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This has been a dream of mine for years, but I've always avoided the project because of the costs I assumed were involved. However, writing for MakeUseOf often forces me to think a bit outside the box. How would I accomplish a home security system inexpensively or f

Another advantage of decent headsets is that they often come with decent microphones. If you’re playing online – FPS or MMORPG – It’ll be a huge advantage to be able to communicate with your teammates or clan; in-game or using Ventrillosoftw

For standard office tasks, LibreOffice is preinstalled with the PIXEL desktop.This is the modern fork of the popular Open Office suite, and has been configured for the Raspberry Pi. Including a word processor, spreadsheet tool, database and presentation software, LibreOffice will complete your Raspberry Pi desk

Make sure you’ve understood all above, and that you have a clear idea of what you’re looking for. You should already be sure of the interface and output and have a semi-steady budget limit. With that in mind, you need to start looking at benchmarks and weigh off your options. A good pick won’t cost a fortune, but still scores relatively high in the benchma

VLC media player is click through the following internet site solution to many video playback issues. It can play almost any video format, from XviD to Real Video, and even optical discs. Codecs are built into VLC media player, although other techniques are used to playback vid

There is something satisfying about successfully completing a Lego project, after all, and using the popular plastic bricks as the support structure and case for your PC has proved to be a popular choice. You’ll find many examples of Lego cases on the web, utilizing either every different colour of brick that is available or designed with an impressive, blocky, almost 8-bit styled mosaic fin

Most DVD drives need to be installed from the front, so that means taking the front panel off carefully and avoid pulling the wires for the power switch. It's also better to connect any cables now before it's slotted in, as things can get quite tight back th

This isn’t a how-to article though - I couldn’t possibly write about how to build a PC from scratch in one article. Instead, I will give tips and describe the process in a whirlwind manner, but you should maybe think of it more as motivation for you to try the same. The whole process took about 2 ho

Many codecs can be used to encode video. In some sense, the codec is like the key and your video is like a locked file. You need the same key or the codec to view the file that was used to encode the f

I captured three snapshots of this student who had just walked into the room and stood at the table. Just imagine if this was your home or business security system. No need to rewind and review security tape - your wifi surveillance system will automatically capture and store the mugshots, and you'll know about it instantly over email or your ph

The email settings are very easy. Just configure your SMTP settings and remember to add which email address to send the alert to. You can add multiple ones by using a comma between them. The interval setting will wait before firing off another email when there's more motion, and you can choose how many snapshots you want the camera to take. During a test run with my single laptop webcam watching for motion, I received the following em

My first thought is a distributed surveillance system where you wire up a webcam at every remote location you want to monitor. This could be your elderly mother's house, your camp way up north or maybe even your office because you suspect someone's stealing your favorite multi-colored sticky notes. Whatever the reason, all you need to do is install your webcams with either their own Internet IP, or plugged into an Internet-connected PC running Active Webcam. For my global distributed network test, I visited Opentopia and selected three random webcams from several Universities around the United Sta

Each USB port requires 4 cables, so the bundle of 8 can be split up into two sets of 4 cables. One USB port uses the top set of pins, one the bottom. The cables should be labelled with either a 1 or 2 , plus something similar to the follow

You'll also notice that there's an impressive array of actions you can take when the camera senses motion. Playing a sound or FTP'ing captured images are standard with most of these motion detection applications - but the one feature that is very cool here is that if you want, the application will not only send you an email, but it can also send an SMS message to your cellphone. Now that's slick. Of course, in my case I want an email with snapshots of the intruder, so I select " Send Email " and then go into the email setti

Webmail can put unnecessary load on your browser as webmail apps tend to use a lot of AJAX and JavaScript. Fortunately, you can use the bundled Claws Mail email client. Other lightweight alternatives include the Mozilla Thunderbird-like Icedove Mail, which you can install