Viejas Live

This is looking out my back window. That is the famous Viejas Mountain. Legend has it that at the solstice there would be dancing on the step peaks that lead up the the top. Each step would have a night of dancing and on the night of the solstice there would be dancing on the peak. This mountain still has a religious significance to the tribe. For many years the Tribe has talked about doing it again but they haven't done so yet. Since it is public land it probably could be returned to the Tribe if we asked for it. 

How to do live video

Setting up the router

Here is what I forgot. The router must have a Static IP Address. That address must be the real address I use to get to the Internet. For some reason the IP Address I give my router must be one greater than the real IP address. This has something to do with the fact that I have to use satellite internet, the only game in town on the rez. I knew all this several years ago but I forgot but I did remember about the one greater than thing and that help me recall how the whole thing worked. I put this technical stuff here so I won't forget again.

I had a heck of a time figuring out how to do live video. I got a lot of advice but the solutions were expensive and complicated. Finally I got some solid advice and then figured out things for myself.  So I bought a router ($10 after rebate) and a Internet Camera ($40 after rebate.) I had to go to the Internet to find the right instructions, but it was not too hard and I got it to work. An Internet camera is not connected to a PC. In a sense it is its own PC. It has a built in Web page so it does not need a PC.

The magic is the IP address. If you connect to the Internet you have an IP address. Every web you access has an IP address. If you know the IP address you do not need a web name but it is easier to remember a web name rather than an IP address. For instance, rather than typing in www.google.com you can type in http://216.239.37.99/. They both point to the same place. Typing in the number is slightly faster because when you type in the letters www.google.com it gets translated into numbers by a thing called DNS. 

Usually the address will change unless you have a static IP address then it will always be the same. Sometimes a static IP address is called a business account, it is what I have. Webs all have static addresses. The changing IP address is known as a Dynamic IP address.

If you have a home, or small office, network you probably have one real IP address and each computer that accesses the Internet has a pretend IP address. The thing called a router gives out the pretend IP addresses and then allows the pretend IP addresses to access the Internet using the real IP address.

The first problem is that no one, in the big Internet, can access the camera because it does not have real IP address, it only has a pretend one. This is usually good because you don't want anyone on the big Internet accessing your computers. You can get around this this by using something called a Port.

The IP address is like a zip code. There are thousands of addresses in one zip code. There are thousands of ports in one IP address. The trick is to assign the camera to a port and then connect that port to the real IP address. So when someone in the big Internet looks at your real IP address they also ask for a specific port number and that specific port number is connected to the camera so they can access the camera.

To do this you have to go to the camera and tell it to use a specific port number and then go to the router and tell the router to open up that port number and connect it to the camera.  You also have to tell the router the pretend IP address of the camera. You tell the people who access the camera to use the IP address and the port number and there you go.

One problem is that the people who have changing IP addresses will have to keep finding the new IP address and then telling everyone the new IP address. Actually it is not that bad as there are services that can connect a Web name to your IP address and then have your computer automatically send the new IP address and they will automatically make the adjustments. (One such service is www.dyndns.org) People will just type in whatever Web name you have like  cameraatmyhouse.com  and they will get your camera even if your IP address changes.

This is all generic but I wish I knew this when I first tried to get live video.