and we make a miniscule quantity of servers, workstations and desktops which are also based on components imported.  An Auckland university professor explained that the scale of New Zealand is too small and cannot support technology innovations from scratch.  Atmost we can do some tip-of-iceberg innovations.  The situation changed when the New Zealand Government subscribed to the biggest science project in the world in this century called SKA, and facilitated a team of New Zealand scientists and engineers to be involved in the development of deep water research and development of high performance computing.  Compucon is a member in this New Zealand contribution effort, and has given a speech in a conference attended by world computing leaders in February.  This session will explain the agenda of New Zealand in developing the high performance pillar of computing. 

Compucon CPD Seminar
Wed 9 April 2014
Compucon House, Albany

4:00pm Optimised and Heavy Data Systems (Edmond)
4:45pm Microsoft Windows Server 2012R2 (Regan/Microsoft)
6:150pm Wine and Cheese

Heavy Data Systems

On top of building servers and desktops for the business sector, Compucon has been doing optimized rack systems and heavy data systems for over 7 years with reasonable success.  Optimized rack systems refer to multiple computing nodes in one single chassis such as 4 nodes in 2U, 24 nodes in 3U and 40 nodes in 7U.  These nodes share a lot of physical resources and reduce space rental and consumption of electricity as ongoing costs of ownership.  Heavy data systems refer to having a large number of commodity hard disks in a chassis such as 12D in 1U and 72D in 4U.  These systems can be deployed as DAS or NAS, using hardware RAID or software ZFS, in medium to large size businesses including data centers.  At the small scale end, we have a multitude of micro servers as small as a desk drawer for installation in mobile or remote environments.  This session will attempt to provide a summary of the above product ranges and assist our peers to obtain clarity of the vast amount of knowledge needed to deploy these systems.  We will explain a new technology called “zero slot” coming out any time now.

Windows Server 2012R2

Regan Murphy is the Infrastructure Technical Evangelist within the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) team at Microsoft New Zealand.  Private and Public Cloud is where Regan’s focus is, including technologies such as Windows Server, Windows Client, Virtualisation, System Center, and Microsoft Azure.  Regan splits his time between running events and helping drive adoption of Microsoft, Windows and Azure products and services amongst partners and customers.  So what’s new in Windows Server 2012 R2?  We will take a closer look at the new features around storage spaces - including tiered data using SSD and HDD disks, what you can do with software defined networking using the new IPAM (IP Address Management) functionality, and we will look at the new and extended features introduced with Hyper-V.