Fisheye Lens Webcam

I video conference often for work, and fret that I can only see one person on the other side of the call. Wouldn't this be easier and more natural if I could see everyone? Time to get creative and mount a fisheye lens to my webcam.

I started with a door viewer a.k.a. peephole. Fail.

Then I upgraded to a Vivitar 0.21X 37mm fisheye lens made for a video camera. Win. I estimate the "before" viewing angle at 75º and the after at 115º. More than 90 is what I was after (stick it in the corner, see the whole room), so this is very good.

Next I needed a housing; preferably one that was non-destructive to both the lens and the laptop. Below is a 1 1/2" EMT insulated bushing (the blue ring) super glued to a plastic faceplate. You can see I drilled holes through the ring so that nuts and bolts can hold the lens in place – the lens barrel has a concave shape, so friction in the lowest point keeps it stable.

1" C-clamps hold the rig in place on the rim of my laptop's display. The clamps should work on pretty much any laptop screen thickness.

Sure it interferes with the display – but that wasn't a design goal since I have a second display.

And of course since I'm an engineer, the housing started with a sketch. Total project cost was under $50.

Here are some other like-minded projects on the Internet that inspired me:

• http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2009/05/inexpensive-fish-eye-webcam/
• http://aggregate.org/DIT/peepfish/
• http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/03/get-goggle-eyed/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/rafael_mizrahi/966626430/ 

Enabling IPv6 on Comcast with Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH

I'm running Buffalo's latest (as of this writing) DD-WRT firmware, V24-SP2 build 16783.

The DD-WRT IPv6 tutorial is in the ballpark, but didn't work for my setup. See the section on 6rd for Comcast-specific scripts; for me, the script never succeeded on startup (I presume because the WAN wasn't up before the script was executed). Here's what actually worked:

• In the web interface, Administration / Management.
• IPv6: Enable
• Radvd: Disable
• JFFS2: Enable
• Clean JFF2: Enable (this will format a writable partition where you can store user scripts)
• Apply, and then reboot the router.
• For some reason, nslookup 6rd.comcast.net throws a segmentation fault on my router… so the script below shows a hard-coded value IP address. The original script linked above intended to parse the result of nslookup.
• Use SSH/SCP/SFTP to copy this script onto the router to /jffs/etc/config/ipv6comcast.wanup:

#!/bin/sh
insmod /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/net/ipv6/sit.ko
HOST6RD=69.252.80.66
#nslookup 6rd.comcast.net segfaults
WANIP=$(ip -4 addr show dev eth1 | grep 'inet ' | awk '{print $2}' | cut -d/ -f1)
if [ -n "$WANIP" ]
then
V6PREFIX=$(printf ' 2001:55c:%02x%02x:%02x%02x' $(echo $WANIP | tr . ' '))
ip tunnel add tun6rd mode sit ttl 255 remote any local $WANIP
ip link set tun6rd mtu 1280
ip link set tun6rd up
ip addr add $V6PREFIX:0::1/32 dev tun6rd
ip addr add $V6PREFIX:1::1/64 dev br0
ip -6 route add 2000::/3 via ::$HOST6RD dev tun6rd
kill -HUP $(cat /var/run/radvd.pid)
fi
echo "interface br0 { \
MinRtrAdvInterval 3; MaxRtrAdvInterval 10; AdvLinkMTU 1280; AdvSendAdvert on; \
prefix $V6PREFIX::/64 { AdvOnLink on; AdvAutonomous on; AdvValidLifetime 86400; \
AdvPreferredLifetime 86400; }; };" \
> /tmp/radvd.conf
radvd -C /tmp/radvd.conf start

• Using SSH, chmod 777 /jffs/etc/config/ipv6comcast.wanup.
• The extension .wanup means that the script will run every time the WAN comes up. More about scripting on DD-WRT.
• Reboot the router and your computer.
• Windows should report IPv6 Internet Connectivity:
  
• http://test-ipv6.com/ should report 10/10 for both IPv4 and IPv6.
• Note: You should be using Comcast's default DNS. I was using Google's Public DNS, but they don't support IPv6.