JON HONEYBALL
Jon investigates a tool that could rescue companies running old Windows 7 systems and provides an update on his move from 3CX – kind of
Jon investigates a tool that could rescue companies running old Windows 7 systems and provides an update on his move from 3CX – kind of.
About four years ago, I visited a local software company that appeared to be doing interesting things with OS installation tools. Called Centrality, its toolset allowed you to deploy Windows operating systems onto computers in a remarkably simple fashion. It had essentially written a WinPE (Windows Pre-Execution Environment) loader tool that could be net booted from a server, and this would then pull in the build of Windows you required. Not only that, it could also be configured to silently install all the necessary drivers, firmware updates and applications you’d need.
Although somewhat rough around the edges, especially in terms of its management interface, it impressed. Indeed, it allowed you to simply wipe clean and reinstall as many machines as you wanted, as often as you wanted. Do it nightly? Why not?
Even more impressive was the lack of complexity required to get it up and running. No need for a server, and certainly no need for a SQL Server back-end; a shared file space on a Windows desktop would do just fine. You could even install it onto a set of Windows Embedded till machines and run it from there.
So, four years on, it seemed appropriate to trundle down the A1 to near Biggleswade to see what Centrality was up to. And I have to confess, I was even more taken by what I saw than the first time. In the intervening time, the company has made significant progress on the management and deployment toolsets.
This is now a fully polished tool. Its demonstration of a room full of Windows computers – all different hardware – getting Windows 10 pushed onto them in a matter of minutes, spoke volumes about the clarity and depth of the tool. It has sensibly split the product, now called OneDeploy, away from its Centrality services company, thus making it easier for other service firms to deal with the software without the implicit worry of dealing with a competitive services company. Cost of deployment is almost trivial on a per-seat basis, and the per-computer licence lives for as many reinstalls as you like.
So why the enthusiasm? Well, there are still way too many Windows 7 desktops out there – and Windows 7 goes out of support in 2020. For some larger organisations, such a deadline is frankly terrifying, but with some care and planning, I’m certain that OneDeploy can remove almost all of that worry.
There also appears to be a nasty issue with the latest chipsets used in desktop PCs and Windows 7, which don’t seem to get along very well. If you’re thinking that you can still buy new hardware and deploy Windows 7 onto it, then you’re possibly in for a rude awakening. Expect to see dialog boxes flashing up on-screen, informing you that this combination isn’t supported. As a result, your need to move to Windows 10 might be closer than 2020.
Why go with OneDeploy rather than the full solution from Microsoft, as an example of an industry-leading alternative? The answer is plain: OneDeploy is simplicity itself; anyone deploying the Microsoft alternative needs a PhD in server side technologies. OneDeploy has no server side dependencies at all.
But don’t let that fool you into thinking that it’s small-fry. If I had hundreds, or worse still, thousands of machines to move to Windows 10, OneDeploy would be top of my list of tools under consideration. In addition, the ability post-upgrade to keep the estate of hardware and OSes fully patched, up to date, and deployed in a way that means you simply don’t care about the hardware any more is compelling.
When you’re safe in the knowledge that you can redeploy almost at the push of a button, your perspective on issues such as end-user support takes on a whole new meaning. Is your machine glitching? No problem – let’s just blow it away, reinstall it and get you working again in minutes.
Put another way: why wouldn’t you want this capability?
In-car registration lookup
I was stopped in my tracks recently by one of those super-interesting stories that occasionally washes across my desktop. The title “How I replicated an $86 million project in 57 lines of code: When an experiment with existing open-source technology does a ‘good enough’ job” was definitely worthy of a deeper look (head to pcpro.link/278-57 to read the full story).
The tale is that of a developer in Australia, called Tait Brown, who decided that it ought to be simple to work out whether or not a car is stolen. At the back-end of the solution he built is an online
web-based service for checking the status of a car registration. So he decided to take a simple dashcam, apply some image processing to it to extract the number plate from the video feed, round trip the information to the online web service, and then display the status of the vehicle seen in the camera view.
As he writes: “At a high level, my solution takes an image from a dashcam video, pumps it through an open-source licence plate recognition system installed locally on the device, queries the registration check service, and then returns the results for display.
“The data returned to the device in the law enforcement vehicle includes the vehicle’s make and model (to verify if only the plates have been stolen), the registration status, and notification if the vehicle is reported stolen.”
It doesn’t get simpler than that. And he managed to do it in just 57 lines of code. As far as I can see, this is a postprocessing task that he runs on video footage taken from the dashcam when he gets home. Obviously, a step up would be to use a small computer with a GSM network connection to allow this to run within the car as you’re driving around.
He goes on to say that, “While it’s easy to get caught up in the Orwellian nature of an ‘always on’ network of licence plate snitchers, there are many positive applications of this technology. Imagine a passive system scanning fellow motorists for an abductor’s car that automatically alerts authorities and family members to their current location and direction. Tesla’s vehicles are already brimming with cameras and sensors that have the ability to receive OTA updates — imagine turning them into a virtual fleet of good Samaritans. Ubers and Lyft drivers could also be outfitted with these devices to dramatically increase the coverage area.”
And that’s an interesting point. With the almost exponentially increasing technical capabilities of cars, and the number of cameras that appear to festoon them, it really would be possible to commoditise this sort of functionality. I wonder who would be brave enough to deploy it for real into the marketplace?
Meanwhile, the idea of taking simple libraries of existing code and bolting them together to provide a real-world solution to a problem is one that we should celebrate. I love this sort of lateral thinking.
Skipping camera
Talking of dashcams, my friend Tim Skipper is waging a battle with his Garmin Virb Ultra 30 camera. Like me, he’s somewhat of a biker nut, and he likes to video his recordings while out and about. I have the RoadHawk Bullet R+ camera mounted on the front of my BMW K1300S, just in case someone decides to do something stupid in front of me – us bikers call it a “SMIDSY”, for “Sorry Mate, I Didn’t See You”.
Tim is delighted with his Garmin Virb, which generates superb images and features capabilities for synchronising CAN bus data with the video feed, so you can overlay information such as throttle position onto the image.
Delighted, that is, except for the synchronisation between video and sound. It appears that the Virb drops image frames, becoming progressively further out of sync between the image and the soundtrack. We’ve proven this by running the camera filming a clapperboard-style time clock. After half an hour or so, the sound is some five to 10 seconds out of sync.
Garmin support hasn’t covered itself in glory, suggesting it must be the card at fault. We’ve changed that a number of times, plus Tim returned the first example of the camera to Amazon for a replacement, so it wasn’t just the first model, either. Debugging such problems can consume much time and effort. If it wasn’t for the otherwise excellent performance of the Virb 30, I’d recommend that Tim bin it. But a device that’s almost right but isn’t, costing hundreds of pounds, is hard to walk away from.
From 3CX to the cloud
I know it’s been months since I first made noise about moving the lab’s phone system away from 3CX – but I’ve finally managed to do it. Why did I want to move? Well, 3CX was running on a rather tired HP Microserver running Windows Server 2012, and it was the only task on that box. It was getting a little boring having to keep an eye on a single computer to ensure that all the necessary patches were being applied, plus the 3CX software had slipped somewhat behind the current version. There was nothing wrong with 3CX; it’s a solution I’ve admired and recommended since I first tried it over a decade ago. And it remains my go-to solution.
However, the desire to simplify was strong and given that all the phone lines into the lab are SIP trunks with no analogue wiring, it seemed sensible to move to a cloud-based solution. After all, if the internet connection went down, we’d be without the SIP trunks anyway.
After much hunting around and procrastination, I chose the new solution. Why the delay? Well, there was a case of “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”, coupled with having many far more pressing things to worry about. But we got there in the end.
I’m happy to announce that the new solution is… 3CX! But this time it’s hosted in a cloud server for me by the good chaps at Wizards ( wizards.co.uk). I’ve known Chris Comley, the Head Pointy Hat at Wizards, for nearly 30 years and so was happy for him to quote for the new cloud version of 3CX. We took the opportunity to retire all the old Snom and Grandview SIP phones, and replaced them with shiny new Yealink devices.
The configuration and management of 3CX/cloud is simply a dream. Getting everything set up took only an hour or two for multiple phones on three physical sites. I’ve fiddled with the configuration of the Yealink phone on my desk to enable all the fancy push buttons as both status lights and direct dials for all the important extensions. It just works, which is exactly what I wanted. The Microserver has been turned off, and will either be re-tasked to a new role or quietly retired in a donation to a worthy cause.
One little glitch to watch out for, though. The otherwise wonderful Dashlane password manager likes to try to rewrite the username and password fields of the phone accounts when you go into the phone management screens. If you’re not careful, you’ll cheerfully hit Save and then discover the phone doesn’t work anymore. Clearly, this is Dashlane’s fault, but maybe 3CX’s web interface could be a little more savvy. Dashlane must think that this is a username and password field, and should be persuaded not to overwrite the contents. By digging deep, I’ve found facilities in Dashlane to disable its functionality on a per-site basis, but I’m far from certain that I’ve beaten it into submission. I can always use an alternative web browser for phone configuration tasks in the meantime.
Any issues with the change? None at all: the VoIP-Unlimited SIP trunks moved smoothly, the new phones logged in without a hitch, and the Yealink phones clearly demonstrate that they’re fully supported by 3CX with their level of integration and feature-rich operation. The cost? A few tens of pounds a month for the entire hosted solution, which is worth every penny in hassle reduction by allowing me to retire yet another on-premise server.
Upgrade to mesh
The new generation of Wi-Fi mesh products are really worth a look. Traditional Wi-Fi extenders log into your existing Wi-Fi base as if they were a laptop or other device, and then retransmit the Wi-Fi signal out. Often, this is on the same channel, and sometimes you can’t even override the SSID, so you end up not really knowing whether you’re connected to the main base or to the extender.
Adding “ext” or something equivalent to the SSID of the extender name at least allows you to have some element of control. Similarly, I like to split the 2.4 and 5GHz
networks into “network24” and “network5” SSID names. I know I’ll probably get longer range with the 2.4GHz network, but I’ll almost certainly get faster throughput on the 5GHz one, so knowing which one I’m connected to gives me more control.
The advantages of a mesh are multiple. First, it self-heals. The traffic is routed around the mesh base stations automatically, and if one goes down it automatically repairs the mesh using the other devices. Better still, you can sometimes get near-full-speed throughput when traversing a mesh, which can be a considerable benefit over old-style repeater networks.
My sister had an old-style Wi-Fi extender solution in her house, based around Apple AirPort and AirPort Express devices. It was good for its time, but it’s somewhat sad to see that Apple has walked away from this market. I’d certainly like to see the company launch a modern mesh product.
Marianne’s Wi-Fi was getting a little crumbly, with dropouts in her living room, so it was time to change to something more modern. I went for the Google Wi-Fi solution. The starter package comes with two units, which it claims is fine for a mediumto-large home. I suggested she go for an extra one, taking the count to three, simply to ensure that we had a truly overkill solution.
I dropped by one lunchtime to set it up. It couldn’t have been simpler. Yes, you need to run the control and configuration app on either an Android or iOS device, but this wasn’t an issue. From unboxing to having a full three-way mesh took less than a quarter of an hour, including the automatic firmware updating. Performance is excellent, and the management features of the app are simple and obvious.
I have only one small criticism – you can’t split the SSID names to separate 2.4 and 5GHz networks. And on occasion, the mesh can be a little tardy on moving you from point to point if you move around the house quickly. Apart from that, however, it’s settling down very well indeed; she’s delighted with the solution. It’s definitely worth a look, and I’ll report back on how it works in a few months.